With SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft continues to be the value leader, offering rich functionality to support OLTP

and BI
workloads out of the box at a low cost of ownership relative to competitors. With increasing hardware innovations, SQL
Server continues to be the only major database vendor who does not price per core for multi-core processors. 

What’s New in SQL Server 2008 R2 Editions

Built on SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2 delivers higher mission-critical scale, more efficient IT, and expanded
reporting and analytics through self-service business intelligence. SQL Server 2008 R2 introduces two new premium editions
to meet the needs of large scale datacenters and data warehouses.

 SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter

 SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse
New Premium Editions
Datacenter

Built on SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter is designed to deliver a high-performing data
platform that provides the highest levels of scalability for large application workloads, virtualization and consolidation, and
management for an organization’s database infrastructure. Datacenter helps enable organizations to cost effectively scale
their mission-critical environment.

Key features new to Datacenter:

 Application and Multi-Server Management for enrolling, gaining insights and managing over 25 instances
 Highest virtualization support for maximum ROI on consolidation and virtualization
 High-scale complex event processing with SQL Server StreamInsight™
 Supports more than 8 processors and up to 256 logical processors for highest levels of scale
 Supports memory limits up to OS maximum
Parallel Data Warehouse

SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse is a highly scalable data warehouse appliance-based solution. Parallel Data
Warehouse delivers performance at low cost through a massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture and compatibility
with hardware partners – scale your data warehouse to tens and hundreds of terabytes.

Key features new to Parallel Data Warehouse:

 10s to 100s TBs enabled by MPP architecture

 Advanced data warehousing capabilities like Star Join Queries and Change Data Capture
 Integration with SSIS, SSRS, and SSAS
 Supports industry standard data warehousing hub and spoke architecture and parallel database copy
Investments in Core Editions
SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise

SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise delivers a comprehensive data platform that provides built-in security, availability, and scale
coupled with robust business intelligence offerings—helping enable the highest service levels for mission-critical workloads.

The following capabilities are new to Enterprise:

 PowerPivot for SharePoint to support the hosting and management of PowerPivot applications in SharePoint
 Application and Multi-Server Management for enrolling, gaining insights and managing up to  25 instances
 Master Data Services for data consistency across heterogeneous systems
 Data Compression now enabled with UCS-2 Unicode support
 High-scale complex event processing with SQL Server StreamInsight™
SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard

SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard delivers a complete data management and business intelligence platform for departments and
small organizations to run their applications—helping enable effective database management with minimal IT resources.

The following capabilities are new to Standard:

 Backup Compression to reduce data backups by up to 60% and help reduce time spent on backups *
 Can be managed instance for Application and Multi-Server Management capabilities
 High-scale complex event processing with SQL Server StreamInsight™

Trusted, Scalable Platform

Line-of-business applications (LOB) are the critical link between the IT department and the business. The ability to securely
and reliably store, centralize, manage and distribute data out to users is key to these LOB applications. SQL Server 2008
provides businesses with a high performance database platform that’s reliable, scalable, and easy to manage. SQL Server
2008 R2 builds on the 2008 release and helps IT departments provide even more cost-effective scalability on today’s most
advanced hardware platforms using familiar SQL Server administration tools.

IT & Developer Efficiency

There has never been greater demand for IT to provide more value with existing budgets and resources. To achieve this,
they need tools and capabilities that help them maximize efficiency across the application lifecycle with streamlined
management, rapid development, and predictable deployment. SQL Server 2008 R2 builds on a long history of enabling DBA
and developer productivity with new tools and capabilities to help IT administrators and developers make the best possible
use of time and resources.

SQL Server 2008 R2 provides new tools for managing large multi-database environments along with improved capabilities to
help maximize the value of consolidation efforts, and ensure the streamlined development and deployment of data-driven
applications.
 Manage Efficiently at Scale
Investments in application and multi-server management will help organizations proactively manage database environments
efficiently at scale through centralized visibility into resource utilization and help streamline consolidation and upgrade
initiatives across the application lifecycle—all with tools that make it fast and easy.

