Online Spare memory configuration

Online spare memory provides protection against degraded DIMMs by reducing the likelihood of uncorrected memory errors. This protection is available without any operating system support.

Online spare memory protection dedicates one rank of each memory channel for use as spare memory. The remaining ranks are available for OS and application use. If correctable memory errors occur at a rate higher than a specific threshold on any of the non-spare ranks, the server automatically copies the memory contents of the degraded rank to the online spare rank. The server then deactivates the failing rank and automatically switches over to the online spare rank.