Default index fill factor

  • Experts, I have been going through handful of servers I am responsible for and I was just looking into DB settings. Some of the settings I saw which didn't look right to me and I am hoping to get some help. I am not sure if I should change it or leave it the way they are.
    Default index fill factor = 0
    CT of parallelism = 5
    MAXDOP = 0

  • Default fill factor doesn't matter too much provided that you consider the fill factors individually for each index you create.  0 is fine for indexes with a monotonically increasing key, but not so good for ones with a more random key.

    5 is too low a value for cost threshold for parallelism on most modern system.  Start with something between 30 and 50, and monitor.

    Best not to let individual queries chew up all the processors on a server.  If you search you'll find all sorts of formulas for calculating MAXDOP.  Often they work out at half the processors in the system.

    John

  • I'd agree with John.

    Fill Factor 0 is the same as 100. If you see lots of page splits, or an increasing amount, then I might lower this, but I'd keep it in the 90 range unless I really had a good set of measurements that show it needs to be lower. any change in this will mean more page reads for queries.

    MAXDOP definitely low.  I think this has some good guidance, but if you look at your hardware, you'll have an idea of where to set this: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2806535/recommendations-and-guidelines-for-the-max-degree-of-parallelism-confi

    Cost threshhold, seems lots of people start about 50 and then adjust this. Grant has a post on how to decide what to do here: https://www.scarydba.com/2017/02/28/determining-the-cost-threshold-for-parallelism/

    The key is to measure your system now, before you make changes. Gather metrics on page splits, query performance, and then make an adjustment. Measure again, repeat.

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