Microsoft has announced the upcoming delivery of the November community technology preview (CTP) of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2. The company has also announced two new editions, SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter and SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse. It is delivering data warehouse appliances with multiple hardware partners, adding IBM as the newest partner.
According to the Microsoft, the SQL Server 2008 R2 is an information platform that is designed to offer managed self-service business intelligence that expands BI tools to all users with SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel; enables administrators to centrally monitor and manage multiple database applications, instances or servers, accelerating the development and deployment of applications and providing improved support for virtualisation through Hyper-V with Live Migration in Windows Server 2008 R2.
In addition, it also delivers a platform to support data consistency across heterogeneous systems through SQL Server Master Data Services, enabling event-stream processing through SQL Server StreamInsight, and supporting scale-up scenarios for x64 and Itanium hardware.
Microsoft is introducing two new offerings, the SQL Server R2 Datacenter, which supports for up to 256 logical processors and unlimited virtualisation, SQL Server Datacenter and Windows Server 2008, and delivers an information platform for large application workloads; and R2 Parallel Data Warehouse that extends its offerings in data warehousing by providing scalability and performance.
In addition, Microsoft is releasing Fast Track Data Warehouse version 2.0, with new configurations from IBM, and updated configurations from Bull, Dell and HP. The new version offers choice with up to 12 reference architectures based on both Intel- and AMD-based processors.
Ted Kummert, senior vice president of the business platform division at Microsoft, said: Companies are looking to compete and grow by reducing costs and identifying the highest value opportunities for their business. We’re moving forward rapidly to address these challenges with new capabilities in manageability, business intelligence, data warehousing and the first relational database cloud offering in SQL Azure.
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