Intel Optane persistent memory (PMem) is a memory technology that can deliver larger capacities compared to traditional DDR4 memory.

Increasing the memory capacity in a VMware vSphere virtualized datacenter by operating in Memory Mode allows for an increase in VM density and a subsequent increase in application capacity and performance in the same datacenter footprint.

VMware vSphere 6.7 EP10 and later versions support Intel Optane persistent memory 100 series (Intel Optane PMem) with 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors in App Direct and Memory Mode.

Past experiments have found some performance challenges with Memory Mode in certain circumstances as seen in a previous whitepaper.

A new persistent memory BIOS profile for Memory Mode has been developed that improves performance in some of these cases.

This paper explores the performance seen with this new BIOS profile using an Enterprise Java workload and a modified version of the VMware VMmark 3.1 benchmark.