When you first install Adaptive Server, the system is configured for a single engine. To use multiple engines, reset the number of engines the first time you restart the server. You may also want to reset the number of engines at other times. For example, you might want to:
Increase the number of engines if current performance is not adequate for an application and there are enough CPUs on the machine.
Decrease the number of engines if Adaptive Server is not fully utilizing the existing engines. There is overhead involved in running the engines, and Adaptive Server is wasting resources if you don't need the extra engines.
max online engines controls the number of engines used by Adaptive Server. Reset this parameter with sp_configure. For example, to set the number of engines to 3, issue the following:
sp_configure "max online engines", 3
You must restart the server to reset the number of engines.
Repeat these steps whenever you need to change the number of engines. Engines other than engine 0 are brought online after recovery is complete.