Microsoft Data Warehouse Fast Track for SQL Server 2016 is a joint effort between Microsoft and its hardware partners to deliver validated, pre-configured solutions that reduce the complexity of implementing a data warehouse on SQL Server Enterprise Edition. The Data Warehouse Fast Track program provides flexibility of solutions and customer choice across hardware vendors’ technologies, and uses the core capabilities of the Windows Server operation system and SQL Server to deliver a balanced SMP data warehouse with optimized performance.
The reference architectures are tested internally by Microsoft and consist of high performance hardware and software configurations at various price, performance and footprint tiers. Data Warehouse Fast Track for SQL Server brings some great capabilities designed to support a modern data warehouse implementation where data and analytics can truly exist in the same solution, spanning cloud and on-premises. These reference architectures have been available since SQL Server 2012.
The Data Warehouse Fast Track is not a replacement for APS (Analytics Platform System). APS is a MPP (Massively Parallel Processing) data warehouse appliance which is designed as a pure data warehouse offering and scales to store and query petabytes of data. In general, the initial database size for using APS over the Data Warehouse Fast Track is 150TB:
Data Warehouse Fast Track for SQL Server brings the optimal configuration of hardware and software together into a single packaged offering which is guaranteed to perform. Balanced against time to solution versus cost, Data Warehouse Fast Track for SQL Server truly enables success ‘out of the box’ without the need to perform arduous sizing or throughput calculations (this has all been done for you), simple purchasing and installation, fast performance and scalability, and total peace of mind.
There are certified reference architectures ranging from 6TB to 145TB across SQL Server 2014 and SQL Server 2016. There is even an RA which scales to 1.2PB! To see the partners and their Data Warehouse Fast Track for SQL Server offerings, check out Data Warehouse Fast Track.