Lenovo ThinkAgile

2021: Data Center Transformation Capabilities From Periphery to Cloud

On April 13, 2021, Lenovo Data Center Group, a division of Lenovo, announced the expansion of platform capabilities for hyperconvergent infrastructure and services.

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX

According to the company, as of April 2021, the problem of efficient use of data within the framework of the Edge-to-Cloud concept - from the periphery to the cloud - is acute for IT directors. Organizations face the more complex challenges of digital transformation, which require reliable partners to create a common strategic picture: the preparation of road maps, the development and deployment of projects of appropriate scale.

To help users process data closer to their source, the Lenovo ThinkAgile HX peripherals are optimized for security. This allows users to deploy the solution to remote locations outside the primary data center in a variety of ways, from hanging on factory walls to shelving in retail stores and installing a standard rack solution in remote offices/branch offices. At the same time, the data remains protected. With a compact size of 1U height, half width and small depth, the peripheral server can be installed almost anywhere. Solution design provides the ability to perform calculations directly where data is generated.

Lenovo ThinkAgile MX

The solution offers a wider range of processors with a different number of cores (8C, 12C, 16C), GPU support for demanding workloads on the periphery. The peripheral server can operate at temperatures from 0 to 55 ° C, and can withstand strong dust and vibration. Lenovo ThinkShield security solutions also detect intrusions and protect against unauthorized access, which provides physical security.

With collaborative technologies with Nutanix, users can run applications and workloads on a single platform with appropriate availability, performance, and simplicity, expanding their knowledge base beyond the primary data center and implementing peripheral computing. said Kamran Amini, Vice President and CEO of Server, Storage and Software Infrastructure at Lenovo Data Center Group

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX

Lenovo and VMware's multi-year collaboration enables users to create a digital foundation and accelerate their journey to the cloud with a single, easy-to-manage, hyperconvergent platform.

For users who work with large arrays, Lenovo introduces a 4U- ThinkAgile VX 8-socket hyperconvergent platform that is certified for SAP HANA and built on VMware vSAN software. The solution allows you to manage large SAP HANA databases in parallel with other workloads on a fully virtualized platform.

ThinkAgile VX

The enhanced 8-socket VX7820 ThinkAgile with twice the number of processors and NVMe drives speeds up to 5 times the load, allowing you to increase the size and number of virtual machines running SAP workloads. The upgrade allows you to deploy larger SAP HANA virtual databases, which helps you generate analytic data and make decisions faster.

Updated user capabilities include faster VX cluster deployment - 75% faster - in less than 4 hours instead of 16. This is achieved using a specialized installer. In addition, the solution now includes a VMware vRealize Operations-based monitoring and operational analytics tool for proactive cluster health analysis with a convenient alerting system to more easily match virtual and physical hardware to visualization in VMware vCenter. Lifecycle management is optimized by integrating with vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM), and you can perform VMware software and Lenovo ThinkAgile VX firmware updates using a single tool.

Lenovo ThinkAgile VX7820

The Lenovo ThinkAgile MX series for the Azure Stack HCI software is now available at the Lenovo Cloud Marketplace. Lenovo and Microsoft offer a seamless hybrid cloud with integrated Azure Stack HCI systems.

Digital transformation often requires updated equipment, and more than 50 million tons of electronic waste appear annually in the world, the combined weight of which exceeds the weight of all commercial airliners ever produced. The last phase of the IT lifecycle - asset disposal - can easily become a costly and resource-intensive challenge for IT directors. Lenovo Asset Recovery Services (ARS) offers a single solution for more secure and documented IT asset and data disposal. Lenovo will help develop a corporate strategy for recycling process equipment, including servers.

ARS optimizes e-waste recycling. For the first time, the teams of different Lenovo departments will provide single-window service together when buying everything in the company's portfolio: from laptops to data centers.

An updated set of consulting services and implementation of Edge-to-Cloud solutions helps users understand what stage of digital transformation they are in and what solution they are looking for.

Work with these solutions begins with workshops led by a chief consultant, where interactive sessions are held. This helps teams of application and platform professionals better navigate available offerings and choose the right choices for their needs.

Consulting and project services include the following areas: Design and Deployment VMware Cloud Foundation (VMware Cloud Foundation Design and Deployment), Evaluation (hybrid cloud Hybrid Cloud Migration Assessment), hybrid cloud Azure Hybrid Cloud Azure Migration Service and Hybrid Cloud Implementation Services (Hybrid Services).

