An important argument for the introduction of software managed clusters is that of scale: By constructing the cluster out of commodity compute elements, one can, by simply adding new elements, improve the reliability of the overall system in terms of performance and in availability. The limits to how far such a cluster can be scaled seems to be dependent on the scalability of its management software, which in its core has a collection of distributed algorithms to guarantee the correct operation of the cluster. The complexity of these algorithms makes them a vulnerable component of the system in terms of their impact on the overall scalability of the system.
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Unisys and Microsoft collaborated on a proof of concept to demonstrate that the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 product suite will support even the most demanding enterprise business intelligence initiatives. The proof of concept shows that SQL Server 2005 can deliver the same or better results for a high-performance enterprise-class data warehouse than the more-costly alternatives.
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