BI On a Budget

Data-warehousing functionality and business-intelligence (BI) applications have historically been tools for only the largest enterprises, mainly because of the high cost of procuring the necessary software and hardware. But SMBs can also benefit from this capability. For systems builders, perhaps the biggest challenge has been how to make BI affordable.

In this recipe, you'll learn how to create a cost-effective server to run data-warehousing and BI applications with inexpensive, off-the-shelf hardware and software.

The Technologies

Companies such as IBM and SAP have traditionally served this segment by offering solutions that start at tens of thousands of dollars.

But Microsoft has gotten into this market, too, with its release of SQL Server 2005. There are many benefits to using Microsoft's software. For instance, it can be loaded onto standard Intel hardware with the Windows operating system, thus eliminating the need for more expensive Unix machines. Also, recent advances in chip-manufacturing technology mean SMBs can now afford 64-bit processing capacity for addressing more than 4 GB of system memory and accessing larger files.

Also, there's been an important paradigm shift in the hardware market. The revolution in storage components and networking has opened up a new world for SMBs that was once cost-prohibitive.

5 Steps

1. Assemble the motherboard "combo" by putting together the motherboard, CPUs and RAM. The retail box CPUs come with their own heat sink, but I recommend using a bit of Arctic Silver thermal compound.

Tyan's Tiger K8SSA motherboard has six memory slots: four for CPU0 and two for CPU1. This design uses a dual-channel memory controller, so use two RAM modules for each CPU. Use the black memory slots for the first pair of modules per CPU, leaving the blue slots empty.

2. Install the motherboard combo into the chassis and prepare the chassis by putting the I/O shield and standoffs in place.

3. Install the drive cage and drives into the chassis. Put the cage into the chassis before you put the drives into it.

4. Create SATA Boot Array and install the operating system. Once you have finished the usual processes for assembling the computer system, you can move on to the easy part--installing the software. By using separate arrays for the OS and the data warehousing, you'll improve the reliability and performance of the server.

Now create a RAID 1 array (mirrored pair) from the two Maxtor MaXLine III drives by using the motherboard's integrated SATA RAID controller. First, you'll need to make a driver disk. Tyan has included a handy utility on the CD that comes with the motherboard to do this.

5. Create an SAS RAID Array and install SQL Server. The TARO card controls the SAS drives, so now create a RAID 10 array with it. A RAID 10 array offers the same read performance, but slightly better write performance, superior fault tolerance and lower cost.

As before, you'll need to load the drivers for the controller. Then you'll create and initialize the array. This can be done after the OS installation. Once you have this array ready, you can install the SQL Server software on your SATA array and point your databases toward it.

There you have it: a complete, under-$7,500 solution that's also reliable.