2020

Integration with VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager

On December 22, 2020, Lenovo announced the launch of a unified support project from a single window and introduced the ThinkAgile VX solution. Now the customer receives one contact person who will provide comprehensive data center support - from hardware tasks to software, regardless of the size of the object. This was made possible by expanding the global partnership with VMware and achieving Lenovo's Global Partner Appliances status.

Partners have integrated Lenovo ThinkAgile VX hyperconvergent solution with VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM), making software and firmware lifecycle management much easier. Before the introduction of Lenovo ThinkAgile VX, it took days to plan and update, and now customers can cope in a few hours, reducing the risk of downloading incorrect updates and causing unplanned outages.

Previously, the installation of a hyperconvergent infrastructure meant for customers to independently configure, update and optimize the system. By integrating Lenovo's ThinkAgile with VMware's vLCM, customers will be able to focus on business tasks while ensuring consistency between vSphere and HCI cluster upgrades. vLCM will now automatically run checks after a specified interval. Adding hosts to the cluster will also invalidate the current hardware compatibility results and alert the administrator to run the checks again.

Lenovo delivers VX ThinkAgile with pre-installed software and pre-configured hardware, which significantly speeds up the launch and deployment of the infrastructure.

In addition, the company certifies each firmware and software update and releases them synchronously, so customers can simultaneously update both hardware and software. It is not necessary to deploy firmware in test clusters: when implementing updates, Lenovo simplified this task as much as possible by integrating XClarity Integrator with VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager. It will also save time for infrastructure deployment and improve utilization.

The Lenovo ThinkAgile VX series supports a wide range of platforms and guarantees support for any HCI use case, including virtualization of highly loaded applications such as VDI, servers with an increased load on the graphics processor, as well as nodes with high storage density, etc.

ThinkAgile MX1021 with SE350 ThinkSystem

On April 13, 2020, Lenovo Data Center Group (DCG) announced additions to its IT infrastructure portfolio. Enterprises around the world are increasingly implementing Internet of Things and 5G solutions. The increase in the number of connected devices contributes to the explosive growth in the volume of data that is generated, stored and controlled throughout the system of devices: from data centers to the periphery. The Lenovo ThinkAgile MX1021 and ThinkSystem DM7100 products present enable companies to integrate infrastructure with cloud environments while supporting tiered storage technologies in the cloud. Lenovo offers a number of solutions for all levels, which are designed to efficiently use these companies of various industries. Among them are retail, industry, transport, healthcare and others.

"The speed and flexibility of business processes play a key role in ensuring the daily operation of enterprises, so our customers need increasingly productive, secure and customizable solutions. Lenovo solutions are designed to provide valuable real-time information across the entire infrastructure, from data centers to peripherals and clouds. This opens a new era in business analysis, when customers can fully realize the potential of the data that is at their disposal, " noted Kamran Amini, Vice President and CEO of Server, Storage and Software Defined Infrastructure at Lenovo DCG

According to the manufacturer, the Lenovo ThinkAgile MX1021 based on ThinkSystem SE350 uses technology based on Microsoft Azure Stack HCI so that enterprises can transfer calculations to the periphery and work with data where they are generated. Retail companies trade can reduce losses and optimize warehouse inventory by analyzing real-time customer sentiment right on the periphery at points of sale. Using the frontier in production servers , they can be assigned the task of collecting data from sensors to ensure monitoring 24/7 and, thereby, increasing the efficiency and productivity of plants. And thanks to the combination of the MX1021 ThinkAgile Azure with Stack Hub and Hub, Azure IoT organizations in the sphere will be able health care to streamline medical data and increase the effectiveness of clinical, client and operating systems. analysts

and the All-Flash SHD enterprise-class Hybrid Flash ThinkSystem DM7100 increase the speed of critical operations applications by supporting NVMe technology and protocol, as well as providing the ability to integrate with the cloud Microsoft Azure and others. public cloudy providers The high performance and support of Azure Cloud Tiring enables customers of these systems to deploy applications taking advantage of Azure and consistently to manage data across the enterprise. In addition, these systems support efficient storage technologies, allowing you to reduce cloud resource consumption by up to 66%, Lenovo claims. With NVMe-enabled All-Flash storage, retailers can use the data they collect, for example, to manage inventory in real time, or to accelerate e-commerce by optimizing order delivery times to customers. According to the developer, the use of NVMe technology can increase the speed of data analytics up to 30%, providing a competitive advantage in the market. Due to the explosive growth of data and the need for tools for early decision-making, industries such as manufacturing and healthcare require modern approaches to improve the quality of customer service. Thanks to significantly increased performance and seamless integration with cloud environments, the DM7100 will allow efficient and secure data processing on a cloud scale, according to Lenovo.

