Lenovo’s 5 New AMD, VMware, Azure And Nutanix-Based HCI Products

Lenovo is launching four new hyperconverged infrastructure product offerings tied to AMD EPYC processors, Microsoft Azure Stack, Nutanix Enterprise Cloud software and VMware’s vSAN.

‘The Strategy Toward The New, Smarter Normal’

The $50 billion PC leader and data center provider launched a slew of new hyperconverged infrastructure products in partnership with market leaders like AMD, Nutanix, Microsoft and VMware.

Lenovo Data Center Group on Thursday unveiled four new hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) product lines aimed at driving sales and market traction around virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), SAP HANA database deployments, Kubernetes, the new remote workforce and Microsoft Azure.

“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 for Lenovo’s 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.”

Here are the five key hyperconverged infrastructure products Lenovo unveiled today.

ThinkAgile HX

Lenovo said it reached “new levels of performance and efficiency” for end-user computing with the new ThinkAgile HX HCI product line thanks to the solutions being powered by AMD EPYC processors along with Nutanix software.

The new ThinkAgile HX AMD two-socket provides a range of core counts to match application needs, two GPUs per one unit and additional memory bandwidth, target use case performance for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and virtualization consolidation. The hyperconverged infrastructure enables customers to run virtual desktop workloads and maintain consistent performance in the same 1U form factor with up to 50 percent fewer servers, according to Lenovo.

ThinkAgile HX is factory-integrated, validated and configure with preloaded Nutanix Enterprise Cloud software. The company has also integrated ThinkAgile Network Orchestrator with Nutanix Prism to reduce human error and downtime by automating switch configuration in response to changes in the virtual network.

Availability is planned in late November as an appliance or a certified node.

ThinkAgile VX and VMware

VMware and Lenovo have partnered to create the new ThinkAgile VX HCI series, powered by VMware’s vSAN and ESXi, aimed at improving agility and reliability for SAP HANA database deployments.

Lenovo’s ThinkAgile VX HCI are 4S certified nodes that enable customers to modernize their infrastructure for high-end database solutions and SAP HANA. Lenovo said it improves lifecycle management of vSAN environments via the integration of Lenovo XClarity Management software and the new vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) tools.

Lenovo said its new ThinkAgile VX 4S solution offers double the SAP HANA database memory and direct connect NVMe, to accelerate response times, speed business insights and improve total cost of ownership.

The ThinkAgile VX will become generally available later in September.

ThinkAgile MX And Microsoft Azure Stack

Lenovo and Microsoft teamed up to create the new Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Azure Stack HCI Edge and Data Center line of hyperconverged appliances. The new ThinkAgile MX series of appliances provides a one-stop-shop for customers to the Azure Stack HCI in order to give businesses an easy way to deploy, manage and scale Azure services from edge-to-core-to-cloud.

ThinkAgile MX has a single console for lifecycle management that allows customers to easily modernize and scale their on-premise infrastructure from edge solutions to cloud. Lenovo said the goal is to enable customers to rapidly deploy a hybrid cloud infrastructure. In the near future, Lenovo will offer consumption-based, pay-as-you-go pricing of Azue Stack HCI and Azure Stack Hub.

Diamanti SR360 Kubernetes

Lenovo has partnered with Diamanti to create the Diamanti SR630 solution powered by ThinkSystem servers. San Jose, Calif.-based Diamanti specialists in enabling fast Kubernetes deployments and allowing organizations to run containerized applications across hybrid cloud environments. With the new platform, Lenovo said Kubernetes becomes an “out-of-the-box solution” allowing organizations to focus on innovation and deploying modern applications across on-premises and hybrid cloud infrastructure.

The SR630 is a purpose-built modern application platform that combines Diamanti’s Spektra Kubernetes platform with acceleration cards and Lenovo servers. The Diamanti SR630 enables customers to rapidly deploy a container and Kubernetes solution by integrating high-performance compute, plug-and-play networking, persistent storage, Docker and Kubernetes into a full-stack solution. Lenovo said customers can gain up to 30x performance improvements for I/O intensive applications and achieve 70 percent reduction in their overall data center footprint using less servers to gain the same performance.

The Diamanti SR630 is available now.

Workshops And XClarity

To help guide customers through their cloud execution, Lenovo-funded workshops pair customers with Lenovo’s Principal Consultants to simplify and streamline the many options across multiple cloud platforms. Lenovo created these workshops to help customers better accomplish their transition to hybrid cloud.

“To help with this transition, customers can leverage our design workshops with our expert solution engineers at no obligation,” said Lenovo’s Amini.

Lenovo Professional Services’ team will design the correct mix of hybrid cloud solutions for 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.

Additionally, it is key to know that inside all of Lenovo’s ThinkAgile HCI solutions, is the company’s management software console XClarity. Lenovo XClarity provides auto-discovery and asset management, policy-based firmware updates across hardware and software. It also integration interface to leading ISV management tools, including vLCM.

Lenovo said as remote work becomes the “new, smarter normal,” businesses need to adapt their hybrid cloud strategy and modernize their data center infrastructure. The $50 billion company believes it’s addressing this by delivering open hyperconverged solutions in partnership with Nutanix, Microsoft and VMware while expanding software-defined systems management capabilities with Lenovo Clarity.