Both Tabular and Multidimensional Model in one SQL Server, how is that possible?

Ton Deli picture Ton Deli · Jun 16, 2015 · Viewed 7.1k times · Source

I'm so confused right now and I need to clear my mind with your help!

My company has SQL Server 2012 SP2 installed with multidimensional analysis service. I have read that you cannot have tabular model and multidimensional model in one SQL installation.

Now I connect to my instances as follows: Server01 (SQL Server) Server01 (Analysis Services Multidimensional) Server01/Server02 (Analysis Services Tabular)

I can connect to that last one from Visual Studio when I select Tabular Model and I can connect databases on Server01.

So, everything seems to be working fine. I just want to know how this installation has been done. I haven't done these installations myself, that's IT dep's work.

I thought that you have to install SQL Server twice to get this to work as I have done with my test environment.I have my own test environment on my workstation and I have two instances installed as follows: Server01 (SQL Server) Server01 (Analysis Services Multidimensional) Server01_tab (SQL Server) Server01_tab (Analysis Services Tabular)

As you can see I'm totally confused right now. Any help, advice or info is more that wellcome!

Answer

PowerDAX picture PowerDAX · Jun 17, 2015

You are correct that you have to install SSAS as a new instance for one or the other storage configuration. You can have a default instance and a named instance, > 1 named instance and no default instance, etc. But, point being, you must be able to distinguish between the two instances.

For example, I could connect to server01 as the multidimensional default analysis services instance and server01\tabular as the tabular analysis services instance.

That being said, it is definitely not a best practice to have both storage modes on the same server (if they are both actually utilized) and typically, the server hardware configuration will not be optimal for one or the other.