I have SQL 2016 Standard Edition instance with 40 logical processors in 2 nodes. (2 physical processors x 20 cores = 40 cores total)
Per Recommendations and guidelines for the "max degree of parallelism" configuration option in SQL Server I want to set MaxDOP to 8
Greater than 8 logical processors per NUMA node Keep MAXDOP at 8
BUT per max degree of parallelism Option I can only set it 4, but it looks like that applies to 2008 and I am at 2016
The maximum value for the degree of parallelism setting is controlled by the edition of SQL Server,
In reality, I changed it to 8, SQL did not complain and the value stayed at 8. I set it back to 0 while continuing to research.
My concern is that if I set to 8, I might really be setting it to 4. Before I make any changes I want to know that 8 = 8. I have searched and not found anything else saying that MaxDOP limits in newer versions of SQL is edition based.
Is the MaxDOP limit in SQL 2016+ Edition based?
EDIT Soft NUMA is currently setting to 4 nodes at startup. still learning but If I understand correctly I think this means a single node with 10 logic processors is the most that could be applied to any one statement (query) so setting the MaxDOP to 8 in order to preserver two processors is probably not worth the effort, without some existing problem to solve.
EDIT2 Nodes do not limit parallelism
Place threads on multiple nodes; This is the most common decision made by SQL Server. The decision spreads the workers across multiple nodes as required. The design is similar to full except the starting position is based on the saved, next node, global enumerator. source
