Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (Purley) Unveiled - Intel and VMware touting roughly 2.5x the performance and 4x as many VMs versus the Xeon of 4 years ago

Today was a big announcement day for both Intel and VMware. But before I leave you wondering any longer, yes, those big claims assume Intel Optane / 3D XPoint Inside.

VMware Video

First up, we have The VMware Storage YouTube Channel posting this short video by Lee Caswell, VMware VP of Products, Storage & Availability.

VMware Virtual Blocks

Next came this great summary, rightfully boastful of Day 0 Support of this new processor family:

• vSAN Hits Another Gear with New Intel Xeon Processor Scalable Family
  by Michael Haag:

  vSAN has been extensively tested with Intel’s latest innovations. When deployed together, along with new Intel® Optane™ SSDs and new server platforms, customers can enjoy up to 2.5x more VMs per cluster versus previous generations of vSAN and Intel Xeon processors. These results came from extensive testing by a 3rd party, Evaluator Group, to demonstrate the lower costs possible and faster return on investment (ROI). View notes below on the details of the figure or read the full report here.

  

  In the figure above, the left 3 charts are based on previous generation of servers using Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v4. The 3 results on the right show the performance benefits of moving to the Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, new generation of SSDs, and VMware vSAN 6.6.

then, just 2 hours later, a summary post at VMware Blogs:

• Intel Purley Platform Day 0 Readiness for vSAN
  by Biswapati Bhattacharjee:

  Intel Purley is launched today and you can read about it in Intel website here.

  With that, we also include new “vSAN ReadyNode Generation” in our vSAN VCG listing. If you go to vSAN VCG, you will find a new entry “Gen3 – Xeon Scalable” in addition to the previous generation. If you need to deploy vSAN on Purley, select this ReadyNode platform.

  Below is the box where you select it in vSAN VCG:

  

  

Intel Press Release

We have similarly big claims by Intel:

• Intel Unveils Powerful Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, Bringing Next-Generation Business and Consumer Experiences to Life

  

  Intel Data Center Platform Offers Industry’s Highest Levels of Performance, Biggest Data Center Advancement in a Decade

  NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

  Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors are uniquely architected for today’s evolving data center and network infrastructure — offering businesses the industry’s highest energy efficiency and system-level performance averaging 1.65x higher performance over the prior generation. In growing workloads like AI, Intel Xeon Scalable processors deliver 2.2x performance3 over the prior generation.
  Designed to support an expanding range of existing and emerging data center, and network workloads, including cloud computing, high-performance computing and artificial intelligence.
  Features the richest suite of platform innovations and several integrated performance-boosting technologies including Intel AVX-512, Intel Mesh Architecture, Intel QuickAssist, Intel Optane SSDs, Intel Omni-Path Fabric and more delivering up to 4.2x more virtual machines (VMs) versus a 4-year-old system leading to 65 percent TCO improvement.

Closing Thoughts

I'm hoping to get some time to get a taste of what Optane can do with VMware vSphere soon, and plan to share those findings with you. Not benchmarks mind you, but tips based on first-hand experiences, such as:

• which NVMe driver is best, and where to get it
• which Optane firmware, and how to install each, and how to easily get a sense of the speed it offers.

See also at TinkerTry

• All Optane and 3D XPoint references, and all Micron QuantX references.

• Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X Series can be ultra fast vSAN cache, storage, or RHEL/SLES 8x memory extender using Intel Memory Drive Technology
  Mar 21 2017

• Paul Braren and Allyn Malventano discuss NAND SSD's rough start, M.2 NVMe, and how 3D XPoint will get even faster
  Apr 09 2017

Jul 14 2017 Update

Jul 15 2017 Update

• Dell Poweredge R740xd

  

See also

• Intel's New Xeon Scalable Processors Are Its Broadest Datacenter And Carrier Play Yet
  Jul 11 2017 by Patrick Moorhead at Forbes

  The new Intel Xeon Scalable processor features a new core architecture, new memory controller and on-die interconnects. These new Xeons can support up to 28 cores and 56 threads per socket with support for memory frequencies up to a new 2666 MHz. The microarchitecture itself is being upgraded from Broadwell to Skylake, bringing a whole host of improved features like support for AVX-512, new cache management instructions, improved time stamp counter virtualization and a slew of new security features.

• Editorial: The Intel Xeon Scalable – a Truly Big Day for the Data Center
  Jul 11 2017 by Intel

• Press Kit: Intel Xeon Scalable Processors
  Jul 11 2017 by Intel

• Video replay of the Intel event.