Blog: Dan E. Linstedt

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The nature of Appliances in the DW Space

Many are now discussing the "Appliance" for Enterprise Data Warehousing. I've blogged on this in the past about definitions (or lack thereof), and what it means to be an appliance. I ran a google search on "appliance+data warehousing" and came up with a few vendors, and their thoughts on what an appliance is. We'll try to sort through the claims in this entry - and drive it back to a simple level of understanding.

DatAllegro:
Instead of purchasing software, hardware and storage from multiple vendors and utilizing thousands of hours of DBA time to integrate and maintain them, an appliance does the job for you. DATAllegro’s data warehouse appliances bring together a comprehensive set of leading-edge technologies that have been integrated and tuned for world-class performance, out-of-the-box.

Calpont:
'Content The most significant difference is that Calpont's system does not have a database, operating system or disks. Instead Calpont holds all the data in memory (SDRAM). In other words the database is implemented as an "SQL on a chip".

Netezza:
With the Netezza Performance Server® data warehouse appliance, companies across several industries are transforming the way they do business. Now they can make ALL of their data actionable - quickly, simply and affordably - enabling them to do things they weren't able to before. Here are some examples of customer results:

Now when we take a look at the "APPLIANCE" side of the market, given the definitions I've written in the past, let's keep in mind that something new is brewing: DBMS Vendors are now moving toward a mix of components, use of high-end for super-fast, and super critical data (hot data), low-end for slow data, non-critical, least accessed (cool data), and intermediate pricing and parts for luke-warm data.

Temperature rating of data is what's just around the corner. The "Appliance" platform (including RDBMS, and hardware, and possible data mining applications) of the future will plug in to your network, provide self-configuration, and allow data to be temperature rated. In some cases the temperature of the data will be managed by the RDBMS software itself. The appliance will have LOTS of RAM, as RAM get's cheaper, and faster - the appliance of the future will invest in utilizing RAM solutions with compression technologies, and other components. Calpont is new on the scene, and we will have to wait and see how they handle things.

One of the items I blogged on in the past is Samsung and it's use of Nanotech to create a 16GB RAM chip: "Samsung Announces It Has Developed World’s First 16Gb NAND Memory Chip" What this does, is allow "platform/appliance" manufacturers to extend their RAM reach in to huge amounts of storage, with tiny spaces - provided they are willing to pay for the expensive technology. Eventually Terabytes of storage will be available on RAM chips. All data will be RAM based once nanotech breaks the price barriers and it becomes efficient to produce.

All of that aside, one must look very carefully before deciding on an appliance. Ask the questions: what types of parts are in the platform? What is the MTBF for the parts themselves? Including disk, RAM, CPU, motherboard, etc.. How can the appliance be upgraded? Is there a remote monitoring facility that can predict when failures occur?

In my mind, a EMC has it spot-on. Their DISK is an appliance, they use high-quality parts in their high-end systems, they have remote monitoring, and are often on-site before the disk fails to fix it, and so on. RDBMS vendors venturing into the world of Appliances can take a lessons-learned approach from EMC, In fact - it would be interesting to see one of these vendors partner up with EMC to leverage its entire pre-built monitoring infrastructure. I wonder if EMC could even outsource something like that...

Anyhow, don't be afraid to ask the tough questions - find out where the product roadmap is going, try to align your goals with a hands-off approach to the "appliance". It should be self-maintaining, self-tuning, and self-upgrading.

I'd love to hear your questions.

Cheers,
Dan Linstedt
CTO, Myers-Holum, Inc
http://www.MyersHolum.com

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