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: