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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 hybridcloud 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 hybridcloud 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 EPYC™ processors and Nutanix™:

• Lenovo, in collaboration with Nutanix and AMD, announce the new Lenovo ThinkAgileHX 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
  • 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%³more 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 turn-key, 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.

“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 Dr. Chris Cooper, General Manager for the Middle East and Africa, 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. Up to 50% server reduction 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 users leading to up to 50% server reduction.
2. HX3375/HX3376 with 128 cores vs 56 Intel HX3320/HX3321 platforms
3. EPYC™ 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/

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