"The emergence of new business ideas and innovations increasingly depends on the analysis of data on the periphery and its efficient storage in the cloud. Therefore, we are working with Lenovo and helping to deliver Microsoft Azure Stack HCI as part of a highly reliable, compact platform for peripheral computing ThinkAgile, together with All-Flash Lenovo ThinkSystem DM storage for tiered storage in Azure, " noted Talal Alqinawi, Senior Director of Azure Marketing at Microsoft Corp

2019: ThinkAgile MX

On June 6, 2019, it became known that the Lenovo Group company introduced the MX ThinkAgile solution for consolidating the IT infrastructure of enterprises.

For many companies, expanding the IT infrastructure as data grows is a real challenge. Most of them use a three-tier architecture in which the components for computing, transmission, and storage are separate systems. Managing these disparate systems is difficult and expensive. In many cases, their deployment, maintenance, and administration require specialized skills and teams. At each enterprise, these problems are trying to solve in their own way.

Hyperconvergent infrastructure (HCI) makes it easy to consolidate all IT components. By combining computing power and storage infrastructure, this solution reduces costs and simplifies management. The main benefits of a hyperconvergent infrastructure include flexibility in handling different workloads, easy scaling, and lower total cost of ownership. In addition, all HCI solutions provide the ability to build a hybrid cloud environment, allowing enterprises to implement a cloud-based development strategy.

Lenovo is a manufacturer of hyperconvergent infrastructure hardware that works in partnership with software developers such as Microsoft, Nutanix and VMware.

The result of a long-term partnership with Microsoft was the release of certified Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Nodes for Azure Stack HCI. Azure Stack HCI is designed specifically to support virtualized applications deployed in today's infrastructure and provides customers with the full benefits of hyperconvergent environments. Azure Stack HCI is based on the same software core used in the Azure Stack cloud solution and provides the functions of computing, storage and transfer of data; it easily integrates with Azure services to build hybrid environments and supports features such as cloud backup, data recovery, monitoring, etc.

For customers, the ThinkAgile MX solution for Azure Stack HCI is a good value for money for Hyper-V and Storage Spaces Direct on Lenovo hardware.

MX ThinkAgile nodes are easy to commission and maintain. This makes it easier for IT administrators to migrate and manage loads throughout the solution lifecycle. Certified ThinkAgile MX nodes support state-of-the-art hardware technologies such as NVMe drives, persistent memory technologies, and remote direct memory access (RDMA).

An important component of Azure Stack HCI is Windows Admin Center, which provides integration with Azure services. The functionality of Windows Admin Center is complemented by the Lenovo XClarity software plugin, which extends the intelligent infrastructure management settings. Since Lenovo is one of Microsoft's leading partners, the company's solutions make up the largest group in the Azure Stack HCI catalog.

Enterprises that modernize IT infrastructure should first pay attention to HCI solutions. The transition to a hyperconvergent system helps consolidate the computation and storage of data in a single hardware and software cosplex and ultimately provide the flexibility and scalability required in modern conditions. Lenovo ThinkAgile MX solutions for Azure Stack HCI can be demanded by enterprises that value the benefits of Microsoft Azure Stack HCI and the reliability of Lenovo equipment.

2018

Blockchain project based on the ThinkAgile HX7820 Appliance and Nutanix Acropolis

On December 14, 2018, Lenovo and Nutanix presented in Baku the first jointly implemented platform project for the "Personal Identification System" based on blockchain technology, combining several bank registries. It is expected that the solution presented allows financial institutions to create distributed calculations based on data centers with infrastructure from Lenovo-Nutanix and without problems scale resources at any time in the future.

The solution uses the Lenovo ThinkAgile HX7820 Appliance, running on the Skylake generation Intel Xeon processor, and Nutanix Acropolis is chosen as the virtualization platform. Thanks to this solution, the financial institution will be able to manage operations in real time, such as opening bank accounts online, etc.

