The Microsoft Analytics Platform System (APS) is an appliance that is the combination of an MPP relational database with MPP Hadoop that address the three top trends driving the adoption of Big Data. (Take a look at this video for more on these Big Data trends).
The APS Appliance solution, formerly called SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse or PDW, comes prebuilt to handle multiple aspects of the Big Data world — expanding data volumes, varieties of data types, and economical processing of high volume data, and consists of three solutions:
- Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW)
- HDInsight (the Microsoft distribution of Hadoop)
- Polybase
As a result of my training with APS, I found several interesting insights:
PDW Region
In the PDW region of the appliance, users get a highly available cluster of SQL Servers that work in coordination to handle high data volume scenarios in an affordable, linear, cost structure. PDW works best with structured data where it can load 100 million records in less than 3 minutes and queries the same 100 million records in less than 15 seconds. *Actual results vary depending on the appliance size and data. These were my results from training*
Hadoop Region
In the Hadoop region of the appliance, users get a highly flexible distribution of Hadoop on Windows that contains the power of Hadoop, but is easy to maintain and requires a lower training curve for the traditional Microsoft based developer. In the Hadoop region, solutions can be build that process semi-structured and unstructured data where the results of processing can be brought into PDW for lightning fast reporting and analytics.
Last, but not least is Polybase. Polybase is the integration tool deeply rooted in Hadoop with its ability to create MapReduce jobs in the Hadoop region. Not only can Polybase be used to import and export data to and from PDW and Hadoop, but it can also be used to run Hybrid queries. These are queries that combine data sets from PDW and Hadoop regions in real time.
APS can be an easy segue for organizations moving into the Big Data world. The appliance comes with two MPP solutions (PDW and Hadoop) to handle both structured and unstructured data and provides solid integration between the two using Polybase. And the best part is that organizations don’t have to leave the familiar world of SQL Server to obtain the power of the appliance.
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