Microsoft teams with Bull, Dell and HP to release a set of pretested reference architectures to make it easier to create data warehouses. The Microsoft SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse is part of Microsoft's continued efforts to expand its footprint in the higher end of the data warehousing space.
Microsoft has partnered with a number of hardware vendors to create a new
set of reference architectures aimed at cutting the complexity
associated with creating data warehouses.
Microsoft officials say the Microsoft SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse is
intended to give customers access to preconfigured industry-standard hardware
from Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Bull. In addition, Microsoft officials said Microsoft
is partnering with Avanade, Cognizant Technology Solutions, HP and Hitachi
Consulting to provide solution templates and technical guidance to help
customers create customized architectures for their data warehouse needs.
"This is basically a step towards appliance-sizing
SQL Server for data warehousing ... basically Microsoft taking on the
responsibility for pretuning the database-to-hardware interface, which we've
just found over the years to be a point of real complexity and difficulty for
the typical DBA [database administrator]," said Stuart Frost, general
manager of Microsoft's SQL Server Data Warehousing Product Unit.
"A DBA will take whatever hardware his company uses, and from the
vendor point of view ... we have no idea what the customer is trying to deploy
on," Frost continued. "What we have to do is work with a very
disparate set of hardware platforms over the years, so we really couldn't
optimize the database to work in a specific way with the hardware platform.
This creates a lot of work for the DBA. They have to be able to understand
operating systems settings, storage infrastructure ... and they have to understand
how to get SQL Server to work on that platform."
The reference architectures will solve those problems, he said, and build on
the foundation that Microsoft laid down with the purchase
of DATAllegro in 2008. According to officials at Microsoft, the
company is pushing ahead with plans to integrate DATAllegro's massively
parallel processing technology with SQL Server 2008 in a project code-named Madison.
The offering is meant to increase Microsoft SQL Server 2008's scalability up
to 32TB and to slash the time and effort required to deploy mission-critical
projects. Through balanced configurations, the new reference architectures are
designed to optimize all hardware components, delivering up to 200MB per second
per central processing unit core, according to Microsoft. The hardware and
reference architectures are available from Bull, Dell and HP starting at
$13,000 per terabyte.
"With Microsoft SQL Server 2008 running on Dell
PowerEdge servers, these new data warehousing solutions are able to scale from
several terabytes to multi-tens of terabytes," Judy Chavis, director of
Software Marketing and Business Development at Dell, said in a statement.
"Soon, they'll be able to scale even higher. This industry-standard
solution gives customers a cost-effective alternative to other proprietary
business intelligence solutions available today."
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