The Analysis Services team has been working overtime lately to provide added community support for the traditional UDM-based OLAP engine (not that any of these people have actually ever worked as little as a 40 hour week in their tenure at Microsoft!) In light of the team’s focus on project Gemini (now known as PowerPivot and the forthcoming BI Semantic Model in SQL Server Denali) over the past couple of years, it’s very encouraging to see their continued commitment to this staple analytic data platform. Last year they announced the Maestros enterprise-scale training and certification program with the second round of sessions scheduled this month in Redmond and Madrid.
The latest deliverable is the SQL Server 2008 R2 Analysis Services Operations Guide, a very comprehensive, 108-page document that focuses on the operational support for Analysis Services database servers and solution environments. This guide was written by Thomas Kejser, John Sirmon, and Denny Lee from the SQL Server Customer Advisory Team (SQLCAT); with contributions from 26 product team members and leading independent industry experts; which include Alejandro Leguizamo and Alberto Ferrari from SolidQ. I attended an excellent session at TechEd 2011in Atlanta last month by Adam Jorgensen on large-scale SSAS operational guidance where he made reference to the forthcoming operational guide.
This will be a welcome and complimentary addition to a library of guides and white papers which include the Analysis Services 2008 Performance Guide, Analysis Services Processing Best Practices and Analysis Services Query Performance Top 10 Best Practices. In addition to several recommended Analysis Services configuration and operational best practices, the new operations guide covers:
- Server configuration
- Memory configuration
- Thread pool & CPU configuration
- Partitioning strategies
- Network considerations
- Monitoring & tuning
- Testing strategies
- Security & auditing
- High availability & disaster recovery
- Diagnosing issues & optimizing
- Server maintenance
For more information on SSAS best-practices and product support, visit the SQLCAT community site.
Filed under: Microsoft BI Community, Microsoft BI Platform, SQL Syndication, SSAS Administration Tagged: Analysis Services Operations Guide, best practices, SQLCAT, SSAS 
