Deployment Guide

Persistent Memory for Azure Stack HCI

Topics:

• Configuring persistent memory for Azure Stack HCI

• Configuring Azure Stack HCI persistent memory hosts

Configuring persistent memory for Azure Stack

HCI

Intel Optane DC persistent memory is designed to improve overall data center system performance and lower storage latencies by placing

storage data closer to the processor on nonvolatile media. The persistent memory modules are compatible with DDR4 sockets and can

exist on the same platform with conventional DDR4 DRAM DIMMs. In App Direct Mode, the operating system distinguishes between the

RAM and persistent storage memory spaces.

Intel Optane DC persistent memory provides an ideal capacity to be used as a cache device (SBL) for Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct.

Storage data is interleaved between the Intel Optane DC persistent memory DIMMs within each CPU socket to achieve the best

performance. A single region per CPU socket is configured in the system BIOS. Thus, a dual CPU server platform provides Storage Spaces

Direct with two persistent memory cache devices. These high-endurance, write-intensive cache devices can be used to enhance the

performance of many slower-performing NVMe/SAS/SATA devices that are used for storage capacity, as shown in the following figure:

Figure 3. Persistent memory

Persistent memory requirements

Persistent memory requirements for Dell EMC Solutions for Azure Stack HCI are as follows:

• AX-640

• 2 x Intel Xeon Cascade Lake-SP Gold or Platinum CPUs (models 52xx, 62xx, or 82xx) per server

• 12 x 32 GB RDIMMs in DIMM slots A1-A6 and B1-B6 (white slots) per server, totaling 384 GB of RAM per server

• 12 x 128 GB Intel Optane DC Persistent DIMMs in DIMM slots A7–A12 and B7–B12 (black slots) per server, totaling 2 x 768 GB cache

devices per server

• Windows Server 2019 Datacenter

20 Persistent Memory for Azure Stack HCI