 Increase visibility and control – Gain quick insights into SQL server instances and applications with tools like new
wizards that help enable fast and easy multi-server management setup and reveal versioning information for more control
over server sprawl—no professional services required.
 Optimize resources – Quickly identify consolidation opportunities with dashboard viewpoints, data and log file
utilization rollups, and utilization trends through adjustable capacity policies—helping eliminate underutilized servers.
 Improve efficiencies – Accelerate deployments and upgrades through a new concept, a single unit of deployment,
that packages database schema (database, tables, stored procedures, etc) with deployment requirements and can be
extracted from existing applications or created in Microsoft Visual Studio®—helping reduce deployment trial and error.

Optimize Your Hardware Resources

Make the best use of your hardware infrastructure with tools and insight that provide greater transparency into resource
utilization and tools that help manage it more effectively.

 Dashboard viewpoints provide superior insight into resource utilization and policy violations helping to identify
consolidation opportunities, maximize the value of hardware investments, and maintain healthy systems.
 SQL Server 2008 enables policy-based management of database systems, enabling administrators to more
efficiently manage resource utilization and foster consistency.
 With Resource Governor, administrators can more easily set resource limits on data applications, helping
ensure consistent application performance.
 Data compression helps to reduce storage costs and increase query performing while improving performance.
Now with SQL Server 2008 R2 take advantage of Unicode support using UCS 2 to reduce storage cost for Unicode encoded
data.

Enhance Collaboration across Development and IT

Facilitate streamlined collaboration across development teams and IT with a unified set of tools for packaging and
deployment. The introduction of a single unit of deployment in SQL Server 2008 R2 enables organizations to accelerate and
standardize deployment and upgrade of data-tier application deployment, taking the guesswork out of database projects.

Develop database applications that capture intent and produce a single deployment package ready for hand-off using a new
project type in Visual Studio. Enhanced tools help developers write better applications and package database schema and
applications requirements with the application.

Enable DBAs to quickly unpack applications, and distribute them with new wizards in SSMS. Automatically identify
application requirements and match them with servers that meet those requirements for a more reliable and consistent
deployment experience.
Deploy Efficiently
Dramatically reduce the time required for SQL Server installs by creating sysprep-ed images of SQL Server standalone
instances that can be copied and quickly installed on target systems. Enables rapid provisioning and configuration using
prepared images stored in VHDMart for Hyper-V deployments.

SQL Server 2008 Sysprep accomplishes the install in two phases behind the scenes: prepare and configure. In SQL Server
2008 R2, two new SQL Server setup actions are exposed to the users: PrepareImage (also referred to as “prepare”) and
CompleteImage (also referred to as “complete” or “configure”). SQL Server PrepareImage takes about 30 minutes for
Engine and RS components, whereas CompleteImage takes a few minutes. Windows SysPrep process can be run in
between the two steps to create Windows OS image and deploy to target computers, but is not a required step. These two
steps can be run back-to-back on the same computer. Sysprep will be able to save on the average an estimated 30 minutes
per install.

This feature is available in SQL Server 2008 R2 for Database Engine and Reporting Services deployments

Self-Service Business Intelligence

IT departments and users have traditionally been at odds with each other over self-service analytics. IT departments seek
to maintain IT governance and control; end-users want to generate and manage their own content and reporting.  With
managed self-service business intelligence in SQL Server 2008 R2, these two worlds meet, providing significant business
advantage. SQL Server 2008 R2 provides both end-users and IT with cutting edge tools to create, analyze and model, share
and manage business intelligence data in a secure and streamlined way.

Self-service analysis tools allow end-users to quickly create solutions from disparate data sources within a familiar Microsoft
Office Excel user interface. By publishing these solutions in SharePoint Server, users can easily share them with others. IT
gains management and oversight so they can help ensure the reliability, performance, and security of data-driven assets
across the enterprise while also gaining better visibility into how people are using their data.