SUSE Linux 10 Is the First 64-Bit Platform for Teradata Data Warehouses

Published: September 19, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Data warehousing system supplier NCR announced this week that it has ported its eponymous parallel database to Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10. The company said that Teradata 9.0 is the first 64-bit version of its software to come to market, and that SLES 10 is the first 64-bit platform to support it.

The Teradata database was originally created by a company of that name in 1979 on its own MP-RAS Unix implementation. NCR acquired Teradata in 1991, just when data warehousing was becoming commercially viable. NCR eventually ported its Unix, which was a variant of AT&T's Unix System V, to X86 and X64 server platforms. A few years ago, NCR announced that the database would run on X86 and X64 iron that had Microsoft's Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003 variants on it; but this runs in 32-bit mode. Support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 running on X64 servers was pre-announced back in August, when SLES 10 was launched. NCR had been offering 32-bit database support for Teradata databases on SLES 9, but SLES 10 is the first 64-bit operating system that NCR is supporting with the Teradata 9.0 database.

Online outlet retailer Overstock.com is a big Teradata user, and is also a lover of SLES 9 and 10. And that means Overstock is the poster child that Novell is excited to talk about for Teradata support on SLES 10. Wal-Mart is probably Teradata's biggest customer, and it runs what is thought to be the largest data warehouse in the world. It is unclear if Wal-Mart uses Linux, but the economics of Linux/X64 iron certainly fit its economic profile a lot more than do RISC/Unix servers.

Teradata already supports SUSE Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for various front-end tools, access control, and load balancing applications that connect data warehouse users to the Teradata databases. It is unclear when Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be supported as a database platform on X64 iron, but such support would seem to be inevitable and probably timed with the future RHEL 5 release due at the end of the year.