Ignite Demo: HPE Scalable Persistent Memory w/ Windows Server Storage Spaces Direct Solution

[Willa]

Every day, the amount of data that is being shared and stored by applications and devices is growing. Because of this growth, the need for high-speed high-performance compute and resilient storage is constantly increasing. To meet these demanding requirements, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Microsoft, Western Digital, and Mellanox have joined forces to deliver a new solution built on Storage Spaces Direct!

The Solution 
Combining the power of the HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 server with Scalable Persistent Memory, Microsoft® Windows Server®, Ultrastar SS300 solid-state drives (SSDs) from Western Digital’s HGST brand, and Mellanox’s high-performance 100 GbE networking adapters connected by Mellanox’s Spectrum® switch, this Storage Spaces Direct solution is configured for performance optimization. In fact, this solution demonstrated up to 3x performance improvement in a performance demonstration leveraging SQL Server to run a TPC-H like data warehouse workload.

How does it improve and optimize performance you ask? Let's take a minute to break it all down and look at the different pieces that make up this solution.

The Server Infrastructure
HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10: As the world's best-selling server¹ the HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server delivers the latest advancements in security, performance and expandability, and is setting a new industry standard for server infrastructure.

HPE Persistent Memory: HPE Gen10 servers are the ONLY servers in the world to offer scalable persistent memory. As an integrated storage solution that runs at memory speeds with terabyte capacity, HPE Scalable Persistent Memory leverages the resilient technology currently deployed in your data centers.

The Server Operating System
Microsoft Windows Server: The latest version of Windows Server introduces support for persistent memory (PMEM) in Storage Spaces Direct—improving the highly available and scalable cloud storage solution. Pairing Windows Server with HPE servers, storage, and networking solutions offers support and features designed to make transitioning to hybrid cloud services and storage solutions easy and simple.

The Storage
Ultrastar SS300 SAS SSDs from Western Digital’s HGST brand: To complement the HPE PMEM architecture this solution uses, Ultrastar SS300 SAS SSDs, designed to deliver both capacity and ultra-high storage performance.

The Networking
Spectrum® Switch: The Spectrum switch provides a predictable, high density 100GbE switching platform capable of meeting the growing demands of today's data centers.

ConnectX®-4 Single/Dual-Port Adapter: The Mellanox ConnectX®-4 Dual-Port Adapter supporting 100 Gb/s with Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI) provides exceptional high performance for the most demanding datacenters, Web 2.0, Cloud, data analytics, database, and storage platforms—enabling today’s corporations to meet the demands of the data explosion.

Want to learn more about this great solution?! If you are attending Microsoft Ignite, be sure to stop by the HPE booth, HGST booth, and Windows Server Software-Defined Storage booth to see demos of this solution and learn more.

[1] With one HPE ProLiant Server shipping every 14.6 seconds and more than 39.3 million sold, HPE ProLiant Servers are the undisputed market share leader. CQ2’17 IDC Server Tracker