White Papers
10
Dell EMC Fault Resilient Memory
FAQs
2
FAQ
1. What are the Dell server models that support FRM?
- For more information, see your respective server’s Installation and Service Manual available at
www.dell.com/support. See the Memory Settings section to know if your server supports FRM.
2. Does FRM require any specific DIMM population configurations and what are the configurations?
- Yes, FRM requires specific DIMM population configuration. For more information. See the General memory
module installation guidelines section in your respective server’s Installation and Service Manual. This is
also applicable to FRM.
3. Can FRM be utilized in conjunction with other memory RAS technologies such as SDDC (Single Device Data
Correction), ADDDC (Adaptive Double Device Data Correction), MPR (memory page retire), Scrubbing,
ChipKill, etc.?
- FRM can be used in conjunction with other memory RAS technologies as listed above except ADDDC.
However, FRM cannot be used in conjunction with full memory mirroring, single rank sparing, and multi-rank
sparing.
4. In BIOS, Optimizer Mode and Advanced ECC mode are listed under Memory operating mode. Is the
Advanced ECC option still available to customers when selecting FRM?
- Advanced ECC does not exist in yx4x PowerEdge servers. The Advance ECC option is used to imply
SDDC, which required running the memory in lockstep mode. Therefore, there is a separate memory mode
option. In yx4x PowerEdge servers you get SDDC (Advanced ECC) in an independent mode. You will still
get SDDC in FRM for the memory regions that are not being mirrored.
5. Can FRM be leveraged on servers with NVDIMMs?
- No, FRM is unsupported when NVDIMMs are used.
6. What hypervisor supports FRM?
- VMware ESXi is the only hypervisor that supports FRM.
7. Which operating system and hypervisors (for example, Windows Server, RHEL) supports FRM?
- VMware vSphere 5.5 and later versions support FRM.
8. After configuring FRM, if a server is populated with 1 TB physical RAM, then how much reliable and
standard memory space is available to the Hypervisor/OS?
- In 1 TB physical RAM, 768 GB of memory capacity is available for hypervisor and applications. Remaining
256 GB memory is reserved as reliable region and can used by vmkernel and critical applications to get
loaded.
9. Are there any methods to test the functionality of FRM?
- Yes, there are internal test methodologies that Dell EMC uses to validate FRM, but that is not available to
the end users.