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Lenovo DCG releases agility-focused HCI and cloud solutions
Tue, 22nd Sep 2020
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Lenovo Data Center Group (DCG) has announced a range of new and updated hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions and cloud services.

Lenovo is addressing the rise of remote work by delivering an 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 suited to provide virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), supporting the need for people to work remotely across many industries such as education and healthcare.

Lenovo aims for ready-to-deploy HCI solutions in partnership with hybrid cloud software providers, which enable customers to deploy and manage a full edge-to-cloud environment with simpler updates, scalability and a consumption-based delivery model.

ThinkAgile HX powered by AMD EPYC processors and Nutanix

In collaboration with Nutanix and AMD, 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% fewer servers. 

ThinkAgile HX AMD two-socket delivers a wide range of core counts (2.3X more) to match application needs, two GPUs per one unit and 45% 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.

ThinkAgile MX and Microsoft Azure Stack

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 offer consumption-based (pay-as-you-go) pricing of Azure Stack HCI and Azure Stack Hub.

ThinkAgile MX has a single console for lifecycle management so customers can modernise and scale their on-premise infrastructure from edge solutions to cloud.

ThinkAgile VX and VMware

In collaboration with VMware, the new Lenovo ThinkAgile VX HCI Solutions improves agility and reliability for SAP HANA database deployments.

ThinkAgile VX HCI Solutions are 4S certified nodes that enable customers to modernise 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.

ThinkAgile VX 4S solution offers double the SAP HANA database memory and direct connect NVMe, to accelerate response times, speed business insights and improve TCO.

Available later this month.

OEM on demand programme

This programme enables ISV partners to offer turnkey, integrated IT infrastructure solutions to market through their respective brands.

Lenovo provides the ThinkSystem platform coupled with engineering, manufacturing and supply chain expertise to integrate and deliver these solutions on behalf of the ISV.

The Diamanti SR630 solution is powered by Lenovo's ThinkSystem servers.

Diamanti specialises in enabling fast Kubernetes deployments and allowing organisations to run containerised applications across hybrid cloud environments.

Customers can deploy a complete container and Kubernetes solution by integrating high-performance compute, plug-and-play networking, persistent storage, Docker and Kubernetes into a 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 service level agreements to applications. 
  • Simplified operations enabled by a single pane of glass to manage multiple Kubernetes clusters.
  • Up to 30x performance improvements for I/O intensive applications and greater than 95%6 of compute resources for applications while achieving a 70% reduction in the overall data center footprint using less servers to gain the same performance while lowering overall TCO.

Available now.