Microsoft Azure Stack HCI Solutions from Supermicro

Supermicro is now offering Microsoft Azure Stack HCI solutions that are built on Supermicro’s industry leading X11 NVMe/All-flash/Hybrid systems and Microsoft’s latest Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) features in Windows Server 2019.

Azure Stack HCI is a perfect hyper-converged solution for customers who plan to replace aging servers, and who wish to run virtual machines on-premises while gaining the benefits of easy access to Azure services such as VM backup, cloud-based monitoring, site recovery and etc.

Key benefits

Microsoft Azure Stack HCI solutions from Supermicro provide the following benefits:

  • Performance: Industry-leading performance delivered by pre-validated Supermicro X11 systems, with improved max capacity and storage performance in Windows Server 2019
  • Features: Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) with the same Hyper-V based Software-defined compute, storage and networking capabilities as for Azure Stack
  • Flexibility: Support NVMe, SSD, HDD and multiple drive type combinations for customers' different performance and capacity needs
  • Scalability: High availability cluster; it is easy to scale out from 2 nodes up to 16 nodes or to add additional drives to existing nodes
  • Hybrid capabilities: Built-in Azure hybrid services in Windows Admin Center; easy integration between on-premises workloads and cloud services including Azure Site Recovery, Azure backup and more

S2D improvement in Windows Server 2019

Azure Stack HCI solutions have the following storage-capacity improvements from Windows Server 2016 based solutions:

  • Maximum raw storage capacity per node increased to 400TB from 100TB.
  • Maximum total raw storage capacity across all nodes increased to 4PB from 1PB.

Mirror accelerated parity is also improved in Windows Server 2019, allowing for more than double the performance compared to mirror accelerated party in Windows Server 2016.

Microsoft Azure Stack HCI solutions also have a built-in performance history, allowing increased insight into resource utilization. Included is drive latency outlier detection, which can automatically label any drives with abnormal performance in Windows Admin Center.

Solution Specifications

Supermicro X11 generation SuperServers are designed to deliver the highest performance, flexibility, scalability and serviceability to demanding IT environments, and optimized for mission-critical enterprise workloads.

We currently offer four Microsoft-certified Azure Stack HCI solution SKUs based on the Supermicro X11 platforms:

  • SYS-6029U-E1CR4-HCI contains 2 to 16 nodes of 2U Ultra servers with 3.5" SAS/SATA drives
  • SYS-1029U-TRT-HCI provides 2 to 4 nodes of 1U Ultra servers with 2.5" SATA drives
  • A new SuperStorage 6019P-ACR12L+ based solution SKU joins the Azure Stack HCI family and delivers market leading storage capacity in a 1U form-factor
  • A new 1U Ultra based All-NVMe solution SKU SYS-1029U-TN10RT-HCI features 2 to 16 nodes and delivers best-in-class storage performance

Supermicro’s Microsoft-certified solutions support up to 2nd generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, 128GB DDR4 memory (up to 36TB per node), and NVMe SSDs as caching devices, flexible options of different drive combinations including All-NVMe, NVMe+HDD, NVMe+SSD, NVMe+SSD+HDD, and more. Each node is equipped with a Mellanox ConnectX-4 Lx EN 25GbE NIC.

Microsoft Azure Stack HCI Solutions from Supermicro
Category SYS-6029U-E1CR4-HCI SYS-1029U-TRT-HCI SSG-6019P-ACR12L+-HCI SSG-6019P-ACR12L+-HCI
Reference BOM
Check with FAE/OS Solution PM for details		 SYS-6029U-E1CR4-HCI SYS-1029U-TRT-HCI SSG-6019P-ACR12L+-HCI SYS-1029U-TN10RT-HCI
Server SKU SYS-6029U-E1CR4 SYS-1029U-TRT SSG-6019P-ACR12L+ SYS-1029U-TN10RT
OS Windows Server 2019 Datacenter Edition Included Windows Server 2019 Datacenter Edition Included Windows Server 2019 Datacenter Edition Included Windows Server 2019 Datacenter Edition Included
Profile Hybrid Hybrid Hybrid All-flash NVMe
Form Factor 2U 1U 1U 1U
Number of Systems 2 to 16 2 to 4 2 to 4 2 to 16
RDMA RoCE v2 RoCE v2 RoCE v2 RoCE v2
TPM 2.0 2.0 2.0  
CPU Dual Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors
Memory 128GB (up to 6TB DDR4 per node) 128GB (up to 6TB DDR4 per node) 128GB (up to 3TB DDR4 per node) 128GB (up to 6TB DDR4 per node)
HBA LSI 3008 IT Mode LSI 3008 IT Mode Broadcom 3216 SAS3 IT mode N/A
NIC Mellanox Connectx-4 Lx MCX4121A Dual port 25 GbE SFP28 Mellanox Connectx-4 Lx MCX4121A Dual port 25 GbE SFP28 Mellanox Connectx-4 Lx MCX4121A Dual port 25 GbE SFP28 Mellanox Connectx-4 Lx MCX4121A Dual port 25 GbE SFP28
Storage Type Qty. Form Factor Type Qty. Form Factor Type Qty. Form Factor Type Qty. Form Factor
Caching NVMe 2-4 2.5" 15mm U.2 NVMe 2 2.5" 15mm U.2 NVMe 2-4 2.5" 7mm U.2 NVMe 2-4 2.5" 15mm U.2
Capacity HDD/SSD 4-8 3.5" U.2 HDD/SSD 4-8 2.5" 15mm U.2 HDD 4-12 3.5" U.2 NVMe 4-6 2.5" 15mm U.2
Drive (OS) 2x 2.5" SATA SSD (480GB) 2x 2.5" SATA SSD (480GB) 1x M.2 NVMe (960GB) 1x M.2 SATA SSD (480GB)
Supported Storage Interface SAS or SATA SATA only SAS or SATA NVMe
Supported alternate configurations NVMe (cache) + SSD (storage) NVMe (cache) + SSD (storage) NVMe (cache) + SSD (storage) NVMe (cache) + NVMe (capacity)
SSD (cache) + HDD (storage) SSD (cache) + HDD (storage) SSD (cache) + HDD (storage) NVMe (capacity)
SSD only SSD only SSD only  
NVMe (cache) + SSD (storage) + HDD (storage) NVMe (cache) + SSD (storage) + HDD (storage) NVMe (cache) + SSD (storage) + HDD (storage)  
Global SKU