A SQL Server Enterprise Edition feature that classifies incoming sessions into workload groups and controls the CPU, memory, and I/O resources allocated to each group.
- Workload management: Resource Governor enables DBAs to prevent analytical or batch workloads from consuming resources needed by OLTP applications, helping enforce service tier guarantees.
- Resource allocation: Workload groups can be configured with CPU percentage limits, memory grant limits, and maximum degree of parallelism (MAXDOP), allowing granular control over resource consumption.
- Classifier function: Incoming sessions are assigned to workload groups using a classifier function based on attributes such as login name, application name, host name, or other session properties.
- External Resource Pools: Introduced in SQL Server 2016, External Resource Pools extend Resource Governor to control CPU and memory usage for R and Python scripts running through Machine Learning Services.
- Common use cases: Resource Governor is commonly used to limit ad hoc query CPU usage, reserve resources for mission-critical applications, and throttle ETL or reporting workloads during peak business hours.
- Related terms: Parallelism, MAXDOP, CX Packet Wait, OLTP, Workload Management.
