PowerPivot – The Coming Wave
prepared for
April 6, 2010
Prepared by
Jeff Johnston
Greg Galloway
Agenda
• What is PowerPivot and why should I care?
•The value of PowerPivot for the Business User
•Self-service reporting with Excel
•Publishing PowerPivot reports to SharePoint
•What SharePoint Administrators need to know about PowerPivot
•Governance
•Architecture
•Configuration
The Need for PowerPivot
•Perform analysis and create reports
•Analyze more than > 1 million transactions
•Bring in data from several different sources
•IT could do it, but not fast enough for my needs
•Use a tool that is familiar and intuitive
•Share my reports with others
•IT’s concerns about governance & scalability
Ok, so what is PowerPivot?
PowerPivot for Excel 2010
PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010
•Free Add-in for Excel
•Publish to SharePoint
•Millions of rows of data
•Share & collaborate with others
•Discovers relationships
•Centrally monitor and manage
•Flexible layout & formatting
•Manage security
•PivotTables & Slicers
•Discover mission-critical BI solutions
•Tables & Charts
•Excel Services support
PowerPivot Unites Business Users and IT
• Model
• Analyze
• Personalize
• Share data
Empowered to create
without IT dependence
I.T.
Users
Provides alignment between
I.T. and Business Users
• Provision
• Administer
• Secure
• Track
Managing compliance and resources
without user interference
Where Does it Fit?
The BI Continuum
Personal
Team
Corporate
Where Does it Fit?
The BI Continuum
Personal
Self-Service / Flexible
Team
Corporate
Enterprise/Formal
Where Does it Fit – Analytical Tools
Monitoring
Data Mining
Analytics
Softwarederived
Insight
OLAP
PowerPivot
Ad-hoc
Reporting
Reporting
Strong
Spreadsheet
Hypothesis
Weak
demo: Self-Service Reporting with PowerPivot
Demo Recap
• PowerPivot enhances the analytical capabilities of Excel
•Illustrated 3 different data sources
•SQL Server tables
•Reporting Services via Atom Feed
•Clipboard
•Multi-Dimensional (OLAP Cubes)
•Files
•Excel
•Ability to handle 3.9 million rows
•Ability to detect relationships between tables
•DAX Expressions
•Familiar PivotTable / PivotChart ad-hoc reporting
demo: Publishing and
the PowerPivot Management Dashboard
PowerPivot Architecture Overview
Producer
Excel
PowerPivot Add-In
Data Sources
PowerPivot Architecture Overview
Producer
SharePoint Farm
Excel
PowerPivot Add-In
WFE
NLB
Data Sources
Content DBs
PowerPivot Architecture Overview
Excel Services
SharePoint Farm
PowerPivot
WFE
NLB
App Servers
Consumer
Browser
Content DBs
Responsibilities for SharePoint Admin
• Setup
– Capacity planning
– Installing PowerPivot for SharePoint
– Tune SharePoint for large files
• Ongoing Support
– Secure document libraries
– Make sure data refresh is succeeding
– Monitor usage and performance
PowerPivot Capacity Planning
• Metrics to capture:
–
–
–
–
–
–
Total SharePoint users
Concurrent SharePoint Users
Concurrent PowerPivot Users
Number of files per user
Average and max size of files
Total size of all unique PowerPivot workbooks being used concurrently
• PowerPivot is in-memory technology
• Specific guidelines will be coming soon
http://powerpivotgeek.com/server-installation
SharePoint 2010 Topologies - Departmental
Single Server
Multiple Standalone Server
SharePoint Farm
Power
Pivot
WFE
Excel
Svcs
SQL
• Good for small setups
• Not a good farm scenario
• Evenly distributes load across many
servers with NLB in front of servers
• SQL on separate server, with or
without clustering
• Easy to rebuild but doesn’t take into
account heavier loads
SharePoint 2010 Topologies - Enterprise
Licensing
SharePoint Farm
• SharePoint app server with
PowerPivot requires these
licenses:
• SQL 2008 R2 Enterprise
• SharePoint 2010 Enterprise
Power
Pivot
Excel
Svcs
WFE
Power
Pivot
Excel
Svcs
SQL
SQL
WFE
Excel
Svcs
Power
Pivot
web
app
dB
SharePoint Upload Config for Large Files
• Important because IT (SharePoint) Administrators are now
dealing with larger files
– Default SharePoint Scenarios
• Max Size: 50MB
• Average Size: 20MB
– PowerPivot SharePoint Scenarios
• Max Size: 2000MB (change both Excel Services and SharePoint settings)
• Average Size: ~50MB
• Beware of versioning
– Consider Remote Blob Store or third party solutions like StoragePoint
SharePoint Upload Choices
• Ways to upload:
– Save As from Excel with SharePoint
• Excel 2010 uses Office Upload Center to upload asynchronously
under the covers
– Publish to SharePoint (the wizard)
– WebDAV where SharePoint looks like a file share
• Make sure Windows Desktop Experience role is installed and the
WebClient service is running
– Upload from SharePoint web page
SharePoint Upload Effect of Bandwidth
Average Upload Duration for 1.3GB to SharePoint
4:19:12
3:41:03
3:50:24
3:21:36
2:52:48
2:29:27
2:24:00
1:55:12
1:26:24
0:53:16
0:57:36
0:28:48
0:19:56
0:00:00
Corp (100)
T1 (1.54)
Comcast (1.00)
OC3 (155.52)
Bandwidth Category (Mbps)
New: Office Upload Center which can asynchronously upload files
from Excel to SharePoint
Troubleshooting: Reading ULS Logs
%commonprogramfiles%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS\
Key Takeaways
• SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel 2010 is a data analysis add-in that delivers
unmatched computational power directly within Microsoft Excel
• SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel 2010 is available for download free of
charge at www.powerpivot.com.
• SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint integrates with Excel Services on
the SharePoint server to enable seamless and secure sharing and
collaboration on user-generated BI solutions directly in the browser
• SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint is included in SQL Server 2008 R2
Resources
•http://www.powerpivot.com/
•http://powerpivottwins.com/
•http://powerpivotgeek.com/
•http://powerpivotpro.com/
•http://geekswithblogs.net/darrengosbell
•http://sqlblog.com/blogs/marco_russo/
About Artis Consulting
Microsoft Awards
•
•
•
•
Customer Experience Award – February 2010
Compete Award - July 2007 and February 2009
Partnering to Succeed Award - July 2008
GM Award - July 2007
Microsoft Gold Certified Partner
• Microsoft go-to partner for Business Intelligence and SharePoint
• Competencies in Information Worker solutions and Business
Intelligence, with specializations in Portals & Collaborations and
Performance Management
• Founder of MS Business Intelligence Community (www.msbic.com)
right information
right person
right time