Joining the HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance in the family of appliances designed jointly by HP and Microsoft is the HP Business Decision Appliance, optimized for SQL Server 2008 and SharePoint Server 2010. This appliance is intended to help small and medium-sized business get started quickly with implementing a self-service business intelligence infrastructure without the need to know all the technical intricacies of its hardware and software components. Larger organizations can confidently deploy the Business Decision Appliance without spending months researching and testing the components necessary to provide self-service business intelligence to business users.

Just like the HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance, the Business Decision Appliance is a single product that you order. When it arrives, you connect it to power and your network, and then use the installation wizard to get the appliance up and running. Of course, the hardware and software components of the Business Decision Appliance are completely different from the Data Warehouse Appliance. It’s only a single server that you add to an existing rack. Here’s what it includes:

The key component of the appliance is PowerPivot for SharePoint that I described in a previous post in this series. Understanding all of the nuances of this product and the software on which it depends takes time to learn, which often delays getting an implementation off the ground if you were to acquire the hardware and software separately. Business users want to use PowerPivot for SharePoint, but IT needs time to prepare itself to install and support the environment. Even when you have experience with this product, it can take a couple of days to get a new server installed and configured properly. Having everything you need available as part of an appliance that can be up and running in an hour after plugging it in means users can start sharing PowerPivot workbooks right away.

What happens during that hour of setup? You start by activating the HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO 3) license which allows you to use iLO 3 as the remote console interface for your new server. You can also connect a monitor, keyboard, and mouse directly to the server if you prefer.

Next, you run the Business Decision Appliance installer. The installer is a wizard that steps you through the installation and configuration of the appliance and the software stack. First, you set the appliance name and provide credentials authorized to join a new machine to the domain, and then the installer continues with the domain join operation.

The server reboots after joining the domain, and then the installer continues by prompting you to accept the HP and Microsoft licenses and asking for a domain user account to add as a local administrator on the server. The installation wizard then installs all of the pre-requisite software required for SharePoint 2010 and does a reboot.  At this point, the user logs into the appliance using the domain account they previously configured as a local administrator.

The installation continues by prompting for domain account to be used to run the SQL and SharePoint services under, a SharePoint Farm Security passphrase and any domain user accounts that should be added as SQL database administrators. The currently logged in domain user account is automatically added as a database administrator and also becomes the SharePoint farm administrator on the appliance. Next, you can opt-in to Windows update. The installer then installs SharePoint and SQL and runs Windows update if necessary. When the installer completes, the appliance is configured and ready to use. You'll see a link to the home site for the Business Decision Appliance. Very simple.

From there, you can use links on the home page to view SharePoint help files that explain how you configure SharePoint security. You’ll need to add users to give them access to the SharePoint farm, and assign them to a SharePoint group or grant applicable permissions to individual users. At that point, the appliance is ready for as many as 80 concurrent users to start adding PowerPivot workbooks. Then let the collaboration begin!