Lenovo Debuts Data Center Storage, Networking, Servers

The company is getting into the software-defined storage market, introducing a networking OS and allying with Juniper, and launching a line of hyperconverged appliances.

June 6, 2016

4 Min Read

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- Lenovo intensified its attack on the $87 billion data center technology market by expanding its arsenal of IT solutions with advanced storage, rejuvenated networking offerings and capabilities, the latest high-performance servers and additional hyperconverged appliances. The stronger, wider portfolio drives Lenovo deeper into next generation IT and strengthens the company's ability to help customers transform their data centers by embracing cloud-based computing models. The company will showcase all of these solutions publicly for the first time at its annual Lenovo TechWorld event in San Francisco on June 9.

With these new offerings, Lenovo demonstrated its ability leverage alliances with industry leaders, as well as leading-edge startup firms, to orchestrate advanced solutions free of legacy thinking or technologies. The company's expanded portfolio provides even greater flexibility for customers to deploy the right solutions for their specific IT environments and business scenarios without locking them into rigid technology stacks.

New Software Defined Storage Solutions and Next-Generation SANs
Lenovo launched a new Software Defined Storage appliance program, called StorSelect, in which the company joined with leading Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to integrate their SDS software with its own hardware in turnkey appliances to be sold and delivered jointly. The first offerings in this program – the Lenovo Storage DX8200N and DX8200C – integrate SDS software from Nexenta Systems, Inc. and Cloudian, Inc., respectively.

The DX8200N supports unified file and block storage for scale-up deployments leveraging three different technologies – all-flash, hybrid, and all spinning drives. The DX8200C uses object-based storage software, which is ideal for large scale-out deployments. Both offerings are built upon Lenovo's industry leading x86 server platforms.

In addition to the StorSelect solutions, the company also unveiled its new V-Series family of 12Gb SANs. The V3700 V2 and V5030 are flexible hybrid and all-flash SAN solutions that help clients confidently and affordably scale their IT operations to improve storage economics in their organizations.

New Networking OS and Expanded Offerings Through Alliance with Juniper Networks
Lenovo rejuvenated its networking line by expanding its offerings and capabilities, enabling customers to deploy more comprehensive solutions from the core data center to the campus. The company released its next-generation network operating system, Lenovo Cloud NOS, which offers new functionality that enhances resiliency, cloud-level scalability and programmability.

In addition, Lenovo disclosed new details of its strategic alliance with Juniper Networks, Inc. announced earlier this year. The two companies have signed a reseller agreement under which Lenovo will offer Juniper's EX2200 Gigabit Power over Ethernet (PoE) and EX4550 10GbaseT switches, as well as the QFX10002-72Q data center spline aggregation system, to augment Lenovo's data center access products. They also jointly published a new virtualized data center reference architecture that will allow customers to easily build solutions integrating their respective offerings to address virtually all data center networking needs.

Latest High-Performance Servers Establish New Industry Benchmarks
Lenovo refreshed its x3850 and x3950 X6 servers with new versions incorporating the latest Intel Xeon E7-4800 and E7-8800 v4 processors, which deliver up to 39% faster performance than the previous generation. With memory support up to 12TB, these powerful offerings are targeted for mission-critical environments, such as in-memory applications like SAP HANA or Hadoop, as well as large virtualization projects, big data and analytics workloads.

The Lenovo x3850 X6 and x3950 X6 offer fast performance, establishing three new industry performance benchmarks. In addition, the new servers feature an innovative, modular "compute book" design, so they can be upgraded or maintained quickly and economically, enabling highly agile and resilient data center infrastructure.

In addition, Lenovo rolled out the ThinkServer sd350, an ultra-dense, 2U four node (2U4N) system designed for more demanding software defined workloads where maximum density and efficiency are critical requirements.

Expanded Portfolio of HX Series Hyperconverged Appliances
Lenovo announced a significantly expanded portfolio of HX Series hyperconverged appliances, based on Nutanix, Inc. software and built upon the company's latest server technology, to cover a broader range of workloads and deployment cost requirements. The new offerings include:

  • The HX1000 Remote Office/Branch Office (ROBO) appliance

  • The HX2000 Series for small to mid-size businesses (SMB) featuring Nutanix's new Xpress software (announced May 24)

  • Integration of Lenovo's latest server platform into its HX3000 Series, a "compute heavy" solution optimized for VDI and smaller virtualization workloads, and

  • HX5000 Series, a "storage heavy" version optimized for Server Virtualization workloads with larger capacity demands

These new appliances significantly expand Lenovo's hyperconverged family, which also includes the HX7000 Series optimized for Databases and other I/O intensive workloads.

Lenovo Group Ltd. (Hong Kong: 992)

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