MSSQL-CONFIG-001 · Instance settings left at defaults

Severity	Confidence	Permission	Applies to
Medium	Hint	VIEW SERVER STATE (host CPU and RAM)	SQL Server 2017+, Azure SQL MI, RDS

What it checks

Setting	Flagged when	Suggested starting point
max server memory (MB)	Still at the default (2147483647)	~80% of host RAM
max degree of parallelism	0 on hosts with more than 8 logical CPUs (maxdop_cpus)	8
cost threshold for parallelism	Still at the default 5	50
optimize for ad hoc workloads	0	1

Why it matters

With unlimited memory SQL Server can starve the OS and other services. With the parallelism defaults, cheap queries go parallel and compete for CPU (CXPACKET / CXCONSUMER waits).

Next action

EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1; RECONFIGURE;
EXEC sp_configure 'max server memory (MB)', <value>; RECONFIGURE;

Change one setting at a time and watch the effect.

Limitations

These are common starting points, not universal answers. Hosts that run other services (SSIS, SSRS, applications) need more memory left to the OS.