AMD EPYC CPUs Expand Performance & Security In VMware

by Adam Armstrong September 30, 2020

written by Adam Armstrong September 30, 2020

Last week there was a vSphere 7 Update 1 that added support for AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV). With this update, AMD is announcing that it can bring both advanced security features and high-performance capabilities with AMD EPYC processors to VMware environments. AMD is achieving this through an expanded ecosystem with several of the major vendors.

AMD EPYC Rome CPU VMware

Since AMD EPYC CPUs came out, they have drawn quite a bit of attention around their performance, they claim up to 2.3x higher performance on VMmark 3.1.1 compared to their competition. Aside from the core and thread boost, organizations can leverage more and faster RAM and a full security feature set with AMD Infinity Guard including SEV-ES and Secure Memory Encryption. AMD claims that the EPYC processors are becoming the go-to drive for virtualization and HCI. To this end, AMD has been working with OEM partners to deliver vSAN ReadyNodes that use AMD EPYC processors as well as other AMD EPYC processor based VMware HCI solutions.

AMD EPYC ecosystem for VMware include:

Dell Technologies
- Dell EMC VxRail E Series hyperconverged systems – Featuring 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors, these systems continue the successful collaboration between AMD, Dell Technologies and VMware enabling HCI for a wide set of use cases.
- Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes – Using Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, customers can get the performance of AMD EPYC with the flexibility of Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes, hyperconverged building blocks for VMware vSAN environments.
HPE
- HPE ProLiant DL325 and DL385 Gen10 and Gen10 Plus servers – Using 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors, these servers are purpose built for VDI users, business-critical applications, and mixed workloads with scalable growth. The servers are vSAN ReadyNode certified as well.
Lenovo Data Center Group
- Lenovo offers Lenovo ThinkSystem single and dual socket servers that are VMware vSAN ReadyNode certified. This includes the two socket Lenovo ThinkSystem SR645 and SR665 servers featuring enhanced performance and I/O connectivity for higher performance workloads and the single socket Lenovo ThinkSystem SR635 and SR655 servers to help customers accelerate higher performance workloads to improve efficiency.
Supermicro
- Supermicro offers vSAN ReadyNode certified solutions with dual-socket AMD EPYC processors for customers that want to deploy the hyper-converged solution, as quickly as possible.