Sunset Farm Data Warehousing

DWH Appliances

Data Warehouse Appliances

The term data warehouse appliance is generally associated with the emergence of Netezza in the early 2000s; however the concept of a MPP machine that was simple to install, quick to get up and running and required minimal DBA involvement had existed from at least the early 1990s when Whitecross (now Kognitio) introduced their WX9010 and WX9020 systems.

Netezza'a success has resulted in virtually everyone jumping on the appliance bandwagon; although I think it is true to say that some are reluctant passengers! Examples of other data warehouse appliances include:

In my opinion, the following are required components of any appliance:

Parallel performance - support for mixed-workloads
Scalability - both capacity and performance
Ease of installation and administration
Fault tolerance - dual networks, dual power-supplies, disk mirroring, etc.
Reduced total cost of ownership and a rapid return on investment

It is important to remember that data warehouse appliances are not a new idea. Teradata pioneered the concept if not the term more than two decades ago. Teradata's success validated the idea and now more and more vendors (including Teradata) are offering and refining variations of it. But perhaps the most important thing to remember is that it requires a great deal more than a good appliance to succeed in the largest and most important data warehouses. It takes staff, services, partners, and most of all, experience.