Default Server Power Plan

Continuing my blog series from SQL Saturday #132, I wanted to review one piece of good advice I received from the pre-conference training on Friday prior to the event.  The pre-con titled “Demystifying Database Administration Best Practices” was presented by Microsoft Certified Masters Robert Davis (twitter|blog) and Argenis Fernandez (twitter|blog).  

The default power setting for a new server is balanced as shown in the image above.  This is great when you are trying to achieve a green workplace.  But did you realize that you purchased hardware and now you are not using it to its full power?  Why would you purchase a powerful server and then not use the server to its full capacity?  Why not just buy a less powerful server if that is the goal?

Want to see the difference in the balance power plan and the high performance?  Download the freeware CPU-Z utility from CPUID.  This is a great utility for the administrator for more reasons than just this one as it gives realtime analysis for your CPU, memory, and graphics.

CPU Performance with Balance Power Plan