Query Parallelism

I have a long running query that behaves differently between two different machines.

I have an 8 core machine running Microsoft SQL Server Developer Edition (64-bit) that does not use parallelism and a 4 core machine running Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Edition (64-bit) that does. I need the former to run in parallelism. I've adjusted all the available settings in the advanced options with no luck.

The 8 core machine runs the query in 1 hour 21 minutes. The other machine runs it in 2 seconds. Please help!

Thanks,
Tyler

You should find explanations for parallelism in SQL Server in these two questions:

-
A query submitted from different applications has differing DOP and

-
What is the meaning of DOP in the context of sql server?

To enable the use of parallelism in first server you have two options:

-
enable it at query level ( use option OPTION (MAXDOP 8) to enable the query to use all CPUs)

-
enable it at server level (use the system stored procedure sp_configure or Management Studio - advanced server properties.

Questions regarding the issue:

• do you have statistics updated in both places?

• did you check the explain plans for the query in both places to see what's the difference?

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#3817, answer score: 4