Dell on Thursday said it will offer preconfigured, 1-Tbyte, 2-Tbyte and 4-Tbyte data warehouse versions of Microsoft's SQL Server database, according to announcements made at Microsoft's SQL Server user group, PASS, in Denver.

As customers pick one of the three reference configurations, they will have the option of buying an appropriate set of servers, disk drives and software to go with the database system, without further decision-making over what should be part of the purchase, said Tom Casey, Microsoft general manager for SQL Server.

A 1-Tbyte configuration would consist of two Dell PowerEdge 6950 servers to host the SQL Server Database Server and Analysis Server, along with a PowerEdge 2970 server to host Microsoft's Reporting Server. The configuration also includes three Dell PowerVault 1000 storage arrays. The 2-Tbyte and 5-Tbyte configurations include the same hardware and software but add more Dell storage arrays.

The three configurations are now listed at the Dell Web site. They were announced to 2,300 attendees of the SQL Server user group, PASS, also known as the Professional Association for SQL Server Community Summit.

The configurations provide a number of connectors and plug-ins so that they can be managed with both Dell tools and Microsoft Operations Manager or Systems Management Server. Microsoft is trying to give its customers a data warehousing option that is simple to implement and less expensive than data warehousing appliances or other pre-configured systems.

Ted Kummert, corporate VP for Microsoft data and storage platform, in a keynote to PASS on Wednesday said the next version of the database, SQL Server 2008, will be available in the second quarter of next year. He said there will be no price increase for the enhanced system.

SQL Server 2008 is code that's currently out in a community technology preview, a Microsoft term for customer test of beta software. Casey said the next community technology preview for SQL Server will be in a near production-ready release that will be available to selected customers in about six weeks.

Casey said Microsoft continues to make a concerted bid to migrate Oracle users to SQL Server by discounting the $25,000 enterprise edition as much as 50% and the $6,000 standard edition up to 25%.