Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Even an SMB Can Afford

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Data warehousing functionality and business intelligence (BI) applications have historically been tools for only the largest enterprise IT departments, due primarily to the high cost of procuring the necessary software and hardware. But large corporations aren't the only ones who can make the most of BI. Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) can also benefit from this capability. For system builders looking to offer such potential to their customers, perhaps the biggest question has been how to do it affordably.

In this Recipe, I'll show you how to create a cost-effective server to run data warehousing and BI applications with inexpensive, off-the-shelf hardware and software. For less than $7,500, you'll be able to offer SMB customers with up to five client machines a complete solution that will perform admirably. If this sounds a bit expensive, keep in mind that a large enterprise could easily pay more for the BI software alone.

Summary of the Technologies

The software market for BI applications is dominated by specialized vendors selling expensive programs. Companies that include 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, Microsoft's offerings 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. Both these software and hardware elements are key to realizing the benefits of BI. In essence, BI is a collection of software applications, and they require large amounts of memory and storage space.

Also, there's been an important paradigm shift in the hardware market. The revolution in storage components and storage networking has opened up a new world for SMBs that was once too expensive for them to realize. More, specifically, the advent of RAID and the resulting convergence of ATA and SCSI technologies evidenced with the SAS standard are of paramount importance. These can help solve the storage needs of SMBs that want to do data warehousing and run BI applications.

Ingredients

For this Recipe, I recommend you use Microsoft server software, AMD Opteron chips, a Tyan motherboard, and Maxtor hard drives:

* Software: My OS of choice for this system is Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard x64 Edition. This gives us a good platform for Microsoft's SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition X64, which is optimized for 64-bit processing and memory accesses.

Optimization for the newly available multi-core 64-bit x86 CPU architecture is essential for extracting maximum performance from every dollar spent. This software meets that need very well. Manufacturer's suggested retail prices (MSRP) for these software packages are $1,029 for Windows Server 2003 and $1,849 for SQL Server 2005. For more on SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition, see this Microsoft SQL Server Features Comparison page.

* Hardware: Here we'll create a server based on two dual-core AMD Opteron 200-series CPUs—the 265 to be exact. AMD has traditionally competed well with Intel chips on pricing, and its Opteron chips are generally regarded as superior to Intel's Xeon offering in the dual-core 64-bit arena. Again, we are aiming at the best possible performance-to-price ratio, and AMD really delivers. The MSRP is $400 a piece, which includes both the chip and an AMD-approved thermal solution.

* Motherboard: Our pair of Opterons will be mounted on a Tyan Tiger K8SSA S3870G2NR ATX motherboard, which retails for about $360. This low-cost component has several features that make it ideally-suited for this project, including dual CPU sockets and six memory sockets that we'll populate with four 1-GB registered ECC Kingston ValueRAM modules, at $200 each. Probably the best value-adding feature of this motherboard is the SO-DIMM slot that accommodates a low-profile RAID controller, which Tyan calls a "TARO" card. The M9000-10 is an 8-channel SAS RAID controller card, and it sells for a little over $100.

* Storage: Our storage duties will be handled by four Maxtor Atlas 15K II 73.5-GB SAS hard drives, which sell for about $400 each. We'll mount them in an Adaptec 335SAS internal enclosure (MSRP: $369). Our bootable array will be a mirrored pair of Maxtor MaXLine III 250-GB internal drives, which I chose for their high reliability and fine performance; they sell for approximately $100 each. All these assemblies will fit nicely inside a sleek, black Antec Titan 550 Tower Server Case, which retails for about $230.

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