TAIPEI, Taiwan, June 18, 2020 — ASUS, the leading IT Company in server systems, server motherboards and workstations today announced that the ASUS RS720-E9-RS24-E rack server now supports Intel^® Select Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, simplifying the selection of a Windows Server hyper converged infrastructure (HCI) solution and providing improved efficiency and performance. With Azure Stack, developers can build applications using the familiar Azure toolset and balance the control of on-premises deployment with the agility of the cloud. Furthermore, with support for the innovative Intel Optane™ persistent memory technology, RS720-E9-RS24-E provides businesses a unique combination of affordable, high-capacity storage and support for data persistence.

Intel Select Solution for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI

Intel Select Solutions are verified hardware and software stacks that are optimized for specific workloads across compute, storage and networks. Azure Stack HCI uses industry-standard servers with local-attached drives to create highly available, highly scalable software-defined storage at a fraction of the cost of traditional SAN or NAS arrays. Its converged or hyper-converged architecture radically simplifies procurement and deployment, and features including caching, storage tiers and erasure coding, together with the latest hardware innovations and Intel Optane persistent memory, deliver optimized performance and hardware and software integration. With Azure Stack HCI, enterprises can leverage Azure Hybrid resources for VM backups and site recovery and use the Windows Admin Center (WAC) unified web interface to easily create, manage, monitor and mobilize servers on Azure Stack HCI clusters.

RS720-E9-RS24-E rack server

In its plus configuration, ASUS RS720-E9-RS24-E is verified by Intel to deliver the highest performance and low latency for demanding hybrid cloud apps. Powered by the latest Intel^® Xeon^® Scalable processors, RS720-E9-RS24-E is designed for easy scalability to fit multiple workloads. It also features multiple interface types for flexible storage configurations, including up to 24 SATA/SAS SSDs, dual PCIe or SATA M.2, 8 PCIe Gen3 x16 slots and port-to-port OCuLink design with Intel Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel VROC) technology for four hot-swappable 2.5-inch NVMe SSDs. RS720-E9-RS24-E also delivers breakthrough performance with Intel Optane persistent memory with an over 88% gain in input/output operations per second (IOPS) compared with the same configuration using SSDs.

By choosing ASUS RS720-E9-RS24-E for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, IT managers can reduce the validation time required to implement an Azure Stack design and benefit from its hyper-converged infrastructure and easy deployment in the future.

ASUS continues growing the hardware and software integration solutions

ASUS servers deliver top performance and power efficiency, making them an excellent choice for data center solutions. ASUS 2P and 1P Intel servers continue to achieve top-ranking performance with over 510 world records based on the SPEC CPU 2017 benchmark on SPEC.org. ASUS also offers servers designed specifically for power efficiency with ASUS exclusive power-saving tuning technology, and these servers have achieved the No. 1 ranking on the SPEC Power benchmark on both Windows and Linux. ASUS will continue to collaborate with Intel to deliver holistic solutions for customers for HCI/storage, HPC (genomics analytics) and analytics. In addition to Intel Select Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, ASUS will launch more verifications with Intel to enable customers to build up solutions easily with less time spent on hardware and software selection.