The System Configuration Tool will not distinguish between sockets and cores, however you may need to intervene to the server's BIOS to limit cores or hyperthreading. By using the System Configuration Tool, you can quickly step down to a fewer number of processors on the system via a soft configuration. For physical systems, this can save unnecessary handling of the internal parts of the server and sensitive processor components. In a virtualized environment, this is pretty straightforward, as you would provision processors to the virtual machine upward or downward.
This is useful for one main reason: determining if lesser performance is acceptable on a system to conserve resources. Here I can step the system down from the current inventory of visible processors (four) to any number less than that. Figure A shows the system running the System Configuration Tool. In the following example, the server has one physical processor with four cores. By clicking the Advanced Options button, you edit the number of processors that are visible to the operating system on boot.
System Configuration (or msconfig.exe) has a Boot tab that allows an interactive edit of the Boot.INI file. I've used this utility to step-down processors on a Windows Server. Most versions of Windows Server have the System Configuration Tool, which shows a number of configuration items for the local system.
