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Organizations face significant challenges in optimizing their infrastructure to meet growing operational demands while managing costs. One of the key areas of concern is the imbalance between memory and CPU utilization, which highlights the need for innovative solutions like memory tiering and data storage optimization. Without addressing these inefficiencies, organizations face increased total cost of ownership (TCO) and underutilized processing power, resulting in wasted resources, including software licenses, power, and cooling.

In this article, we will dive into strategies that address these issues and help improve overall infrastructure performance.

The Problem Of Underutilized CPUs

A common issue for IT teams is that servers equipped with powerful CPUs often don’t operate at full capacity. In fact, CPU utilization frequently hovers below 50%, mainly because the systems are memory-starved. When there isn’t enough memory available to feed data to the CPU, even high-performance processors can't deliver their full potential.

The consequences of memory-starved CPUs are significant:

• Power, cooling, and rack space are consumed by servers that aren’t delivering maximum performance.
• Locked-up software licenses, underperforming systems, and maintenance overheads all add to operational expenses. This leads to wasted TCO. 

Organizations often react to this problem in two primary ways:

1. Adding more DRAM: While increasing memory may seem like a logical solution, DRAM is costly, often accounting for 50% to 90% of the total server cost. Simply adding more memory is not a sustainable long-term fix.
2. Adding more servers: Another common reaction is to increase server counts. However, this approach leads to a chain reaction of additional costs, including the need for more software licenses, more rack space, higher power consumption, and increased cooling requirements, all of which further inflate operational expenses.

As these traditional solutions continue to drive up infrastructure costs, the need for more innovative and efficient strategies becomes evident. This is where memory tiering comes into play, offering a more intelligent and cost-effective way to address the memory-CPU imbalance. Organizations can optimize their existing infrastructure without continuously adding more expensive hardware or increasing operational expenses.

Memory Tiering And NVMe-Based Memory Tiering

VMware addresses the critical challenges of underutilized CPUs and unbalanced memory-to-CPU ratios through innovative solutions like memory tiering and data storage optimization. These enhancements, included in the latest VMware Cloud Foundation 9 release, aim to improve performance and reduce costs for organizations managing resource-intensive workloads such as databases and VDI.

Memory tiering is a technique that enhances VMware memory management by intelligently classifying memory pages based on their usage patterns. With this approach, frequently accessed data remains in high-speed DRAM, while less critical or infrequently accessed data is moved to a lower-cost tiered memory architecture, utilizing NVMe devices. This innovative page classification method ensures optimal use of memory resources, preventing CPUs from becoming memory-starved, which would otherwise hinder overall performance.

A standout feature in this release is the tech preview of NVMe-based memory tiering in vSphere 8.0U3, which leverages NVMe devices as a second tier of memory to balance memory resources and unlock greater CPU efficiency. This introduces a significant improvement by allowing IT teams to offload less critical data from DRAM to NVMe, freeing up expensive DRAM for high-priority tasks. By doing so, organizations can experience multiple benefits, such as:

• Optimized CPU utilization: By addressing memory bottlenecks, CPUs can now perform at higher efficiency, unlocking additional computing power.
• Reduced DRAM dependency: Offloading less frequently accessed data to NVMe reduces the need for costly DRAM, lowering server costs.
• TCO savings: Organizations can reduce their TCO by up to 45%, thanks to fewer servers, reduced power and cooling demands, and lower ongoing maintenance costs.

For instance, in environments like databases and VDI where memory resources are critical, NVMe-based memory tiering provides a scalable solution with only a minimal 4% loss in performance. This small trade-off is far outweighed by the significant cost savings and enhanced resource efficiency – making memory tiering an excellent choice for organizations looking to optimize infrastructure without sacrificing performance.

Future-Proofing Your Data Center Infrastructure

The ability to optimize memory and CPU utilization becomes more critical as organizations continue to scale their operations. The implementation of memory tiering and data storage optimization offers a forward-thinking approach to addressing these challenges. By balancing memory resources through a tiered memory architecture, IT teams can avoid costly over-provisioning while improving overall infrastructure efficiency.

Final Thoughts

With the growing demands of modern workloads, optimizing infrastructure performance is crucial. The introduction of memory tiering and data storage optimization ensures a balanced tiered memory architecture that supports high-performance environments while reducing the need for additional hardware.

To unlock the full potential of VMware memory management and memory tiering technologies, it’s important to work with experts who understand the intricacies of these solutions. WEI is a trusted IT solutions provider, with a VCDX-certified expert on board to help you navigate these innovations.

Contact WEI today to learn how memory tiering and other advanced technologies can transform your infrastructure, improve efficiency, and lower costs.