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8 BP1062 | Best Practices for Decision Support Systems with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 using Dell EqualLogic PS Series
Storage Arrays
Range right partition function (SQL Server): Here, each boundary value specifies the lowest value of its
partition. All values in partition 1 must be less than the lower boundary of partition 2 and all values in
partition 2 must be greater than or equal to partition 2's lower boundary.
SAN Headquarters (SAN HQ): Monitors one or more PS Series groups. The tool is a client/server
application that runs on a Microsoft Windows system and uses simple network management protocol
(SNMP) to query the groups. Much like a flight data recorder on an aircraft, SAN HQ collects data over time
and stores it on the server for later retrieval and analysis. Client systems connect to the server to format
and display the data in the SAN HQ GUI.
Secondary data file (SQL Server): Optional, user-defined files that store user data. Secondary files can be
used to spread data across multiple disks by putting each file on a different disk drive. Additionally, if a
database exceeds the maximum size for a single Windows file, the secondary data files can be used so the
database can continue to grow. The recommended file name extension for secondary data files is .ndf.
TPC-H Scale: In TPC-H, the database size is defined with reference to scale factor (i.e., scale factor = 300
is approximately 300 GB).This size does not include the database index size and the database size will be
bigger than this estimated size after it has been built.
Transaction log file (SQL Server): Holds the log information used to recover the database. There must be
at least one log file for each database. The recommended file name extension for transaction logs is .ldf.
User-defined Filegroup (SQL Server): Specifically created by the user when the database is created or later
modified. It can be created to group data files together for administrative, data allocation, and placement
purposes.
Virtual Machine: A guest operating system implemented on a software representation of hardware
resources (processor, memory, storage, network, etc.) running on top of a hypervisor in a virtualized server
environment.