Solution Brief

Data Center
Software-Defined Storage

Transform Data Center Efficiency

with Technology Innovation
Increase scalability, reliability, and affordability with Intel® Optane™ technology
and Microsoft Azure Stack HCI

Executive Summary
Solution Benefits Businesses of all sizes and across industry verticals must optimize and modernize
their data centers to remain competitive. Through hyperconverged infrastructure
Microsoft Azure Stack HCI,
powered by 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® (HCI), Microsoft Azure Stack HCI solutions can enable organizations to simplify
Scalable processors, uses Intel® deployments, scale operations, increase reliability and manageability, and
Optane™ technology to help maximize resource utilization—all of which helps transform data center
organizations reimagine memory efficiency and help reduce total data center costs.
and storage, and accelerate
By combining highly virtualized compute, storage, and networking on
data-centric transformation.
industry-standard servers and components, Microsoft Azure Stack HCI makes
Organizations can expect to:
it possible to run virtualized applications on premises as well as connect to
• Process demanding workloads.
Microsoft Azure for cloud services.
The solution’s robust
capabilities allow users to Microsoft Azure Stack HCI is optimized for 2nd Generation Intel® Xeon®
handle large datasets and the Scalable processors, a workload-optimized platform designed to deliver agility
most demanding workloads. with enhanced performance and advanced capabilities. Adding Intel® Optane™
• Do more with less. The technology to Microsoft Azure Stack HCI can help organizations increase data
solution’s high-performance throughput, reduce latency, affordably increase memory capacity, and quickly
design helps increase IOPS extract value from large datasets for timely, actionable insights, all while
while requiring fewer nodes for potentially consolidating workloads on a smaller data center footprint.
greater consolidation can help
Optional partner logo
to decrease costs. Intel has created multiple reference architectures to accelerate infrastructure
goes here decisions and solve storage efficiency and memory capacity issues. Organizations
• Help ensure reliability.
Microsoft Azure Stack HCI can look to these modern solutions to help meet today’s storage and memory
solutions use Microsoft- requirements across a wide variety of use cases.
validated hardware for optimal
performance and reliability. Boost Data Center Efficiency with
Validated and Optimized Hardware and Software
Increased Throughput, Larger Memory Capacity, Reduced Latency

Microsoft Azure Stack HCI Intel® Optane™ Technology

Author VIRTUALIZED WORKLOADS INSIDE SSDs AND MEMORY MODULES

Alessandro Goncalves
SSD Solutions Architect, Non-Volatile Figure 1. Intel Optane DC technology helps businesses using Microsoft Azure
Solutions Group, Intel Stack HCI optimize their data centers.
Solution Brief | Transform Data Center Efficiency with Technology Innovation 2

Business Challenge: Choose the Right • Branch office and edge. Azure Stack HCI helps businesses
Infrastructure for Data-Hungry Workloads like retail stores, branch offices, field sites, and other edge
sites that want affordable, highly available, and resilient
Constantly expanding datasets can be overwhelming, but storage for business-critical applications and new edge
they also offer tremendous opportunities to organizations workloads built on containers. Azure Stack HCI solutions
that know how to squeeze the most value from their data. designed for this use case offer cost-effective fault
Companies of all types and across all industries now tolerance and resilience. Intel SSDs can be used in a single
understand the importance of taking advantage of the tier, or as a cache tier to support HDDs in the capacity tier.
growing volume of data to gain actionable insights that help
• Scale-out storage. Businesses that require file serving
inform their business decisions and keep them competitive.
with high scalability, performance, and availability can
Rapidly mining data requires an infrastructure tuned to a look to Azure Stack HCI to provide storage performance
specific workload’s memory and storage requirements. on validated hardware that can be optimized for density,
Today’s organizations need a highly flexible, scalable solution speed, or performance-to-cost ratio. This requires an
that provides affordable handling of high-performance, high- affordable file server and a small hardware commitment.
density data. HCI—tightly integrated and virtualized compute, This use case draws on the capabilities of Microsoft Storage
storage, and networking—combined with Intel® Optane™ Spaces Direct, which creates a pool of highly available and
technology can help organizations meet these challenges. highly scalable storage from locally attached drives at a
cost that can be lower than traditional SAN or NAS arrays.
Performance-Optimizing Use Cases Intel SSDs support the cost-savings and performance goals
Today’s organizations are looking to create efficiencies, of scale-out storage servers. Using high-bandwidth PCIe/
improve performance, and lower costs as much as possible. NVMe-based Intel SSDs for all storage devices will help
Here are some use cases that illustrate how Microsoft Azure optimize performance. Using Intel Optane DC SSDs as
Stack HCI can help businesses find operational efficiencies cache drives and SATA-based SSDs or HDDs as capacity
and boost performance. drives can deliver great performance at a low cost.

• Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Azure Stack HCI suits

users that want to implement remote desktop virtualization
on a large scale. VDI provides user desktops through a
virtual desktop broker. The virtual desktops connect back
to VMs and central storage on the Azure Stack HCI cluster.
VDI delivers client desktops on a range of devices so users
don’t have to store data locally or upload data from local
devices, helping to enhance security.
• Trusted enterprise virtualization. Azure Stack HCI
works in general business scenarios in which customers Organizations that use Microsoft Azure Stack HCI
want to serve any applications hosted on VMs with high can optimize their data centers with Intel® Optane™
security and high availability. Azure Stack HCI provides DC technology.
a security-enabled infrastructure for workloads through
• Intel Optane DC SSDs help eliminate data center
virtualization-based security (VBS), using the Hyper-V
storage bottlenecks and allow affordable processing
hypervisor to create and isolate the Virtual Secure Mode
of larger datasets. The technology can accelerate
(VSM) from the normal operating system. Enabling VBS
applications, reduce workload latency, and lead to
allows security-sensitive operations to occur in the isolated
potential cost savings.
memory, independent of the host operating system.
• Intel® Optane™ DC persistent memory is a non‑volatile
• High-performance SQL Server. Running Microsoft SQL
memory option that delivers a combination of large
Server in an Azure Stack HCI cluster allows users to run
memory capacity and support for data persistence
SQL Server and associated applications with the resiliency
for easy data accessibility. The workload-optimized
virtualization provides. Azure Stack HCI also offers the
technology sits between the memory and storage
benefit of a single vendor for its hypervisor, host operating
layers and helps enable businesses to get fast,
system, and database server when used to host SQL Server.
actionable insights from data-intensive applications
Adding Azure Backup provides comprehensive database
reliably and affordably.
backup management. While Azure Stack HCI deployments
built to support database servers are typically performance-
optimized, users can boost performance with high-bandwidth
PCIe/NVMe-based Intel® SSDs. Users can further increase
performance by using Intel Optane DC SSDs for caching and
SATA-based SSDs or HDDs for capacity.
Solution Brief | Transform Data Center Efficiency with Technology Innovation 3

