Technology leap ahead: 15G Intel based Dell EMC Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI
Wed, 22 Sep 2021 18:15:33 -0000
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We are happy to announce the latest members of the family for our Microsoft HCI Solutions from Dell Technologies: the new AX-650 and AX-750 nodes.
If you are already familiar with our existing integrated system offering, you can directly jump to the next section. For those new to the party, keep on reading!
Figure 1: Dell EMC Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI portfolio: New AX-650 and AX-750 nodes
As with all other nodes supported by Dell EMC Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, the AX-650 and AX-750 nodes have been intelligently and deliberately configured with a wide range of component options to meet the requirements of nearly any use case – from the smallest remote or branch office to the most demanding database workloads.
The chassis, drive, processor, DIMM module, network adapter, and their associated BIOS, firmware, and driver versions have been carefully selected and tested by the Dell Technologies engineering team to optimize the performance and resiliency of Azure Stack HCI. Our engineering has also validated networking topologies using PowerSwitch network switches.
Arguably the most compelling aspect of our integrated system is our life cycle management capability. The Integrated Deploy and Update snap-in works with the Microsoft cluster creation extension to deliver Dell EMC HCI Configuration Profile. This Configuration Profile ensures a consistent, automated initial cluster creation experience on Day 1. The one-click full stack life cycle management snap-in for the Microsoft Cluster-Aware Updating extension allows administrators to apply updates. This seamlessly orchestrates OS, BIOS, firmware, and driver updates through a common Windows Admin Center workflow.
On top of it, Dell Technologies makes support services simple, flexible, and worry free – from installation and configuration to comprehensive, single source support. Certified deployment engineers ensure accuracy and speed, reduce risk and downtime, and free IT staff to work on those higher value priorities. Our one-stop cluster level support covers the hardware, operating system, hypervisor, and Storage Spaces Direct software, whether you purchased your license from Dell EMC or from Microsoft.
Now that we are at the same page with our integrated system…
What’s new with AX-650 and AX-750? Why are they important for our customers?
AX-650 and AX-750 are based on Intel Xeon Scalable 3rd generation Ice Lake processors that introduce big benefits in three main areas:
- Hardware improvements
- New features
- Management enhancements
Hardware improvements
Customers always demand the highest levels of performance available, and our new 15G platforms, through Intel Ice Lake and its latest 10nm technology, deliver huge performance gains (compared to the previous generation) for:
- Processing: up to a 40 percent CPU performance increase, a 15 percent per core performance boost, and 42 percent more cores
- Memory: 33 percent more memory channels, a 20 percent frequency boost, and a 2.66x increase in memory capacity
- PCIe Gen4 IO acceleration: a doubled throughput increase compared to PCIe Gen3, 33 percent more lanes, an increase in direct attached Gen4 NVMe drives, and support for the latest Gen4 accelerators and GPUs
These impressive figures are a big step forward from a hardware boost perspective, but there are even more important things going on than just brute power and performance.
Our new 15G platforms lay the technology foundation for the latest features that are coming (really) soon with the new version of Microsoft Azure Stack HCI.
New features
Windows Server 2022 and Azure Stack HCI, version 21H2 will bring in (when they are made available) the following two key features:
- Secured-core Server
- GPU support
The fundamental idea of Secured-core Server is to stay ahead of attackers and protect our customers’ infrastructure and data all through hardware, BIOS, firmware, boot, drivers, and the operating system. This idea is based on three pillars:
- Simplified security: easy integration and consumption through Windows Admin Center
- Advanced protection: leveraging hardware root-of-trust, firmware protection, and virtualization-based security (VBS)
- Preventative defense: proactively block the paths attackers use to exploit a system
For more details about Secured-core Server, click here.
Figure 2: Secured-core Server with Windows Admin Center integration
AX-650, AX-750, and AX-7525 are the first AX nodes to introduce GPU readiness for single-width and double-width GPUs.
With the September 21, 2021 launch, all configurations planned to support GPUs are already enabled in anticipation for the appropriate selection of components (such as GPU risers, power supplies, fans, and heatsinks).
This process permits the GPU(s) to be added later on (when properly validated and certified) as an After Point of Sale (APOS).
The first GPU that will be made available with AX nodes (AX-650, AX-750, and AX-7525) is the NVIDIA T4 card.
