Running scripts to set up a demonstration environment - Business Intelligence in Microsoft SharePoint 2013 - page 332

TABLE A-1 A comparison of hardware needs for Tabular and Multidimensional Analysis Services instances

Feature Tabular Multidimensional

RAM Some (16/32 GB) A lot (64/128 GB)

RAM Speed Important Crucial

Number of cores 4/8/16 4/8/16

Core speed Less important Crucial

Disk speed Less important NA

SSD disk usage Recommended NA

Network speed Important Important

The following instruction for determining memory is excerpted from the topic Microsoft SQL
Server 2012 Analysis Services: The BISM Tabular Model (Microsoft Press, 2012).

As a rule, the memory available for a database should be at least 1.5 times the
space required to store the database on disk. Every query can require a temporary
peak of memory usage to store partial results required to solve the complete query.
Simple queries require minimal memory, but more complex queries might be
expensive from this point of view. It is hard to estimate this cost, which also depends
on the number of concurrent queries that Analysis Services receives. It is also difficult
to provide a guideline for sizing memory, depending on concurrent users, and it is
better to follow a heuristic approach, measuring memory consumption in the typical
workload you expect to have.

Introducing the scripts

One of the most important steps you can take to show how the client tools such as Microsoft Ex-
cel 2013 integrate with Microsoft SharePoint 2013 and Microsoft SQL Server 2012 is to “prop-up” an
environment in which you can demonstrate a proof of concept to stakeholders, sponsors, and end
users. People must see what can be accomplished when tools and approaches are used to create
visualizations and insights which change behavior.

Installing and configuring the software can feel daunting. By providing you the scripts and detailed
instruction for a development environment, you will be able to refer back to what is configured and
better modify and reuse the scripts for production.

We introduce a tool that installs the scripts for you by unzipping content packs. Content packs are
simply the files that are used for running the scripts. In this appendix, we detail what each content
pack contains and what it installs.