HARDWARE AND OPERATING SYSTEMS
Hardware and operating systems make tip the computing
environment for your data warehouse. All the data extraction, transformation,
integration, and staging jobs run on the selected hardware under the chosen
operating system. When you transport the consolidate and integrated data from
the staging area to your data warehouse repository, you make use of the server
hardware and the operating system hardware. When the queries are from the
client workstations, the server hardware, in conjunction with the database s
ware, executes the queries and produces the results.
Here are some general guidelines for hardware selection, nut
entirely specific to ha ware for the data warehouse.
Salability - When
your data warehouse grows in terms of the number of users, number of queries,
and the complexity of the queries, ensure that your selected hank could be
sealed up.
Support - Vendor
support is crucial for -hardware maintenance. Make sure that the port from the
hardware vendor is at the highest possible level.
Vendor Reference - It is important to check vendor references with
other sites using hardware from this vendor. You do not want to be caught with
your data warehouse being down because of hardware malfunctions when the CEO
wants some critical analysis to be completed.
Vendor Stability -
Check on the stability and staying power of the vendor. Next let us quickly
consider a few general criteria for the selection of the operating system. First
of ail, the operating system must be compatible with the hardware. A list of
criteria follows.
Scalability -
Again, scalability is first on the list because this is one common feature of
every data warehouse. Data warehouses grow, and they grow very fast. Along with
the hardware and database software, the operating system must be able to
support the increase in the number of users and applications.
Security - When
multiple client workstations access the server, the operating system must be
able to protect each client and associated resources. The operating system must
provide each client with secure environment.
Reliability - The
operating system must be able to protect the environment from application termination.
Availability -
This is a corollary to reliability. The computing environment must continue in
be available after abnormal application terminations.
Preemptive Multitasking
- The server hardware must be able to balance the allocation of time and
resources among the -multiple tasks. Also, the operating system must be able to
let a high priority task preempt or interrupt another task as and when needed.
Use multithreaded
approach - The operating system must be able to serve multiple requests concurrently
by distributing threads to multiple processors in a multiprocessor hardware
configuration. This feature is very important because multiprocessor configurations
me architectures of choice in a data warehouse environment.
Memory protection -
Again, in a data warehouse environment, large numbers 'of queries arc common.
That means that multiple queries will be executing concurrently. A memory
protection feature in an operating system prevents one task from violating the
memory space of another.
Having reviewed the requirements for hardware and operating
systems in a data warehouse environment, let us try to narrow down the choices.
What are the possible options? Please go through the following list of three
common options.
Mainframes
- Leftover hardware from legacy, applications
- Primarily designed for OLTP and not for decision support applications
- Not cost-effective fin data warehousing
- Not easily scalable
- Rarely used for data warehousing when too much spare resources are available for smaller data marts
- Open System Servers
- UNIX servers, the choice medium for most data warehouses
- Generally robust
- Adapted for parallel processing
NT Servers
- Support medium-sized data warehouses
- Limited parallel processing capabilities
- Cost-effective for medium-sized and small data warehouses
