Anon,
The AWE flag enables Addressing Windows Extensions which allows applications such as SQL Server to access more than 4GB of physical memory. If you have more the 4Gb of memory installed in your SQL Server box I would suggest that this flag is enabled along with the /3GB and/or /PAE switches (see http://www.modhul.com/2007/11/10/optimising-system-memory-for-sql-server-part-i/ for more information).
However, I would suggest that if you are experiencing high CPU loads, I would monitor tools such as SQL Profiler to determine whether you are experiencing much higher traffic in your prod environment than you are in dev. If you are, you’re into classic scale up / scale out territory.
Other possible causes:
- Better hardware / CPU / CPU cores in dev?
- Better SQL Server data and log file separation in dev (i.e. high I/O is handled more gracefully)
Diagnosing SQL Server issues is always a long and complicated job, please let us know how you get on.
Rgds, Nick.