Solution Value: Get Speed and Scale storage bottlenecks and minimize I/O wait times. Reducing I/O
wait helps to recover CPU cycles, which can help to increase
Microsoft Azure Stack HCI is a hyperconverged Microsoft
workload density, and that ultimately can enable a reduction
Windows Server 2019 cluster that uses validated hardware to
in node count. Fewer nodes not only mean a smaller hardware
run virtualized workloads on-premises. Microsoft Azure Stack
investment, but can also lead to lower software licensing costs.
HCI solutions combine highly virtualized compute, storage,
On a workload simulating a multi-VM environment on Microsoft
and networking on industry-standard x86 servers with local-
Storage Spaces Direct, adding Intel Optane DC SSDs to a server
attached drives to create highly available, highly scalable SDS.
cluster resulted in 26.6 percent faster response times, and
The components of the solution include Microsoft Storage
improved IOPS by up to 52.9 percent using one fewer server,
Spaces Direct, which has built-in support for both PCIe/NVMe-
compared to a solution using only SATA SSDs (see Figure 2).1
based Intel SSDs and Intel® Optane™ DC persistent memory, as
well as Microsoft Hyper-V, which serves as the hypervisor. Azure
Affordably Improve Memory Capacity and Memory Caching
Stack HCI dramatically simplifies deployment, while caching,
storage tiers, and erasure coding, together with the latest For memory-intensive workloads, Intel Optane DC persistent
hardware, deliver exceptional efficiency and performance. memory can provide benefits beyond using DRAM alone. The
technology introduces a new flexible tier within the memory/
The solution is powered by 2nd Generation Intel Xeon storage hierarchy, which is immediately applicable to
Scalable processors, which provide compute capabilities workloads across cloud, in-memory computing, and storage.
to the VMs, as well as enabling I/O and storage efficiency This new technology improves system speed and efficiency,
technologies such as deduplication, compression, and erasure increases data availability, and delivers rapid data insights.
coding. Adding Intel Optane technology to Microsoft Azure
• Intel Optane DC persistent memory in Memory Mode
Stack HCI can result in high performance and low latency at an
allows users to affordably expand volatile system memory,
affordable cost. With Intel Optane technology, organizations
increasing VM density and the amount of memory available
don’t need to choose between speed and scale. Various
to applications.
aspects of Intel Optane technology work together to enable
organizations to process, store, and move larger and more • Intel Optane DC persistent memory in App Direct Mode
complex datasets. The technology bridges critical gaps in can serve as non-volatile (persistent) cache. Persistence
the storage and memory hierarchy to deliver a combination not only protects data in the event of a power loss, but
of persistent memory, large system memory pools, rapid shortens application restart times and increases application
caching, and fast storage, depending on which Intel Optane performance, as memory no longer has to be continuously
technology is in use. Overall, combining 2nd Gen Intel Xeon flushed to storage devices.
Scalable processors with Intel Optane DC persistent memory • In App Direct-Dual Mode (Memory Mode and App Direct
and Intel Optane DC SSDs can help organizations reduce Mode), this technology can serve both as non-volatile
bottlenecks, achieve more VMs per server, and meet the (persistent) cache, as well as fast, volatile system memory,
needs of latency-sensitive workloads, while delivering greater with a percentage of the memory assigned to each mode.
agility and value to challenging data center environments.
By affordably expanding system memory with Intel Optane
Improve Working Storage DC persistent memory in Memory Mode, the number of VMs
per node can increase by up to 36 percent. This increases
Low-latency, high-performance, high-endurance, and reliable
VM density in the Microsoft Azure Stack HCI cluster and can
Intel Optane SSDs in the cache tier help to break through
help to decrease costs (see Figure 3). 2

Increased Data Center Efficiency Increased Data Center Resources

Using Intel® Optane™ DC SSDs1 Using Intel® Optane™ DC Persistent Memory 2
Four-server Cluster using Only Intel® SATA SSDs Baseline System with 384 GB DDR4
Three-server Cluster using Intel® SATA SSDs and Intel Optane DC SSDs System with 192 GB DDR4 + 512 GB Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory in Memory Mode

IOPS LATENCY MEMORY UTILIZATION

HIGHER IS BETTER LOWER IS BETTER HIGHER IS BETTER HIGHER IS BETTER
60 6

50 5
33%
40
52.9 %
4 inCreASeD
36%
Latency (ms)

uP to

MeMorY
IOPS

30 3
inCreASeD DDR4
More VMS
26.6
384 GB
ioPS Per noDe
20
% 2 512 GB
+
DDR4
10 DeCreASeD 1 192 GB 41 VMs 56 VMs

0 lAtenCY 0
PER NODE PER NODE

4-Server 3-Server 4-Server 3-Server Baseline Optimized Baseline Optimized

Cluster Cluster Cluster Cluster System System System System

Figure 2. Get more I/O performance on fewer servers with Figure 3. Adding Intel Optane DC persistent memory increases
Intel Optane DC SSDs. resource utilization and drives down costs.
Solution Brief | Transform Data Center Efficiency with Technology Innovation 4

