Fast Track Foundations: Get Serious about Sequential I/O
Fast Track is a new reference data warehousing architecture provided by Microsoft. More than this it represents a new way of thinking about data warehousing. A Fast Track system is measured by its raw compute power - not by a DBAs ability to tune an index. Fast Track is an appliance-like solution that delivers phenomenal performance from a pre-defined, balanced configuration of CPU, memory and storage using nothing but commodity hardware.
Of particular interest in a Fast Track system is the way in which the storage and SQL Server are configured. To achieve the fantastic throughput without using SSDs requires some careful configuration. This configuration is designed to make use of Sequential I/O to dramatically improve disk I/O performance.
Interested? If you have a large data warehouse that's seen better days or perhaps you are about to embark on a new warehousing project then you should be! Fast Track is a great solution with a fantastic value proposition.
In this one hour session we'll aim to get under the skin of Fast Track and get some answers as to how it delivers such great throughput on commodity hardware. In the process we'll aim to answer the following questions:
- When might I need Fast Track?
- What is Sequential I/O?
- How does Sequential I/O improve performance?
- What do I need to do to get Sequential I/O?
- How can I monitor for Sequential I/O ?
- What may I need to change in my ETL to get the benefit of sequential I/O?
Allan Mitchell will be showing how to build SSIS packages to take advantage of sequential IO performance.
Still reading? I'll save you a front row seat....
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- SpeakerBIO
James is a SQL Server Consultant and Microsoft MVP. His focus and passion is to architect and deliver highly scalable database systems that are creative,simple and elegant in their design. He has worked for some of the worlds largest institutions and been responsible for project delivery across EMEA. James has worked on both OLTP and BI/data warehouse engagements and latterly has been spending a lot of time working on SQL Server reference architectures and appliances including Fast Track and PDW.
James is a keen advocate for the SQL Server community both internationally and here in the UK. He is a member of the SQLBits Organising Committee and co-founder of SQLSocial.com. Recently James was appointed as a Board Advisor to PASS. He is charged with providing an international perspective to the board across a wide variety of matters but primarily to assist the PASS community grow internationally.
You can find James on twitter
@jrowlandjones or
www.linkedin.com
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