Windows config to optimize cube builds

[i-guy]

Hi.
Curious what people have seen regarding optimizing windows setting for quicker cube builds.
Esp curious about...
virtual memory settings (By default, the virtual memory paging file  that is created during installation is 1.5 times the RAM.) ,
Memory Usage (Programs vs  System Cache),
and Processor scheduling (Programs  vs Background services).

Cognos only wants to give me the typical minimum system requirement spiel.

thx.

[mikegreen]

i-guy,

  We have found that memory (2-4GB) and faster, FEWER processors WITHOUT Intel's Hyperthreading turned on yield the best results.

  Transformer will only use a maximum of 2 processors (one if you dont turn on multiprocessing).  We were building cubes on a 4-CPU box that had hyperthreading turned on - making Windows see 8 processors.  Transformer was only using 2/8th of the server's capacity - just one physical CPU.  Turning off hyperthreading allowed it to really use 2 processors, resulting in MUCH quicker cube build times (down by over an hour for a 3 hour build).

You can turn off Hyperthreading in your BIOS, generally.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Mike

[Darek]

Page file should be never of your concern. If you run into using it, your performance will degrade. So just add RAM.

Memory Usage should be set to Programs and so should Processor Scheduling.

Play with WriteCacheSize and find a setting best suits you.