SQL SERVER – Fast Track Data Warehouse for SQL Server 2008

I recently attended a wonderful training session organized by Microsoft on Fast Track Data Warehouse Reference Architectures. If you are regular reader of my blog, you will be well aware of the fact that I am more of the Relational guy than a Business Intelligence professional. I was initially a bit skeptic about this training. However, once I start learning about it, to my surprise, I thought that I am the perfect guy to learn this. In fact, I realized that few of the tricks which this course is suggesting have already been implemented in my earlier consulting assignments.

Fast Track Data Warehouse is a very unique effort by Microsoft, where few Reference Architectures which offer scalability and reliability to huge database are proposed. Fast Track Datasheet provides some excellent points about this reference architecture. I am listing few of the same here.

• Scale from 4 up to 48 Terabytes using compression capabilities in SQL Server 2008 Enterprise
• Choose from industry-standard hardware from Dell, HP, Bull, IBM, EMC and other leading vendors
• Pre-configured servers, storage and networking, specifically balanced and optimized for warehousing
• Implement an enterprise-class solution for less than one-third the price of a comparable Oracle system
• Fast Track Data Warehouse has 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

The Fast Track approach derives its strength from the advanced data warehouse enhancements included in SQL Server 2008 Enterprise such as compression, parallel partitioning and star join query optimization

Well, I think it is great effort by Microsoft and I must express deep gratitude to Microsoft for giving me opportunity to learn this unique initiative. I clearly see that in near future, lots of Data Warehousing solutions will be switching to this solution. You can read more about this reference architecture over here. The image used in blog post is taken from MS official site of Fast Track.

Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)