Reports of Perfectly-Balanced Hardware Configurations are Greatly Exaggerated

Reports of Perfectly-Balanced Hardware Configurations are Greatly Exaggerated | Intelligent Enterprise Blog

Data Frontiers, by Curt Monash
Curt Monash runs Monash Research, which provides strategic, analysis-based advice to users and vendors of advanced information technology. He also writes the blogs DBMS2, Text Technologies, and Strategic Messaging.
See More by Curt Monash

E-MAIL |

Reports of Perfectly-Balanced Hardware Configurations are Greatly Exaggerated

Posted by Curt Monash
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
9:26 AM

Data warehouse appliance and software appliance vendors like to claim that they've worked out just the right hardware configuration(s), and that a single configuration is correct for a fairly broad range of workloads. But there are a lot of reasons to be dubious about that. Specific vendor evidence includes:

Teradata ascribes considerable importance to a Virtual Storage technology whose main purpose is to allow mixing of heterogeneous storage devices in a single system. And the discussion rarely suggests that these parts will be in a rigid fixed relationship.

Netezza -- as Teradata keeps reminding me -- often sells boxes with the expectation that they won't be filled with data, so as to increase spindle count and hence performance.

Oracle/Sun have dropped some comments about Exadata being more flexibly configured going forward.

Kickfire's new "high-end" appliance lets you attach fairly arbitrary amounts of external storage.

And of course, software-only analytic DBMS vendors run their software in all sorts of hardware and storage environments.

What's more, the claim never made a lot of sense anyway. With the rarest of exceptions, even a single data warehouse's workload will contain different queries that strain different parts of the system in different ratios. Calculating the "ideal" hardware configuration for that single workload would be forbiddingly difficult. And even if one could calculate it, it almost surely would be different than another user's "ideal" configuration. How a single hardware configuration can be "ideally balanced" for a broad class of use cases boggles the imagination.

E-MAIL |

This is a public forum. United Business Media and its affiliates are not responsible for and do not control what is posted herein. United Business Media makes no warranties or guarantees concerning any advice dispensed by its staff members or readers.

Community standards in this comment area do not permit hate language, excessive profanity, or other patently offensive language. Please be aware that all information posted to this comment area becomes the property of United Business Media LLC and may be edited and republished in print or electronic format as outlined in United Business Media's Terms of Service.

Important Note: This comment area is NOT intended for commercial messages or solicitations of business.