Using the lightweight pooling Option

The overhead involved in switching thread contexts is not very large. Most instances of SQL Server will not see any performance differences between setting the lightweight pooling option to 0 or 1. The only instances of SQL Server that might benefit from lightweight pooling are those that run on a computer having the following characteristics:

• A large multi-CPU server.

• All the CPUs are running near maximum capacity.

• There is a high level of context switching.

These systems may see a small increase in performance if the lightweight pooling value is set to 1.

We do not recommend that you use fiber mode scheduling for routine operation. This is because it can decrease performance by inhibiting the regular benefits of context switching, and because some components of SQL Server cannot function correctly in fiber mode. For more information, see lightweight pooling.