Joining cubes and relational data

Question

Hi we run std 2008 r2.  My experience is that voluminous dims have no place in olap cubes.  If I remember correctly power pivot can join a cube to a relational table.  Is that correct?
I'm contemplating going that route but wonder if the same performance issues u get when u incorrectly add a voluminous dim to olap will also occur if instead I set up pp to join that voluminous dim from a relational table to my cube. 
Also worried about any other gotchyas pp brings to the table when a newbie thinks pp is  going to be a viable self service bi tool for his user.
the customer dim i'm focused on has 158k values and is growing.

Answer 1

Well, I didn't mean to run Tabular in a hybrid mode, but to switch your data model to tabular completely.
Good that you mentioned it. Don't think there's any advantage in doing a hybrid on that constellation. 
Here are some links re tabular:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh212940(v=sql.110).aspx
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh994774.aspx
Don't know how much you actually tried to optimize query performance in your current environment - do you know this Whitepaper?: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17303
Maybe it would make more sense to use partioning on your current environment - but then an upgrade to Enterprise or at least Business Intelligence Edition (2014) would be needed (as it would be for running SSAS in Tabular anyway)
2008:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645993(v=sql.105).aspx
2014: https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/cc645993.aspx
Imke