To prepare for this GPU, customers should opt for the single-width capable PCI riser.
The following table shows the maximum number of adapters per platform taking into account the GPU form factor:
| AX-750 | AX-650 | AX-7525 | |||
| Single width | Dual width | Single width | Dual width | Single width | Dual width |
All SSD | Up to 31 | Up to 2 | Up to 22 | N/A |
| |
All NVMe | Up to 31 | Up to 2 | Up to 22 | N/A | Up to 33 | Up to 33 |
NVMe+SSD |
| Up to 4 | Up to 3 | |||
1 Max of 3 factory installed with Mellanox NIC adapters. Exploring options for up to 4 SW GPUs
2 Depending on the number of RDMA NICs
3 Only with the x16 NVMe chassis. x24 NVMe chassis does not support any GPUs
Note that no GPUs are available at the September 21, 2021 launch. GPUs will not be validated and factory installable until early 2022.
Management enhancements
Dell EMC OpenManage Integration with Microsoft Windows Admin Center (OMIMSWAC) extension was launched in 2019.
It has included hardware and firmware inventory, real time health monitoring, iDRAC integrated management, troubleshooting tools, and seamless updates of BIOS, firmware, and drivers.
In the 2.0 release in February 2020, we also added single-click full stack life cycle management with Cluster-Aware Updating for the Intel-based Azure Stack HCI platforms. This allowed us to orchestrate OS, BIOS, firmware, and driver updates through a single Admin Center workflow, requiring only a single reboot per node in the cluster and resulting in no interruption to the services running in the VMs.
With the Azure Stack HCI June 2021 release, the OpenManage Integration extension added support for the AX-7525 and AX-6515 AMD based platforms.
Now, with the September 21, 2021 launch, OMIMSWAC 2.1 features a great update for AX nodes, including these important extensions:
- Integrated Deploy & Update
- CPU Core Management
- Cluster Expansion
Integrated Deploy & Update deploys Azure Stack HCI with Dell EMC HCI Configuration Profile for optimal cluster performance. Our integration also adds the ability to apply hardware solution updates like BIOS, firmware, and drivers at the same time as operating system updates as part of cluster creation with a single reboot.
With CPU Core Management, customers can dynamically adjust the CPU core count BIOS settings without leaving the OpenManage Integration extension in Windows Admin Center, helping to maintain the right balance between cost and performance.
Cluster Expansion helps to prepare new cluster nodes before adding them to the cluster, to significantly simplify the cluster expansion process, reduce human error, and save time.
Figure 3: CPU Core Management and Cluster Expansion samples
In conclusion, the AX-650 and AX-750 nodes establish the most performant and easy to operate foundation for Azure Stack HCI today, along with all the new features and goodness that Microsoft is preparing. Stay tuned for more news and updates on this front!
Author Information
Ignacio Borrero, @virtualpeli
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Dell EMC Solutions for Azure Stack HCI Furthers Customer Value
Wed, 16 Jun 2021 13:35:49 -0000
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As customers address the upgrade cycle of retiring Microsoft Windows Server 2008 into software defined infrastructures using Windows Server 2019, the core tenets of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and hybrid cloud enablement continue to be desired goals. Many customers, however, are unsure how to best leverage their investments in Windows Server to modernize their datacenters to take advantage of software defined infrastructure.
At Dell Technologies, we have leadership positions in converged, hyperconverged, and cloud infrastructures covering several platforms, including being a founding launch partner with Microsoft’s Azure Stack HCI solution. Built over three decades of partnership with Microsoft, we bring the insights and expertise to help our customers with their IT transformation utilizing software defined features of Windows Server 2019, the foundational platform for Azure Stack HCI.
Built on globally available and supported Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) Ready Nodes, Dell EMC offers a wide range of Azure Stack HCI Solutions that provide an excellent value proposition for customers who have standardized on Microsoft Hyper-V and looking to modernize IT infrastructure while utilizing their existing investments and expertise in Windows Server.
As we head to Microsoft’s largest customer event – Microsoft Ignite 2019 – we are delighted to share some new enhancements and offerings to our Azure Stack HCI solution portfolio.
