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50 BP1062 | Best Practices for Decision Support Systems with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 using Dell EqualLogic PS Series
Storage Arrays
8 Conclusion
In today’s IT world, as data is growing very rapidly, organizations are being stressed to optimize for storage
capacity as well as for application performance. Data warehouse applications help organizations achieve
better and faster data analytics to improve decision making processes while staying competitive. However,
before a data warehouse application is deployed, specific design decisions and principles should be taken
into consideration to meet capacity and performance requirements. It is also very important to be able to
scale these data warehouse environments linearly as the organizations grow along with the data.
Dell tests validated that EqualLogic PS Series arrays, along with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 provides users
with a flexible, high-performing, and robust data warehouse solution. The lab validated tests explained in
this paper prove that EqualLogic 10 GbE iSCSI PS6110X storage arrays provide high levels of I/O
throughput warranted by data warehouse applications. Taking the performance level a step further, the
scalability of EqualLogic arrays was also tested and the results show that they scale linearly in both
performance and capacity as an organization grows.
The tests presented in this paper were:
• The SQL Server tuning parameter tests performed in section 6.1
proved that the Microsoft
recommended configurations improve the query execution times for data warehouse
workloads.
• SQL Server table partitioning can be implemented to speed up the data warehouse bulk load
operations, backups/restores and maintenance activities. However, they may not be beneficial to
speed up the query performance. The partitioning scheme and structure need to be selected
based on the nature of the queries and in line with the business requirements. Evaluate the table
partition benefits on a test environment before implementing it into production.
• Columnstore Index significantly improved the Data warehouse query execution times as seen in
section 6.3
.
• EqualLogic PS arrays provide the high throughput that DSS applications demand. In addition,
with the scalability of array resources, the system also scales proportionally in both performance
and capacity as the business grows.
Dell EqualLogic PS Series storage arrays provide a flexible, scalable, high-performing, and robust
foundation for a data warehouse implementation based on Microsoft SQL Server 2012.