After dreaming about “” for years, HPE completed the first milestone.

Today, HPE announced that its DL360/380 servers support NVDIMM-N, or in their own words: “New HPE ProLiant Gen9 portfolio extends leadership with industry-first support for persistent memory“.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they are the first to support PM or that they offer a complete solution (software anyone?), but HPE does deserve a round of applause for several reasons:

• They have been one of the key contributors to the standardization of NVDIMMs in recent years
• They have dedicated resources to validate and mature the Linux driver for persistent memory
• They are the first lead server vendor to offer a central alternative power source, instead of requiring a super capacitor or battery per NVDIMM-N card

The latter bullet is actually the most significant. It may not win HPE the Nobel Prize for breakthrough engineering, but it will save integrators a logistic headache. Just try passing 8 cables from the DIMM slots to the front panel 2.5″ bays via the air flow plastics within a 1U server and you’ll learn to appreciate this feature as well…

Kudos to the HPE server team!

BTW – The ProLiant servers (w/ NVDIMM cards) will be ready by May. Then you’ll be able to run your existing applications on it using Plexistor SDM software.