Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

The PDW

SQL Server 2012 PDW is delivered as a prebuilt appliance with software, hardware, and networking components already preinstalled. And, as mentioned before, the PDW appliance had added other features such as xVelocity-based columnstore indexes and PolyBase query integration for retrieving structured and unstructured data together. As you can see in Figure 57.2, the PDW is truly an optimized MPP appliance that has both high availability and high performance all in one. But remember, it has been optimized for data retrieval, not for data updates, deletes, or inserts.

FIGURE 57.2 PDW appliance MPP architecture.

The controller functionality ...