Data has the power to transform a business in and out. In order to remain relevant and gain competitive advantage, an enterprise needs to have the ability to transform data into breakthrough insights.
Data is growing exponentially. To control the flow of this huge chunk of data and to convert this data into meaningful insights, businesses harness the power of data warehousing. Microsoft has empowered businesses around the globe to do this better with its robust Azure Data Platform. To help businesses deliver insights even faster and better, Microsoft Azure has recently launched the new generation of its Azure SQL Data Warehouse: Compute Optimized Gen2 tier.
The new generation Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW)
1). Query performance improvement through adaptive caching technique
The Azure SQL DW Compute Optimized Gen2 tier is a fast, flexible and secure modern data warehouse, designed for fast complex queries performance. If your enterprise is using the next generation Azure SQL DW, you will experience a dramatic query performance improvement. Additionally, it can support up to 128 concurrent queries with 5x computing power (as compared to the older version of Azure SQL DW).
Interactive queries performance is the top most requirement of any organization. What leads to a suboptimal query performance is the disk access. The potential gap between the computer layer and the storage layer in cloud computing causes a bottleneck for achieving high query performance. The updated version of Azure SQL DW uses its adaptive caching technique that automatically caches data allowing the SQL data warehouse to automatically move all frequently accessed data across different caching tiers. This strategy helps Azure SQL DW to deliver faster and next level query performances.
2). Powering enterprise-wide dashboards with high concurrency
In order to keep their valuable, confidential and sensitive data secured, organizations are compelled to restrict access of their data warehouses. The rigorous control over the stored data leads to analysis delays. Well, not anymore! Azure SQL Data Warehouse Compute Optimized Gen2 tier empowers enterprise-wide dashboards while increasing the number of concurrent queries that can be performed. Azure SQL DW delivers 4x concurrency as compared to the previous product generation. This allows seamless availability of data to the business users. Azure data warehouse has extended the workload management functionality to allow this next level high concurrency.
3). Predictable performance through scaling
The previous product generation-Azure data warehouse fulfills the ever-growing demand of organizations i.e. storing and operating huge data sets. Therefore, Azure SQL data warehouse is highly elastic. The Compute Optimized Gen2 tier brings 2 additional powers in this space -namely the capabilities to store unlimited data in SQL’s columnar format and the availability of new Service Level Objectives with an additional 5x compute capacity. Therefore, the SQL Data Warehouse now can deliver unlimited column store storage capacity.
Get started with Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Microsoft rolled out the Azure SQL DW Compute Optimized Gen2 tier to 20 regions initially that includes US, Australia, Canada, Japan etc. Take advantage of upgrading your existing data warehouse to Gen2. If you are getting started with cloud data warehousing or have any queries with respect to upgrading, we’ll be glad to help. Just give us a shout here!