Simplifying Managing Azure Stack HCI via Windows Admin Center (WAC)
With a goal of simplifying Azure Stack HCI management, we have integrated monitoring of S2D Ready Nodes into the Windows Admin Center (WAC) console. The Dell EMC OpenManage Extension for WAC allows our customers to manage Azure Stack HCI clusters from a single pane of glass. The current integration provides health monitoring, hardware inventory, and firmware compliance reporting of S2D Ready Nodes, the core building block of our Azure Stack HCI solution. By using this extension, infrastructure administrators can monitor all their clusters in real time and check if the nodes are compliant to Dell EMC recommended firmware and driver versions. Customers wanting to leverage Azure public cloud to either extend or protect their on-prem applications can do so within the WAC console to utilize services such as Azure Back up, Azure Site Recovery, Azure Monitor, etc.
Here is what Greg Altman, IT Infrastructure Manager at Swiff-Train and one our early customers had to say about our OpenManage integration with WAC:
"The Dell EMC OpenManage Integration with Microsoft Windows Admin Center gives us full visibility to Dell EMC Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, enabling us to more easily respond to situations before they become critical. With the new OpenManage integration, we can also manage Microsoft Azure Stack HCI from anywhere, even simultaneously managing our clusters located in different cities."
New HCI Node optimized for Edge and ROBO Use Cases
Customers looking at modernizing infrastructure at edge, remote or small office locations now have an option of utilizing the new Dell EMC R440 S2D Ready Node which provides both hybrid and all-flash options. A 2-node Azure Stack HCI cluster provides a great solution for such use cases that need limited hardware infrastructure, yet superior performance and availability and ease of remote management.
The dual socket R440 S2D Ready Node is shallower (depth of 27.26 in) than a typical rack server, comes with up to 8 or 10 2.5” drive configurations providing up to 76.6TB of all-flash capacity in a single 1U node.
The table below summarizes our S2D Ready Node portfolio.
R440 S2D RN | R640 S2D RN | R740xd S2D RN | R740xd2 S2D RN | |
Best For | Edge/ROBO and space (depth) constrained locations | Density optimized node for applications needing balance of high-performance storage and compute | Capacity and performance optimized node for applications needing balance of compute and storage | Capacity optimized node for data intensive applications and use cases such as backup and archive |
Storage Configurations | Hybrid & All-Flash | Hybrid, All-Flash, All-NVMe including Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory | Hybrid, All-Flash, and All-NVMe | Hybrid with SSDs and 3.5” HDDs |
For detailed node specifications, please refer to our website.
Stepping up the Performance Capabilities
With applications and growing data analysis needs increasingly driving the lower latency and higher capacity requirements, it’s imperative the underlying infrastructure does not create performance bottlenecks. The latest refresh of our solution includes several updates to scale infrastructure performance:
- All S2D Ready Nodes now support Intel 2nd Generation Xeon Scalable Processors that provide improved compute performance and security features.
- Support for Intel Optane SSDs and Intel Optane DC memory (on R640 S2D Ready node) enable lower latency storage and persistent memory tier to accelerate application performance. The R640 S2D Ready Node can be configured with 1.5TB of Optane DC persistent memory working in App Direct Mode to a provide a cache tier for the NVMe storage local to the node.
- The new all-NVMe option on R640 S2D Ready Node provides a compact 1U node for applications that are sensitive to both compute and storage performance.
- Faster Networking Options: For applications needing high bandwidth and low latency access to network, the R640 and R740XD S2D Ready Nodes can now be configured with Mellanox CX5 100Gb Ethernet adapters. In addition, we have also qualified the PowerSwitch S5232 100Gb switch to provide a fully validated solution by Dell EMC.
As we drove new hardware enhancements to our Azure Stack HCI portfolio, we also put a configuration to test the performance we can expect from a representative configuration. With just a four node Azure Stack HCI cluster with R640 S2D Ready Nodes configure all NVMe drives and 100Gb Ethernet, we observed:
- 2.95M IOPS with an average read latency of 242μs in a VM Fleet test configured for 4K block size and 100% reads
- 0.8M IOPS with an average write latency of 4121 μs in a VM Fleet test configured for 4K block size and 100% writes
- Up to 63GB/s of 100% sequential read throughput and 9GB/s of 100% sequential write throughput with 512KB block size
Yes, you got it right. Not only the solution is compact, easy to manage but also provides a tremendous performance capability.
Read our detailed blog for more information on our lab performance test results.
