OpenMetal Large v5 Intel TDX Confidential Computing

Q: Does the OpenMetal Large v5 support Intel TDX confidential computing?

Yes — the Large v5’s Xeon 6517P processors support Intel TDX, but activation requires upgrading from the base 512 GB DDR5-6400 configuration to 1 TB (all 16 DIMM slots populated), which is OpenMetal’s policy threshold for enabling TDX on Large-tier servers.

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Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) creates Trust Domains — hardware-isolated VM environments whose memory and CPU state are encrypted with per-domain keys generated and held inside the CPU itself. The host OS, hypervisor, and other tenants cannot read TD memory; any access attempt from outside the TD is intercepted at the silicon level. This places the trust boundary at hardware, not at software, which is the critical structural difference from hypervisor-based isolation. A compromised host kernel or a privileged operator cannot reach into a TD.

OpenMetal’s RAM-threshold policy applies across the v4 and v5 lineups: Large-tier servers ship TDX-active when all 16 DIMM slots are populated (1 TB at 64 GB per DIMM). The base Large v5 ships with 8 DIMMs populated (512 GB), so TDX is hardware-supported but not active out of the box. The XL v4, XL v5, XXL v4, and XL v4 High Frequency tiers ship TDX-active by default because their base configurations already include 1 TB or more of RAM.

For customers wanting TDX on a Large v5, two paths exist: order the Large v5 TDX Edition with 1 TB of DDR5-6400 from the start, or deploy at base RAM and schedule a memory upgrade later. The upgrade is in-place — existing DIMMs stay, additional DIMMs are added to fill remaining slots, and TDX activation follows the standard enablement guide. TDX is supported on bare metal Large v5 servers only, not on Hosted Private Cloud clusters; for hybrid deployments, pair a bare metal Large v5 TDX server with an HPC cluster on the same private network. Intel SGX enclaves (128 GB EPC per CPU) are enabled by default on every Large v5 regardless of RAM tier, so application-level confidential computing is available immediately without the RAM upgrade.