We plan to use the architecture that was created for the blockchain project in the Central Bank of Azerbaijan as a platform for providing cloud services - the so-called Blockchain-as-a-Service. One of the first blockchain startups in Azerbaijan (IQREX.com) has already migrated to our platform, and we received the first commercial customer in the country in this segment, "said Rasim Bakhshi, business development manager of Lenovo hyperconvergent infrastructure in the CIS countries.

Release of CP Series Products

On August 20, 2018, Lenovo introduced a series of products from the line of converged ThinkAgile systems. Positioned as a "cloud out of the box" ThinkAgile CP systems combine, according to the manufacturer, the dynamism of the public cloud and the security of the private cloud.

Lenovo noted that the introduced CP400 and CP600 series ThinkAgile CP systems integrate high availability, backup, remote replication, resource consumption counters, real-time support, and tiered security.

The hardware platform ThinkAgile CP is a cluster of two-unit computing units Lenovo ThinkSystem, on which Clouditics software is installed, up to ten times accelerating the deployment of applications such as VDI, web services, enterprise applications, OLTP and OLAP databases, analytical systems, noted in Lenovo.

The CP ThinkAgile also includes two-unit units data storage with 24 solid-state drives, SSD two specialized 10-Gb switchboard interconnects connecting the computing units into a cluster, and a control switch.^[1]

2017: VX Series Release

On September 5, 2017, Lenovo introduced ThinkAgile VX series technologies based on the VMware vSAN software.

VX series systems increase the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of IT infrastructure and facilitate the transition to software-defined data centers.

Due to the growing volume of requests to IT departments for the provision of services and applications, the data center market is under intense pressure. This pushes companies to find ways to solve current problems and develop their business. The VX Series ThinkAgile product family (hereinafter referred to as the VX Series) is a hyperconvergent platform from Lenovo and VMware, providing the simplicity inherent in the public cloud and control at the private or hybrid cloud level. These decisions are constructed on the basis of reliable, productive serverovlenovo ThinkSystem also are integrated with hyper convergent ON a corporate class of VMware of vSAN. Lenovo gives system users access to the ThinkAgile Advantage service program.

The VX series is based on Lenovo ThinkSystem servers processors using the family, Intel Xeon Scalable it is a pre-integrated and pre-configured hyperconvergent technology solution. It reduces data center complexity by consolidating servers, storage systems virtualizations and into a shared pool of resources within the standard x86 platform. The VX series was designed for easy and rapid deployment so customers can focus on running their business rather than building and maintaining their infrastructure.

VX series solutions scale to start from three nodes and gradually expand storage capacity and increase performance as needed. The VX series supports the latest version of VMware vSAN. Features include native encryption that eliminates the need to purchase hardware-encrypted drives that increase total cost of ownership (TCO) for customers.

Hyperconvergence quickly became the optimal choice when building a modern infrastructure. VMware vSAN continues to support changes that improve data center efficiency, flexibility, and performance. Our customers attach great importance to simplicity and speed, so we are very excited about the Lenovo Think Agile VX Series. This complete hardware and software suite provides our joint customers with a highly reliable infrastructure that saves time and improves performance by making their IT structure more flexible.

The Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series platform can be used as an infrastructure for remote offices/branch offices (ROBOs) and retail stores, virtual desktop (VDI) deployments, and enterprise applications. To meet a variety of customer workload requirements, the VX series offers three models:

• VX 3000 - Versatile 1U/2U single-node solutions optimized for demanding workloads such as virtual desktops.
• VX 5000: 1-node 2U storage solutions optimized for high-speed and high-capacity workloads such as e-mail, big data, and analytics.
• VX 7000 - 2U single-node solutions optimized for the most demanding workloads, such as databases and collaboration.

Today's announcement is an important signal to Lenovo and VMware customers who want to implement a hyperconvergent infrastructure using hardware and software technologies. Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series provides our customers with an integrated turnkey system and comprehensive technical support. The solution combines advanced VMware vSAN software with Lenovo systems based on Intel Xeon Scalable processors. The products are based on Lenovo's experience with the vSAN ReadyNodes solution. VMware and Lenovo joint developments provide a complete enterprise platform that our common customers can fully trust.

Software-defined solutions line released

As of August 16, 2017, ThinkAgile is a line of software-defined solutions built on the basis of Lenovo ThinkSystem platforms and capable of adapting to the changing needs of the enterprise, while reducing costs and simplifying the infrastructure compared to traditional solutions.

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