Deployment Guide
Table Of Contents
- Microsoft HCI Solutions from Dell Technologies Deployment Guide
- Contents
- Introduction
- Solution Overview
- Solution Deployment
- Introduction to solution deployment
- Deployment prerequisites
- Predeployment configuration
- Operating system deployment
- Installing roles and features
- Verifying firmware and software compliance with the support matrix
- Updating out-of-box drivers
- Changing the hostname
- Configuring host networking
- Joining cluster nodes to an Active Directory domain
- Deploying and configuring a host cluster
- Best practices and recommendations
- Recommended next steps
- Deployment services
- References
- Appendix A: Persistent Memory for Windows Server HCI
Appendix A: Persistent Memory for Windows
Server HCI
Topics:
• Configuring persistent memory for Windows Server HCI
• Configuring Windows Server HCI persistent memory hosts
Configuring persistent memory for Windows Server
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 Microsoft HCI Solutions from Dell Technologies:
● AX-640 nodes
● 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
A
Appendix A: Persistent Memory for Windows Server HCI 23