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Ask Google AIMemory Is Becoming the Next Data Center Constraint
For years, enterprise infrastructure planning revolved around compute and storage capacity. Today, the rise of AI workloads, increasing virtualization density, and growing application requirements are shifting attention to a new challenge: memory.
According to Gartner's report Strategies for Surviving the DRAM Shortage: Optimization Techniques for Your Existing Server Memory,
“memory has overtaken processors as the primary factor influencing server performance and cost. This shift has gained more scrutiny due to escalated costs and limited availability of memory, and necessitates innovative solutions to enhance memory performance without buying more memory.”
As AI workloads, higher virtualization density, and expanding enterprise applications drive greater memory consumption, memory is emerging as one of the most constrained and costly resources in modern data centers.
However, adding more DRAM is becoming increasingly difficult to justify as costs rise and utilization efficiency comes under greater scrutiny.
As a result, IT leaders are asking a different question:
How can we increase effective memory capacity without continuously increasing hardware investment?
This challenge is driving interest in memory optimization technologies that intelligently combine DRAM and NVMe storage to improve utilization and efficiency.
Gartner Highlights a New Approach to Memory Optimization
As organizations rethink how memory resources are utilized, industry analysts are also paying closer attention to technologies designed to address this growing constraint.
In recent report, Gartner® highlighted Automatic NVMe-Backed Memory Tiering as an approach for expanding available memory through intelligent data placement between DRAM and NVMe storage.
As Gartner explains:
"Automatic NVMe-Backed Memory Tiering: Memory tiering expands available memory by dynamically identifying or predicting 'hot' or actively used segments of memory and moving them from 'cold' storage on NVMe SSDs into main memory. Offered today as a driver within the operating system (such as MEXT and iWXX), or within a hypervisor (including VMware VCF 9.x and Sangfor aSV 6.11), the tiering happens in the background, so applications and guest operating systems in virtual machines don't need to be modified."
Notably, Gartner specifically references Sangfor aSV 6.11 as one of the hypervisor platforms capable of implementing this capability.
By operating transparently at the infrastructure layer, memory tiering enables memory optimization without requiring modifications to applications, operating systems, or virtual machines.
Why This Matters Beyond Memory
In our opinion, the significance of Gartner's observation extends beyond memory optimization alone.
Traditionally, virtualization platform evaluations have focused on factors such as licensing, feature parity, migration complexity, and operational management. While these considerations remain important, enterprises are increasingly looking at a broader set of infrastructure capabilities that can improve efficiency and maximize existing hardware investments.
Memory tiering reflects this shift.
Rather than relying solely on additional DRAM to support growing workloads, organizations can explore technologies that make better use of available resources while maintaining a transparent experience for applications and virtual machines.
In an era defined by AI adoption, rising infrastructure costs, and pressure to do more with less, resource efficiency is quickly becoming a strategic priority.
VMware Modernization Is About More Than Replacing a Hypervisor
Many organizations evaluating VMware alternatives initially focus on migration planning, compatibility, and licensing costs.
While these considerations remain important, infrastructure modernization is increasingly becoming a broader discussion centered on long-term scalability and operational efficiency.
Decision-makers are now asking questions such as:
- How effectively can infrastructure resources be utilized?
- Can existing hardware investments support future growth?
- Is the platform prepared for AI-driven workloads?
- What capabilities help control long-term infrastructure costs?
These questions extend beyond traditional hypervisor evaluation criteria and reflect the growing importance of infrastructure-level innovation.
As memory demand continues to rise, technologies that improve utilization and efficiency are becoming increasingly relevant in virtualization modernization projects.
Bringing Memory Tiering into the VMware Modernization Conversation
With aSV 6.11, Sangfor brings intelligent memory tiering into the VMware modernization discussion.
For organizations looking beyond basic hypervisor replacement, capabilities such as memory tiering offer an opportunity to improve infrastructure efficiency while helping address growing memory demands across virtualized environments.
To us, Gartner's research serves as a reminder that the future of virtualization is not only about running workloads successfully, but also about optimizing the infrastructure resources that support them.
As enterprises continue preparing for AI-era applications and increasingly memory-intensive workloads, memory efficiency may become as important as compute and storage efficiency in future infrastructure decisions.
Ready to dive deeper? Discover how Sangfor Memory Tiering helps extend effective memory capacity, optimize resource utilization, and reduce dependence on costly DRAM upgrades in Sangfor Memory Tiering Explained: How to Double Server Memory Without Adding DRAM?
Source: Gartner, Strategies for Surviving the DRAM Shortage: Optimization Techniques for Your Existing Server Memory, Daniel Bowers, 18 August 2026.
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