Solution Architecture:
Build a Balanced Architecture Design Workload-Driven HCI Designs
It is a best practice to increase all subsystems by the Intel simplifies infrastructure decision making by defining
same factor, thereby avoiding creating bottlenecks by five reference designs, optimized for specific use cases for
lack of one or more subsystems. With the increase in organizations that need faster caching, more memory—or both.
options to design HCI solutions, it is imperative that all
resources support one another in a balanced approach. Figure 4 illustrates the reference architecture for workloads
The key is not to under-provision nor over-provision that can benefit from using Intel Optane technology. Each of
any subsystem. Overall, every subsystem needs to grow the options uses Intel Optane SSDs; Options 2 and 3 add in
when one grows, otherwise bottlenecks are highly likely. Intel Optane DC persistent memory. Here are the details:
• Option 1. Use Intel Optane DC SSDs as cache, plus SATA-
based Intel SSDs for the capacity tier, to speed caching and
Achieve Low-Latency Ethernet increase VM density—leading to server consolidation.
Traditionally, storage workloads have run over a dedicated • Option 2. Workloads that need more memory can benefit
fabric. However, HCI environments distribute data across from Intel Optane DC persistent memory in Memory Mode,
nodes in the cluster using a standard Ethernet network, in addition to the Intel Optane SSDs in the cache tier.
making network performance an important factor in the HCI
solution. Microsoft Azure Stack HCI has built-in support for • Option 3. Workloads that not only need additional
high‑performance, low‑latency Intel® Ethernet network adapters memory, but also need extremely low latency can combine
that support remote direct memory access (RDMA). RDMA Intel Optane DC persistent memory in App Direct-Dual
improves the throughput for traffic between nodes, enabling Mode, where the cache layer uses a two-tier architecture
a low-latency, high-throughput direct memory-to-memory that allows for much faster cache allocation and frees
data communication between applications over a network. up drive bays for more capacity. The App Direct Mode
persistent memory replaces Intel Optane DC SSDs in the
Organizations can use these Intel® technologies to solve their cache tier. This configuration is ideal for high-performance
memory and storage issues and accelerate applications, SQL Server use cases.
resulting in excellent overall data center costs.

Three Ways to Improve Microsoft Azure Stack HCI

with Intel® Optane™ Technology
OPTION 1 OPTION 2 OPTION 3
Increase Caching Speed Increase Available Memory Increase Memory and Cache Bandwidth
Upgrade the cache tier with Replace some DDR4 with Intel Optane DC Variably configure Intel Optane DC persistent memory
Intel Optane DC SSDs to persistent memory and enable Memory Mode to with Memory Mode for increasing memory, and
increase caching speed increase memory App Direct-Dual Mode for increasing cache

256 GB System Memory Upgrade to 8x 128 GB Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory Upgrade to 12x 128 GB Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory
16x 16 GB DDR4 Intel Optane DC persistent memory (1TB) used in ‘Memory Mode’ for • 6x used in ‘Memory Mode’ (768 GB) for available system memory
available system memory + 12x 16 GB DDR4 for memory caching • 6x used in ‘App Direct-Dual Mode’ (768 GB) to replace cache tier for
increased caching bandwidth
Memory Mode • 12x 16 GB DDR4 for memory caching

Memory Mode
App Direct-Dual Mode
+
Upgrade Cache Tier to
4x Intel Optane DC SSDs

+ + +
Capacity Tier Cache Tier Capacity Tier +
Intel SATA SSDs Intel Optane DC SSDs Intel SATA or QLC SSDs Capacity Tier
Intel QLC SSDs

Figure 4. Adding Intel Optane technology can speed caching, increase VM density, and reduce latency for a variety of workloads.
 Solution Brief | Transform Data Center Efficiency with Technology Innovation 5

Conclusion that can speed selection and deployment of data center and

communications network infrastructure. The solutions are
Optimizing compute, memory, and storage is important
developed from deep Intel experience with industry solution
for organizations that want to perform fast data analysis
providers, as well as extensive collaboration with the world’s
to inform business decisions that can improve time-to-
leading data center and service providers.
market and lead to competitive advantage. Enterprises
need an infrastructure that’s tuned to a specific business Find the solution that is right for your organization.
scenario or that suits their requirements. Companies can use Contact your Intel representative or visit Intel Optane
Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, with a foundation of 2nd Gen Intel Technology for Data Centers.
Xeon Scalable processors and Intel Optane technology, to
transform data center efficiency and save on hardware and
licensing costs. The solution allows users to either get more
functionality from fewer nodes by enabling more VMs per
Learn More
server, add more servers to do exponentially more work, or You may also find the following resources useful:
extend system memory and memory caching to lower latency • Intel® Optane™ Technology
and increase VM density at the same time.
• Intel® Optane™ DC SSD Series
Replacing standard SSDs with Intel Optane DC SSDs at the cache • Intel® Optane™ DC Persistent Memory
tier can help businesses get insights faster. And by including Intel • 2nd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors
Optane DC persistent memory, organizations can quickly extract
• Microsoft Azure Stack HCI
meaningful insights from very large datasets, scale delivery
of services, and support more customers at compelling cost • Intel® Select Solutions for Azure Stack HCI
savings. Together, these technologies can give organizations of
every size and type the ability to modernize their infrastructure
to get the most value from their data so they can grow and thrive. Solution Provided By:
To get started with Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, visit the
Azure Stack HCI product catalog, which offers solutions
from 20 hardware suppliers. To simplify deployment
even further, choose an Intel® Select Solution for Azure
Stack HCI. Intel Select Solutions are verified configurations

