Lenovo Data Center Group Releases Cloud-Based Business Agility Solutions for The New, Smarter Normal

Today, Lenovo Data Center Group (DCG) announces a range of new and updated hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions and Lenovo Cloud Services to enable customers to keep pace with evolving business needs. As remote work becomes the new, smarter normal, businesses need to adapt their hybrid cloud strategy and modernize their data center infrastructure. Lenovo is addressing this by delivering an unparalleled, open platform of hyperconverged infrastructure solutions in partnership with Nutanix, Microsoft and VMware and expands software-defined systems management capabilities with Lenovo XClarity.

Hyperconverged infrastructure solutions are uniquely suited to provide virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), supporting the need for people to work remotely across many industries such as education and healthcare. Lenovo is focused on ready-to-deploy HCI solutions in partnership with industry-leading hybrid cloud software providers, which enable customers to deploy and manage a full edge-to-cloud environment with simpler updates, easy scalability and a consumption-based delivery model.

Reach new levels of performance and efficiency for end user computing with ThinkAgile HX powered by AMD EPYCtm processors and Nutanixtm:

• Lenovo, in collaboration with Nutanix and AMD, announce the new Lenovo ThinkAgile HX HCI solutions powered by AMD EPYC processors, enabling customers to run their virtual desktop workloads and maintain consistent performance (in the same 1U form factor), with up to 50%¹ fewer servers.
  • Improved TCO ? The Lenovo ThinkAgile HX AMD two-socket delivers a wide range of core counts (2.3X more)² to match application needs, two GPUs per one unit and 45%³ more memory bandwidth, enabling excellent performance for virtualization and VDI consolidation.
  • The factory installed Nutanix software increases flexibility for customers continuing their multi-cloud adoption journeys. It provides simplified operations, increased workload density, stronger data protection and seamless application across clouds to enable a true hybrid architecture.
  • Availability is planned in late November as an appliance or a certified node.

Simplify Edge-to-Cloud scalability with Lenovo ThinkAgile MX and Microsoft Azure Stack:

• Lenovo, in collaboration with Microsoft, announce the new Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Azure Stack HCI Edge and Data Center Solutions, enabling customers to rapidly deploy a hybrid cloud infrastructure.
  • Lenovo offers customers a one-stop shop for Azure Stack HCI with the new ThinkAgile MX appliances, providing easy deployment, management and scalability of Azure services from edge-to-core-to-cloud. In addition, Lenovo plans to offers consumption-based (pay-as-you-go) pricing of Azure Stack HCI and Azure Stack Hub.
  • ThinkAgile MX has a single, simplified console for lifecycle management and delivers an enhanced customer experience, so customers can easily modernize and scale their on-premise infrastructure from edge solutions to cloud.

Improve agility of mission critical applications with Lenovo ThinkAgile VX and VMware:

• Lenovo, in collaboration with VMware, announce the new Lenovo ThinkAgile VX HCI Solutions, improving agility and reliability for SAP HANA database deployments.
  • Lenovo ThinkAgile VX HCI Solutions are 4S certified nodes that enable customers to modernize their infrastructure for high-end database solutions and SAP HANA, improving agility and simplifying lifecycle management of vSAN environments via the integration of Lenovo XClarity Management software and the new vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) tools.
  • Lenovo XClarity is the management console for Lenovo ThinkAgile HCI solutions and it provides auto-discovery and asset management, policy-based firmware updates across hardware and software and is the integration interface to leading ISV management tools, including vLCM.
  • Lenovo ThinkAgile VX 4S solution offers double⁴ the SAP HANA database memory and direct connect NVMe, to accelerate response times⁵, speed business insights and improve TCO.
  • Available later this month.

Lenovo OEM ON DEMAND Program Delivers Solutions to Modernize IT infrastructure:

• Lenovo's OEM ON DEMAND program enables ISV partners to offer turnkey, integrated IT infrastructure solutions to market through their respective brands. Lenovo provides the open, reliable and secure ThinkSystem platform coupled with their deep engineering, manufacturing and supply chain expertise to integrate and deliver these solutions on behalf of the ISV.
• Lenovo, in collaboration with Diamanti, announce the introduction of the Diamanti SR630 solution powered by Lenovo's ThinkSystem servers. Diamanti specializes in enabling fast Kubernetes deployments and allowing organizations to run containerized applications across hybrid cloud environments.
• The Diamanti SR630 enables customers to rapidly deploy a complete container and Kubernetes solution by integrating high-performance compute, plug-and-play networking, persistent storage, Docker and Kubernetes into a powerful, simple full-stack solution. The Diamanti SR630 includes:
  • Improved resource control capabilities via configuration of container-granular quality of service policies for compute, network and storage resources deliver guaranteed service level agreements to applications.
  • Simplified operations enabled by a single pane of glass to manage multiple Kubernetes clusters, allowing businesses to focus on deploying modern applications across on-premise and hybrid cloud infrastructure.  
  • Customers can gain up to 30x⁶ performance improvements for I/O intensive applications and greater than 95%⁶ of compute resources for applications while achieving a 70%⁶ reduction in the overall data center footprint using less servers to gain the same performance while lowering overall TCO.
  • Available now

