Lenovo Launching StorSelect, Software-Defined Storage Appliance Program

Lenovo Enterprise Solutions, Pte Ltd intensified its focus on the $87 billion data center technology market ⁽¹⁾ by unveiling an expanded arsenal of IT solutions, including next-gen software defined storage, enterprise networking offerings and capabilities, the latest high-performance servers and an enhanced suite of hyperconverged appliances.

The broader portfolio drives Lenovo deeper into next-generation IT and strengthens the company’s ability to help customers transform their data centers by embracing emerging data consumption and delivery models such as cloud-based infrastructure, big data and analytics solutions. The company showcased many of these solutions publicly for the first time at its annual Lenovo TechWorld event in San Francisco, CA, on June 9.

These offerings are the latest demonstration of company’s ability to leverage partnerships with industry leaders, as well as start-up firms, to orchestrate delivery of solutions free of legacy technologies and investment burdens. They give customers even flexibility to deploy the right solutions for their evolving IT environments and business scenarios without being locked in to rigid technology stacks.

DX8200 front and rear

Software-defined storage solutions and next-generation SAN
The firm launched a innovative software-defined storage (SDS) appliance program, called StorSelect, collaborating with leading ISVs to integrate their SDS software with company’s hardware in turnkey appliances. The factory-integrated appliances with end-to-end firm’s support enable simple and confident deployment of scalable storage solutions. The first offerings in this program – the DX8200N and DX8200C integrate SDS software from Nexenta Systems, Inc. and Cloudian, Inc., respectively, to deliver ROI for storage solutions.

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 is an object-based storage appliance that is for large scale-out deployments and addresses the fastest growing segment of the storage market. Both offerings are built upon company’s x86 server platforms and will begin shipping worldwide in the 3Q16.

V3700

V3700_V2 rear

In addition to the StorSelect solutions, the company also unveiled its first firm-branded mid-range storage systems – V-Series family of 12Gb/s 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. The firm’s V Series family will begin shipping worldwide in June 2016.

Networking OS and expanded offerings
through global partnership with Juniper Networks:
The company rejuvenated its enterprise networking line with expanded 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 OS, company’s Cloud NOS, which offers new functionality that enhances resiliency, cloud-level scalability and programmability. It will be available for customer download starting on June 17.

In addition, the firm disclosed new details of its global strategic partnership with Juniper Networks, Inc., which was announced earlier this year. The two companies signed a reseller agreement under which the company will offer Juniper Networks’ EX2300 and EX4550 Ethernet switches, as well as the QFX10002-72Q data center spine aggregation switch. The company will sell these Juniper offerings directly as part of an integrated portfolio that also includes Lenoo’s own data center access products. The Juniper offerings will be available from the firmo beginning in 3Q16.

The companies also jointly published a virtualized data center reference architecture, available, that will allow customers to easily build solutions integrating their respective technologies to address virtually all data center networking needs.

x3850 front

Latest high-performance servers establish industry benchmarks
The firm refreshed its x3850 and x3950 X6 servers with new versions incorporating the latest Xeon E7-4800 and E7-8800 v4 processors, which deliver up to 39% faster performance than the previous generation. ⁽²⁾ With memory support up to 12TB, these powerful offerings are designed 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 x3850 X6 and x3950 X6 offer fast performance, establishing 17 new industry performance benchmarks^.(3) In addition, the new servers feature an innovative, modular ‘compute book’ design, so they can be upgraded or maintained quickly and economically, enabling a highly agile and resilient data center infrastructure. They will be available starting this month.

Company’s 4-Socket x3850 X6 server using Xeon E7-8890 v4 processors on Windows delivers a more than 33% performance improvement over the previous-generation firm’s system against the SAP SD 2-tier standard application benchmark. ⁽⁴⁾ In addition, these new servers enable expanded memory support to provide 33% more memory for SAP S/4HANA solutions in eight-socket, 8TB configurations with SAP HANA SPS12. With this innovation, customers can expand their SAP S/4HANA footprint while gaining the faster, more responsive data access needed to drive their digital enterprises.

ThinkServer sd350

The company also rolled out the ThinkServer sd350, a 2U four node (2U4N) system designed for more demanding software defined workloads where maximum density and efficiency, as well as highly attractive ownership costs, are critical requirements. The sd350 will be available starting in July 2016.

HX5500

Expanded portfolio of HX series hyperconverged appliances:
The firm announced an expanded portfolio of HX Series hyperconverged appliances, based on Nutanix, Inc. software and built upon the company’s latest server technology, to cover a range of workloads and deployment cost requirements.

These offerings include:

• HX1000 Series for ROBO appliance

• HX2000 Series for small to SMB featuring Nutanix’s new Xpress software (announced May 24)

• Integration of company’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 appliances expand firm’s hyperconverged family, which also includes the HX7000 Series optimized for databases and other I/O intensive workloads. They will be available through company’s direct and business partner channels beginning in 3Q16.

“This dramatically expanded portfolio is a powerful demonstration of Lenovo’s commitment to creating purposeful data center innovation in a truly open ecosystem,” said Tom Shell, SVP, data center product group, Lenovo. “With the latest advancements in server performance, software-defined storage, hyper-convergence and rejuvenated networking capabilities, all delivered seamlessly in a partner-centric model, Lenovo is striving to redefine the data center inside and out.“

“The Lenovo Storage DX8200C is a disruptive product to address explosive data growth,” said Michael Tso, CEO and co-founder, Cloudian. “Cloudian’s award-winning smart storage with 100% native S3 compatibility is delivered in an integrated, simple, scalable, and affordable appliance with Lenovo’s industry-leading enterprise server technology, and global service and support.“

“With this new reference architecture and reseller agreement, Juniper and Lenovo are bringing together our industry leading networking and data center infrastructure technologies to help customers embrace a world in which networking is integral to every workload and application,” said Mike Marcellin, CMO, Juniper Networks. “Lenovo is a strong partner with a reputation for innovation and global reach, giving customers more ways to transform their businesses through the cloud and next generation IT.“

“Nexenta and Lenovo are committed o transforming the enterprise data center market via integrated and advanced software-defined storage solutions, including joint go-to-market, service, and support programs,” said Tarkan Maner, chairman and CEO, Nexenta. “The Lenovo Storage DX8200N powered by Nexenta delivers a stack-agnostic, high-performance, low-cost, integrated, and scalable storage solution unmatched in the industry.“

“By combining Nutanix’s enterprise cloud with Lenovo’s proven hardware, our teams have been able to create a customer-focused, turnkey platform to provision private cloud data centers that can also seamlessly connect to the public cloud,” said Sunil Potti, SVP, engineering and product management, Nutanix. “Our team is pleased with the partnership, as we jointly help organizations of all sizes – from small businesses to large enterprises – deploy IT infrastructure to support new applications and services with a cost efficient pay-as-you-grow approach while bringing delight to their end users.”

⁽¹⁾ IDC market forecasts
⁽²⁾ Intel Corporation performance comparison data
⁽³⁾ SPECjbb2015-Distributed critical-jOPS #1 4P performance ; TPC-E – #1 4P performance; STAC M3 – 15 separate benchmarks. Results referenced current as of 6/6/16.
⁽⁴⁾ SAP certification number 2016027

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