SQL Server Modernization: Maximizing Data Value

Many thousands of small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) use Microsoft® SQL Server® for online transaction processing (OLTP), online analytics processing (OLAP) and data warehousing, relying on this popular relational database management system for critical reporting functions and some lightweight analytics.

However, as the data-driven era unfolds, real-time data access and visibility become increasingly important for maintaining a competitive edge. Many SMBs are discovering that older versions of SQL Server running on legacy hardware can’t keep up with growing data sets, let alone emerging applications and use cases such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

If this describes your situation, you’re not alone. However, with SQL Server 2012 reaching end of life in less than a year, now is the perfect time for you to start exploring your options for upgrading your environment to SQL Server 2019 running on the latest generation of Dell EMC PowerEdge servers.

SQL Server 2019: designed for the data-driven era

With the 2019 release, SQL Server took a major evolutionary step, adding features and functionalities that enable it to act as a virtualized data hub. This enables users to access and manage structured and unstructured data from multiple sources through a single, unified interface. For example, SQL Server 2019 can create insights from data across Oracle®, Teradata® and Hadoop® environments without moving or copying it, enhancing both performance and security. The ability to acquire, process and access data — transactional, social, web and more — in a timely, relevant and actionable manner puts data-driven decisions at the heart of your business.

However, to take full advantage of SQL Server 2019, you’ll want to consider deploying it on infrastructure capable of unlocking maximum performance and efficiency for its game-changing features.

Data-intensive workloads demand a more powerful and efficient foundation

Many SMBs deploy SQL Server on a single, on-premises server. That makes the performance and efficiency of your standalone SQL Server platform critical to your ability to keep up with data-intensive workloads such as advanced analytics, AI and ML. Another challenge with running SQL Server databases on self-contained systems is ensuring data is available and protected in the event of a drive failure. Given these requirements, you’ll want to select a modern server configured with high-performing processors, networking and RAID controllers, along with ample storage and memory for SQL Server workloads.

The latest generation of Dell EMC PowerEdge servers fit the bill, with modern technology that gives you multiple advantages for SQL Server 2019. These include 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors with faster performance and more cores, the latest generation of NVMe™ solid-state drives paired with PCIe® Gen4 interfaces for double the throughput, faster memory and new Dell EMC PowerEdge RAID Controllers all enabling 7X more new orders per minute (NOPM) and up to 5.25X faster RAID array rebuilds.

Together, these improvements offer significant SQL Server performance and efficiency gains over previous generation hardware, in addition to higher-capacity storage and faster database rebuild times. These factors and more make Dell EMC PowerEdge servers an ideal choice for running SQL Server 2019.

Source: delltechnologies.com