"The strategy toward the new, smarter normal is around modernizing the data center and breaking down the longstanding digital barriers that many organizations face today," said Kamran Amini, Vice President and General Manager of Server, Storage and Software Defined Infrastructure, Lenovo Data Center Group. "We offer a large breadth of agile and preconfigured edge-to-hybrid cloud solutions in partnership with leading HCI providers that enable customers to harness the flexibility, scalability and economics of the cloud. To help with this transition, customers can leverage our design workshops with our expert solution engineers at no obligation."

To guide business leaders through their cloud strategy and execution, Lenovo-funded workshops pair customers with Lenovo's Principal Consultants to simplify and streamline the many options across multiple cloud platforms. The Lenovo Professional Services team will design the right mix of hybrid cloud solutions for ultimate business agility. By partnering with Nutanix, Microsoft, VMware and many others, customers are granted access to the best selection of pre-tested and -configured cloud infrastructure solutions.

To learn more about Lenovo's Data-Centered approach, visit https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/data-center/.

1. VDI workloads are mainly dependent on CPU cores. Other factors like memory and storage may also have an impact. ThinkAgile HX Intel platform can have a maximum of 56C in a 2S platform vs. 128C in ThinkAgile HX AMD based platform. Higher VDI density claim is based on extrapolation of performance results for virtual desktops on ThinkAgile HX and ThinkSystem with Citrix. A 2S Intel ThinkAgile HX platform with 28C CPU would support approximately 260 Knowledge workers per node when system is CPU bound based on (https://lenovopress.com/lp0665.pdf Table 7 Section 4.6.2). A 2S AMD ThinkAgile HX platform with 64C CPU would support 500 Knowledge workers per node based on - https://lenovopress.com/lp0664.pdf Table 11 Section 4.3.2. This gives us approximately 92% improvement in Citrix Knowledge.
2. HX3375/HX3376 with 128 cores vs 56 Intel HX3320/HX3321 platforms
3. EPYCtm 7002 series has 8 memory channels, supporting 3200 MHz DIMMs yielding 204.8 GB/s of bandwidth vs. the same class of Intel Scalable Gen 2 processors with only 6 memory channels and supporting 2933 MHz DIMMs yielding 140.8 GB/s of bandwidth. 204.8 / 140.8 = 1.454545 - 1.0 = .45 or 45% more. AMD EPYC has 45% more bandwidth. Class based on industry-standard pin-based (LGA) X86 processors. ROM-11
4. 6TB SAP HANA data base: New 4 socket configurations are SAP HANA HCI certified for up to 6TB of memory https://www.sap.com/dmc/exp/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/hci.html#categories=certified%23Lenovo
5. https://unihost.com/help/nvme-vs-ssd-vs-hdd-overview-and-comparison/
6. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/resources/data-center-solutions/datasheets/diamanti-sr630/

LENOVO is a trademark of Lenovo. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others and are the property of their respective owners. ©2020, Lenovo Group Limited.

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, EPYC and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

VMware, vSphere, and VMware vSAN are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other jurisdictions.

Supporting Customer Quotes

"The Lenovo ThinkAgile MX platform has all the features we need as an MSP?high performance, high availability and easy scalability" - Brian Townley, General Manager, C3 Group

"We haven't experienced any outages since migrating to the Lenovo infrastructure. Efficiency has increased so we can process and ship out more parts faster than we could before, bringing more products?and therefore socio-economic empowerment?to more and more people around the world." - Sujoy Brahmachari, Head of IT Infrastructure & Information Security, Hero MotoCorp

"Thanks to our new Lenovo hyperconverged infrastructure, we've simplified and enhanced IT operations while cutting energy costs, so we can invest more of time and resources in our primary purpose: providing best in-class healthcare services." - Bernie Larralde, Vice President of Information Technology, Miami Jewish Health

"Efficiency has increased dramatically and we're now able to cope with customer requirements at a speed that was previously impossible." - Thomas Rumpf, CTO Private Cloud, T-Systems

About Lenovo

Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a US$50 billion Fortune Global 500 company, with 63,000 employees and operating in 180 markets around the world. Focused on a bold vision to deliver smarter technology for all, we are developing world-changing technologies that create a more inclusive, trustworthy and sustainable digital society. By designing, engineering and building the world's most complete portfolio of smart devices and infrastructure, we are also leading an Intelligent Transformation ? to create better experiences and opportunities for millions of customers around the world. To find out more visit https://www.lenovo.com, follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Weibo and read about the latest news via our StoryHub.