As someone from Microsoft who works closely with a team at HP building the actual appliances mentioned discussed here, I'd love more feedback on the HP Business Decision Appliance (HPBDA) mentioned here. The appliance is designed to support 80-150 concurrent PowerPivot users (doing what we call Self-Service BI) in a 1U server (24 cores/96GB memory) with all the storage required inside the appliance. The appliance is configured to provide backup storage initially. The HPBDA from cardboard box to production takes less than an hour to configure and the only pre-req is existing AD infrastructure.
Here are product details to learn more and an unboxing video which can help understand what we're talking about.
Considering it can take months to design and build one of these yourself starting from scratch (choosing approach/software/hardware/tuning/etc) we're hoping this enables many of you to deliver a very cool capability called PowerPivot to your own organizations with minimal effort because of this.
NuSphere MySQL provides a portable multi-platform (read Linux, UNIX, and Windows) installation via open source tools. The key is providing a mini web server to use to bootstrap. This allows the installation to use the browser on the platform for the UI and Perl scripts that are invoked by the mini web server. Since the scripts can be platform sensitive we are able to have a single install that works on all platforms (and even autostarts). Download and give it a try on Linux and Windows if you are skeptical.
The biggest issue with RPM we find is that everyone who builds them seems to think that every program should be placed in some set of hardwired directories. To provide flexibility for the user to choose their own installation root (or perhaps even install the software multiple times on the same machine for different purposes we found RPMs sorely lacking.
Installation can be done by command line, remotely, and by someone without root privs in a directory where the user has write access and provide apache, perl, php and mysql function for that user.
To gain widespread IT acceptance, open source products are going to need to get much more sophisticated about how and where they are installed.
Don't make the mistake of thinking knowing a little HTML and how to use a database is all you ever need to know. In fact since the web really took off I've seen decline in talented engineers who understand all there is to know about building complex software. Many are distracted by the short term demand for HTML-based websites and never get to the more complex aspects of software.
Keep in mind not all software programs are math based, some are engineering based and focus on broader engineering knowledge rather than pure math that some prefer.
If you really want to have fun, major in software and minor in hardware then you will know exactly how these amazing machines work down to the logic gates inside the chips - some schools call this a computer engineering degree.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone from Microsoft who works closely with a team at HP building the actual appliances mentioned discussed here, I'd love more feedback on the HP Business Decision Appliance (HPBDA) mentioned here. The appliance is designed to support 80-150 concurrent PowerPivot users (doing what we call Self-Service BI) in a 1U server (24 cores/96GB memory) with all the storage required inside the appliance. The appliance is configured to provide backup storage initially. The HPBDA from cardboard box to production takes less than an hour to configure and the only pre-req is existing AD infrastructure.
Here are product details to learn more and an unboxing video which can help understand what we're talking about.
Considering it can take months to design and build one of these yourself starting from scratch (choosing approach/software/hardware/tuning/etc) we're hoping this enables many of you to deliver a very cool capability called PowerPivot to your own organizations with minimal effort because of this.
Look forward to hearing what everyone thinks.
Britt...
The biggest issue with RPM we find is that everyone who builds them seems to think that every program should be placed in some set of hardwired directories. To provide flexibility for the user to choose their own installation root (or perhaps even install the software multiple times on the same machine for different purposes we found RPMs sorely lacking.
Installation can be done by command line, remotely, and by someone without root privs in a directory where the user has write access and provide apache, perl, php and mysql function for that user.
To gain widespread IT acceptance, open source products are going to need to get much more sophisticated about how and where they are installed.
Britt...
Keep in mind not all software programs are math based, some are engineering based and focus on broader engineering knowledge rather than pure math that some prefer. If you really want to have fun, major in software and minor in hardware then you will know exactly how these amazing machines work down to the logic gates inside the chips - some schools call this a computer engineering degree.