Reference Guide

Boss card information
6 Dell EMC XC Series Appliances and XC Core Systems Best Practices for Running Windows Server 2016 with
Hyper-V | A01
1 Boss card information
1.1 Important information about the Boss (PCIe cards M.2 Drive)
The Boot Optimized Server Storage (BOSS) card shipped with XC Series appliances is the appliance boot
device. This PCIe card supports up to two M.2 SATA SSDs configured in RAID1 for high availability.
Note: Write intensive activities and processes leveraged by XC Series appliances, are intended to take place
on the SSDs and HDDs and not the BOSS boot device. Any applications defaulting write activity to the BOSS
boot drive should be redirected accordingly.
1.1.1 Examples of write intensive applications not to be run on the boot device
• System Center Agents
- System Center Configuration Manager (CCMExec.exe)
- System Center Operations Manager (MonitoringHost.exe)
• Write‐intensive Agents
• Databases
• Disk management utilities (third-party disk defragmentation or partitioning tools).
• Additional roles outside of the appliance’s intended use (web server, domain controller, RDS, and so
on.).
• Client‐based Antivirus.
• Virtual machines. Ensure that the Virtual Machines run only on Solid State Drives (SSDs) and Hard
Disk Drives (HDDs).
1.2 Redirection of SCOM and SCCM logs
Note: Currently, Nutanix KB 3253 is an internal Nutanix document for Nutanix and Partner resources only.
For assistance implementing the redirection of SCCM and SCOM logging using Nutanix KB 3253, contact
Dell EMC Tech Support.
When using Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) and Microsoft System Center
Configuration Manager (SCCM) third-party tools to manage and monitor the XC Series hosts, you must
consider write-activity to the system boot drive. SCOM and SCCM make frequent and heavy writes to the
boot devices. In some cases, heavy wear may cause premature failure.
To mitigate premature failure of boot devices due to the impact of the third-party SCCM and SCOM tools, Dell
EMC recommends redirection of the SCCM and SCOM writes.
Nutanix KB 3253 provides the process to redirect logging for both existing and new implementations of SCOM
and SCCM. This process details the steps to create and present an iSCSI target on the Nutanix Distributed
File System (NDFS) then present it to the XC hosts running Hyper-V for redirection of SCOM and SCCM
logging and activity.
1.3 Run virtual machines on the Nutanix Distributed File System only
The boot device is slower performing and much more limited in space than the XC hosts’ SSDs and HDDs
used for the highly available Nutanix Distributed File System (NDFS) clustered storage.