1
Testing by Principled Technologies as of August 7, 2019. For more information, visit principledtechnologies.com/Hpe/Intel-Optane-HPE-ProLiant-
Storage-Spaces-Direct-0919.pdf and principledtechnologies.com/Hpe/Intel-Optane-HPE-ProLiant-Storage-Spaces-Direct-science-0919.pdf.

Common configuration: 2x Intel® Xeon® Gold 6154 processor @ 3.0 GHz (18 cores); 12 x 32 GB DDR4-2666 (total memory = 384 GB); OS drive = 1x
Intel® SSD DC S3700 400 GB; Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology = ON; Intel® Turbo Boost Technology = ON; BIOS = U30 v1.46 (10/02/2018); BIOS
setting = Performance; OS = Windows Server 2019 Build 1809 (patched 8/2/19); Power management policy = Static High Performance Mode; NIC =
2x Intel® Ethernet Adapter XXV710 (25 GbE). All-SATA configuration: four-node cluster; 4x Intel® SSD D3-S4510 3.84 TB. Results: IOPS = 387,092;
Latency = 6.0 ms. SATA plus Intel® Optane™ DC SSD configuration: three-node cluster; 4x Intel® SSD D3-S4510 3.84 TB and 2x Intel Optane SSD DC
P4800X 375 GB. Results: IOPS = 592,173; Latency = 4.4 ms. Workload: VMFleet/DISKSPD 2.0.21a.
2
Performance results are based on testing by Intel as of January 15, 2019 and may not reflect all publicly available security updates. See the configuration
disclosure for details. Common configuration: Intel® Xeon® Gold 6230 processor @ 2.10 GHz. All-DRAM configuration: 384 GB DDR4 DRAM memory.
DRAM + Intel® Optane™ DC persistent memory configuration: 192 GB DDR4 DRAM memory + 512 GB Intel Optane DC persistent memory. Benchmark
Setup: VMFleet Test: Each VM with 1 core, 8 GB; memory, 40 GB VHDX; Test Setup: threads = 2; buffer size = 4 KB; pattern: random, duration = 300
seconds; queue depth = 16, 30% write; OS: Windows Server 2019 Standard (desktop) with updated patch.

Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel microprocessors.

Performance tests, such as SYSmark and MobileMark, are measured using specific computer systems, components, software, operations and
functions. Any change to any of those factors may cause the results to vary. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you
in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. For more complete
information, visit intel.com/benchmarks.

Performance results are based on testing as of the date set forth in the configurations and may not reflect all publicly available security updates. See
configuration disclosure for details. No product or component can be absolutely secure.

Cost reduction scenarios described are intended as examples of how a given Intel-based product, in the specified circumstances and configurations, may
affect future costs and provide cost savings. Circumstances will vary. Intel does not guarantee any costs or cost reduction.

Intel does not control or audit third-party benchmark data. You should review this content, consult other sources, and confirm whether referenced data
are accurate.

Intel’s compilers may or may not optimize to the same degree for non-Intel microprocessors for optimizations that are not unique to Intel
microprocessors. These optimizations include SSE2, SSE3, and SSSE3 instruction sets and other optimizations. Intel does not guarantee the
availability, functionality, or effectiveness of any optimization on microprocessors not manufactured by Intel. Microprocessor-dependent
optimizations in this product are intended for use with Intel microprocessors. Certain optimizations not specific to Intel microarchitecture are
reserved for Intel microprocessors.

Intel technologies’ features and benefits depend on system configuration and may require enabled hardware, software or service automation.
Performance varies depending on system configuration. No product or component can be absolutely secure. Check with your system manufacturer or
retailer or learn more at intel.com.

Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Optane are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries.
Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. © Intel Corporation  0120/JGAL/KC/PDF  341107-001US