{"id":17365,"date":"2016-10-25T08:00:27","date_gmt":"2016-10-25T15:00:27","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-04-24T07:03:53","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T14:03:53","slug":"top-5-announcements-at-pass-summit-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/sql-server\/blog\/2016\/10\/25\/top-5-announcements-at-pass-summit-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Top 5 Announcements at PASS Summit 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is by Joseph Sirosh, Corporate Vice President of the Data Group at Microsoft.<\/em><\/p>\n

In June, we\u2019ve announced the general availability of SQL Server 2016<\/a>, the world\u2019s fastest and most price-performant intelligence database for HTAP (Hybrid Transactional and Analytical Processing) with updateable, in-memory columnstores and advanced analytics through deep integration with R Services. As we officially move into the data-driven intelligence era, we continue to bring new capabilities to more applications, environments and users than ever before.<\/p>\n

Today, we\u2019re making several announcements to bring even more value to our customers.<\/p>\n

1. Public Preview of Azure Analysis Services<\/h2>\n

\"PASS_Announce_1\"Azure Analysis Services (Azure AS)<\/a> \u2013 Based on the proven analytics engine in SQL Server Analysis Services, Azure AS is an enterprise grade OLAP engine and BI modeling platform, offered as a fully managed platform-as-a-service (PaaS). Azure AS enables developers and BI professionals to create BI Semantic Models that can power highly interactive and rich analytical experiences in BI tools such as Power BI and Excel. Azure AS can consume data from a variety of sources residing in the cloud or on-premises (SQL Server, Azure SQL DB, Azure SQL DW, Oracle, Teradata to name a few) and surface the data in any major BI tool. You can provision an Azure AS instance in seconds, pause it, scale it up or down (planned during preview), based on your business needs. Azure AS enables business intelligence at the speed of thought! For more details, see the Azure blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2. SQL Server 2016 DW Fast Track Reference Architecture, 145TB<\/h2>\n

We have collaborated with a number of our hardware partners on a joint effort to deliver validated, pre-configured solutions that reduce the complexity and drive optimization when implementing a data warehouse based on SQL Server 2016 Enterprise Edition. Today, I am happy to announce the Data Warehouse Fast Track (DWFT)<\/a> reference architectures that certify that a SQL Server 2016 SMP unit can support active data sets of up to 145TB<\/strong> and maximum user size of <\/strong>1.2 Petabytes of SQL Data<\/strong><\/a> in an all flash system. These reference architectures provide tested and validated configurations and resources to help customers build the right environment for their data warehouse solutions. Following these best practices and guidelines will yield these tangible benefits:<\/p>\n