Database Reference
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that it's an appliance. It has a specific purpose; you can't use a kettle to heat
soup. (Well, you can, but the result is less than ideal.)
PDW is the same. You can do some research online, pick your preferred
hardware vendor (HP, Dell, or Quanta), and decide how much compute
resources you want to have at your disposal. You order the kit, and 4 to 6
weekslaterapreinstalled,preconfiguredrackarrivesatyourdatacenter.It's
unboxed (consider this a white glove service), plugged in, and plumbed into
your network. Data warehousing in a box. Note that this is not transactional
processing in a box. Remember, we support boiling water, not heating soup
with PDW.
NOTE
Quanta have only recently entered the market. At the time of writing
the PDW appliance using Quanta is only available in the USA and
China. Both HP and Dell are available worldwide.
Okay, so the question that tends to follow is this: What happens if you want
to boil water more quickly or boil greater quantities of water? You simply
buy a bigger/better kettle. The same applies with PDW. If you want queries
to run faster or you want to handle more data, you can simply extend your
appliance to provide you with additional computing resources. The nice part
of extending PDW is that the costs are known, predictable,
and
linear. This
is one of the key aspects of scale-out solutions. When you extend them you
are using more of the same commodity kit.
Contrast thiswith anormal SQLServer data warehouse build, even onewith
guidance like a Fast Track solution. These are more like buying a box of
Lego. Sure, they come with instructions and guidance on assembly, but it's
up to you to assemble it correctly. If you don't follow the instructions you
are unlikely to have built the Lego Hogwarts castle you purchased. You are
much more likely to have created something completely different. It might
look like a castle and feel like a castle but it won't be Hogwarts. The same
principle applies to Fast Track.
Furthermore, howdoyouextendit?Well,extending aserverisn'treallyvery
simple, is it? It's not like you can graft another couple of CPU sockets onto
the motherboard, now is it?