Overall, we are very excited to bring so many new capabilities to our customers. We invite you to come meet us at Microsoft Ignite 2019 at Booth 1547, talk to Dell EMC experts and see live demos. Besides the show floor, Dell EMC experts will also be available at Hyatt Regency Hotel, Level 3, Discovery 43 Suite for detailed conversations. Register here for time with our experts.
Meanwhile, visit our website for more details or if you have any questions, contact our team directly at s2d_readynode@dell.com
Dell Hybrid Management: Azure Policies for HCI Compliance and Remediation
Mon, 30 May 2022 17:05:47 -0000
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Dell Hybrid Management: Azure Policies for HCI Compliance and Remediation
Companies that take an “Azure hybrid first” strategy are making a wise and future-proof decision by consolidating the advantages of both worlds—public and private—into a single entity.
Sounds like the perfect plan, but a key consideration for these environments to work together seamlessly is true hybrid configuration consistency.
A major challenge in the past was having the same level of configuration rules concurrently in Azure and on-premises. This required different tools and a lot of costly manual interventions (subject to human error) that resulted, usually, in potential risks caused by configuration drift.
But those days are over.
We are happy to introduce Dell HCI Configuration Profile (HCP) Policies for Azure, a revolutionary and crucial differentiator for Azure hybrid configuration compliance.
Figure 1: Dell Hybrid Management with Windows Admin Center (local) and Azure/Azure Arc (public)
So, what is it? How does it work? What value does it provide?
Dell HCP Policies for Azure is our latest development for Dell OpenManage Integration with Windows Admin Center (OMIMSWAC). With it, we can now integrate Dell HCP policy definitions into Azure Policy. Dell HCP is the specification that captures the best practices and recommended configurations for Azure Stack HCI and Windows-based HCI solutions from Dell to achieve better resiliency and performance with Dell HCI solutions.
The HCP Policies feature functions at the cluster level and is supported for clusters that are running Azure Stack HCI OS (21H2) and pre-enabled for Windows Server 2022 clusters.
IT admins can manage Azure Stack HCI environments through two different approaches:
- At-scale through the Azure portal using the Azure Arc portfolio of technologies
- Locally on-premises using Windows Admin Center
Figure 2: Dell HCP Policies for Azure - onboarding Dell HCI Configuration Profile
By using a single Dell HCP policy definition, both options provide a seamless and consistent management experience.
Running Check Compliance automatically compares the recommended rules packaged together in the Dell HCP policy definitions with the settings on the running integrated system. These rules include configurations that address the hardware, cluster symmetry, cluster operations, and security.
Figure 3: Dell HCP Policies for Azure - HCP policy compliance
Dell HCP Policy Summary provides the compliance status of four policy categories:
- Dell Infrastructure Lock Policy - Indicates enhanced security compliance to protect against unintentional changes to infrastructure
- Dell Hardware Configuration Policy - Indicates compliance with Dell recommended BIOS, iDRAC, firmware, and driver settings that improve cluster resiliency and performance
- Dell Hardware Symmetry Policy - Indicates compliance with integrated-system validated components on the support matrix and best practices recommended by Dell and Microsoft
- Dell OS Configuration Policy - Indicates compliance with Dell recommended operating system and cluster configurations
Figure 4: Dell HCP Policies for Azure - HCP Policy Summary
To re-align non-compliant policies with the best practices validated by Dell Engineering, our Dell HCP policy remediation integration with WAC (unique at the moment) helps to fix any non-compliant errors. Simply click “Fix Compliance.”
Figure 5: Dell HCP Policies for Azure - HCP policy remediation
Some fixes may require manual intervention; others can be corrected in a fully automated manner using the Cluster-Aware Updating framework.
Conclusion
The “Azure hybrid first” strategy is real today. You can use Dell HCP Policies for Azure, which provides a single-policy definition with Dell HCI Configuration Profile and a consistent hybrid management experience, whether you use Dell OMIMSWAC for local management or Azure Portal for management at-scale.
With Dell HCP Policies for Azure, policy compliance and remediation are fully covered for Azure and Azure Stack HCI hybrid environments.
You can see Dell HCP Policies for Azure in action at the interactive Dell Demo Center.
Thanks for reading!
Author: Ignacio Borrero, Dell Senior Principal Engineer CI & HCI, Technical Marketing
Twitter: @virtualpeli