SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse

Fast Track Solution

Overview

SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse accelerates your data warehouse roadmap with new SQL Server 2008 Enterprise scalable reference architectures for HP, Dell, Bull, EMC and IBM. Reduce costs, save time and reduce risk with reliable reference architectures and best practices for warehousing.

Key Features

Accelerate your data warehouse roadmap with reference configurations
Reduce hardware testing and tuning with better Data Warehouse performance out-of-the-box
Scale from 4 up to 48 terabytes using compression capabilities in SQL Server 2008 Enterprise
Enjoy a lower cost of ownership through better price performance, rapid deployment and industry-standard hardware
Choose the right performance, scalability and pricing to suit your business needs

SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse Partners

Reference configurations are available for HP ProLiant DL 385 G6, HP ProLiant DL 585 G6 and HP ProLiant DL 785 G6 servers. Storage configurations are available for HP MSA2312fc G2.

Reference configurations are available for Dell Power Edge R710 and Dell Power Edge R900. Storage configuration is available for EMC AX4 SAN.

Bull offers Reference configurations based on Bull Novascale R460 E2 and Bull Novascale R480 E1. Storage configuration is available for EMC AX4.

Buy from the Bull website

Experience a new wave of Fast Track with 3 new Reference Architectures from IBM based on IBM System x3650 M2, IBM System x3850 M2 and IBM System x3950 M2.

EMC powers the Dell and Bull Fast Track Reference Architectures with the CLARiiON AX4 Storage Servers. In addition, EMC is a full service Partner with Data Warehouse and BI service offerings for Fast Track Data Warehouse.

Buy from the EMC website

Scale up your warehouse on SQL Server 2008 Enterprise

With SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse, deploy a high performance, enterprise-class warehouse – up to 48 terabytes – without the high cost of traditional systems. A SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse consists of:

SQL Server 2008 Enterprise for a scalable enterprise data warehouse platform
Pre-configured servers, storage and networking, specifically balanced and optimized for warehousing
Reduced data warehousing costs and improved “out-of-the-box” performance

Deep Dive

Faster Time to Value

Deploy a high-performance warehouse faster. Fast Track Data Warehouse hardware is pre-tested for Data Warehousing, which eliminates guesswork and is designed to save you months of configuration, setup, testing and tuning.

Buy all the hardware you need from just one vendor – servers, storage and networking
Speed up creation or migration of data warehouses
Enable business units to build dedicated symmetric multi-processing (SMP) data warehouses on a standard platform

Deep Dive

Implementing a SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse

Data Warehousing at Low Cost

Fast Track Data Warehouses enable you to build Enterprise Data Warehouses at low cost, thanks to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise and industry-standard hardware. Deployment is accelerated and the level of maintenance effort is predictable.

Select from different levels of performance, scalability and price to suit specific business needs.
Choose from two, four or eight processor configurations
Implement an enterprise-class solution for less than one-third the price of a comparable Oracle system

Deep Dive

Raising the Bar on Performance and Scalability

Fast Track Data Warehouse customers enjoy better performance out-of-the-box with less effort because solutions are optimized for Data Warehousing.

What distinguishes a Fast Track Data Warehouse from a typical online transaction processing (OLTP) database is that all components – from CPU to disk are balanced for online analytical processing (OLAP), with a primary emphasis on eliminating potential performance bottlenecks.

Optimized for sequential IO rather than random IO, each Fast Track Data Warehouse is designed to provide up to 200 MB/s per CPU core. This offers similar performance at less than a fifth of the price of other leading Vendors.

Using Microsoft’s technical guidance and best practices, Data Warehouse managers and DBAs can expect their data warehouses to deploy smoothly and perform consistently and predictably.

Deep Dive

A Better Approach to Data Warehousing

Fast Track Data Warehouse solutions are designed with a rigorous approach to data warehousing. Using best practices on Windows configuration and SQL Server database management they help customers to build Data Warehouses that offer predictable performance.

The Fast Track approach derives its strength not only from consistent, reliable hardware, but also from the advanced data warehouse enhancements included in SQL Server 2008 Enterprise such as compression, parallel partitioning and star join query optimization.

An updated best-practices methodology provides implementers with step-by-step technical guidance to lay data out for improved performance. This new Fast Track methodology improves the data warehouse team’s agility and responsiveness by enabling rapid deployment and advanced tuning techniques.

Customize to suit your unique workload and performance requirements
Enhance performance, scalability and manageability through data warehousing enhancements in SQL Server 2008 Enterprise
Build, tune and deploy with confidence using established data warehouse best practices

Deep Dive

Using SQL Server to Build A Hub-and-Spoke Enterprise Data Warehouse Architecture

Looking Ahead

Fast Track Data Warehouses offer a solid roadmap to large-scale enterprise data warehousing on SQL Server. Data warehouses built on Fast Track configurations today can be fully integrated SMP “spokes” in a hub-and-spoke architecture. As your data grows to hundreds of terabytes, your Fast Track data warehouse can become part of a scale-out solution on SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse (previously known as codename “Madison”).