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SQL Server vs. Ford Focus RS: it is a gain!

The installation of SQL Server is very simple. After a few simple questions where you want to put what the installation is a fact and you can use SQL Server. Most users follow the Next - Next - Next - Finish rule and in that case SQL Server is installed with all options chosen installed on the system disk. Nothing wrong with that of cause if you have only one disk because then there is not much to chose, is it.

However, if you are the lucky one having multiple disks in your laptop (I managed to have up to 3 disks) then the installation becomes more tricky. Of cause this is much more difficult when we talk about a Fast Track server with a dedicated SAN behind it and an array of disks that makes an ordinary user dasle. Because you can choose everything becomes more difficult.

It is like ordering an hamburger at MacDo or a VW Golf at your dealer. You have to think whether you like electric windows in the back or tinted glass and at what level. Everything becomes much more easy when you have an example. That's why you see in MacDo this big window above the counter to make you choose faster. The same with VW. Their publicity guides you into prefab models like the Golf 'Rolling Stones' or 'Swing' etc. They try to limited your choice to 5 or 6. Ford did that with the Ford Focus RS. No compromise and really, really incredibly fast! And factory warranty up to 350 horsepower!

The installation of SQL Server does the same thing. It guides you through a process that normally is complex making it simple and give you the feeling that you are in control. But do you really know what you are doing? Looking at all the clients I worked, I can say the majority is not. Especially the customers in France and India. The guys installing SQL Server are just too young, thinking too much on the girl they kissed yesterday while doing the installation or just returned from a late night party doing the installation on automatic mode. They give the impression that they know what they are doing but in fact they don't. And you will find that out after 3 months running. Then things come together and your SQL Server just seem to lose performance.

I knew some IT managers telling me that my loading job should not take more then 1/2 hour because their daily schedule is full. And they have only to load their Data Warehouse. When I looked into it, their DWH turned out to be full of errors like using all the substitute keys and all user keys together in one table. And they stored their user keys of 255 characters long in their fact tables with 800M rows. Great work guys! You knew what you had to do to screw it up! And this guy was telling me that he was in control and he knew what he was doing. LOL.

Last time I got involved me and a colleague of mine tuned down a job that lasted more than 3 hours down to 2 minutes. Oh and I did some tests and their shared SAN had a performance of 0.06 Mb/second at some point in a working day. No wonder that SQL Server did not perform.

This was the bad side of the story which I had to tell to make you understand the good side. Microsoft actually realized that in order to make the choice much more easy for this IT manager they had to provide a pre-configured out of the box solution with a blazing performance. So they designed the Fast Track for Data Warehousing. Bull worked together with Microsoft to deliver a range of products that scale linear in performance and size. From 3 Gb/second up to 14 Gb/second and from 4 Tb to 125 Tb of storage.

The performance is really, really fast! Like the Ford Focus RS the Fast Track program is for Data Warehousing and Data Marts with no compromise. Bull Fast Track does the same for your Data Warehouse as Ford does for their Ford Focus RS: warranty for the performance but Bull gives it for the lifetime of the configuration. So 3 Gb/second stays 3 Gb/second for the whole lifetime of your Data Warehouse. This should make you go to sleep much relaxed and is worth the investment.

You know what? If you get your people on a line we deliver it in 6 weeks completely installed and ready to use. How about it? Is it a deal?
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Location: Paris, France

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