They include new Lenovo V3 Infrastructure solutions, a new Lenovo XClarity One cloud-based software management platform, and the fifth generation of Lenovo Neptune water-cooling technology.
Kamran Amini, VP and GM of Servers and Storage at Lenovo
This week, Lenovo unveiled new end-to-end infrastructure solutions and services that they are terming the most comprehensive portfolio enhancement in their history. New Lenovo V3 infrastructure solutions which include updated ThinkSystem, ThinkAgile, and ThinkEdge servers and storage will include the new generation of AMD and Intel processors, as well as Lenovo’s own technology upgrades around software and security. The new Lenovo XClarity One Platform was announced. It is a cloud-based, unified software management platform that provides an industry-first integration of TruScale Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Management-as-a-Service and Smarter Support analytics. Lenovo has also announced its fifth generation Lenovo Neptune Technology water-cooling technology with CO2 Offset Services, which more specifically addresses sustainability goals rather than high end production associated with water cooling in the past.
“I’ve been at IBM-Lenovo for 25 years of X86, and this is the most comprehensive launch during that time,” said Kamran Amini, VP and GM of Servers and Storage at Lenovo. “This is all about us driving innovation in a sustainable way. It’s a huge announcement and my customers are very excited.”
Amini emphasized that the V3, XClarity One and security announcements are all essentially integrated.
“V3, XClarity One and security all go together, with the ThinkSystem X3 engineering being the key,” he said. “We try and focus not only on the CPU aspect but the platform innovation. The new platforms are based on how we can deliver on our core foundation for uncompromised performance.”
Amini highlighted other advances in the newly announced hardware that will go beyond the new processors that every other OEM in the industry will also have. For example, Lenovo’s next-generation of ThinkAgile V3 hyperconverged infrastructure solutions come pre-integrated with an open ecosystem of partners, including Microsoft, Nutanix and VMware software capabilities
“We work closely with VMware, Nutanix and Microsoft, and now on ThinkAgile VX we can deliver 75% savings in management,” Amini said. “These are also available through our TruScale as-a-service, which is another major source of value for both partners and customers.
“We can deliver a cloud-like experience, SLA and economics, while everything sits in the customer data center,” Amini stated.
NVIDIA AI Enterprise software has also been enhanced.
“We have added information on metering and TruScale as-a-service, so partners can get information on how we meter and charge back,” Amini said. “We have also enhanced solution deployment automation, and not just around infrastructure, to things like network protocol. We can help automate them through simplified user interfaces. We are working to transform how customers see management software delivering value.”
Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions V3 includes enhanced ThinkShield Security capabilities. Lenovo’s Modular Root of Trust helps protect, detect and recover from cyberattacks and digital compromises with bolstered tamper-detection and monitoring embedded into the chip design.
“This enhanced hardware root of trust provides true end to end security, not just infrastructure security,” Amini said. In addition, Lenovo System Guard ensures heightened security between manufacturing, delivery and deployment with advanced hardware monitoring.
Another highlight announcement was the new Lenovo XClarity One Platform, which is now a cloud-based, unified software management platform, that provides an industry-first integration of TruScale Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Management-as-a-Service and Smarter Support analytics to simplify orchestration, automation and metering from edge to cloud.
“This isn’t new systems management software,” Amini said. “What is new is the platform. This suite has been around since 2017, but in an on-prem environment. XClarity One sits on a public cloud or on-prem. Delivering a cloud-native management as-a-service allows a core data centre person to manage outside it, covering areas like the edge.
Amini also emphasized that this version of XClarity One is smarter than its predecessor.
“With this smarter support, XClarity One has faster time to resolution if a defect happens,” he said. “For example, it will proactively ship a part which may fail. That was not there in the previous version of the suite.”
The fifth generation of Lenovo Neptune Direct Water-Cooling technology extends industry-leading data center efficiency to a broader range of servers, recycling loops of warm water to cool systems and enabling customers to reduce power consumption up to 40 percent.
“In the past, watercooling was for the supercomputing customer base, but even before the pandemic, because of the cost of energy in places like Germany, sustainable computing was more important. We have been innovating in that space. We realize as more customers from SMB to global all have new ESG initiatives, those policies are forcing their data center management to run completely different. With this announcement, we understand there will be customers who want the highest performance direct water cooling, but more now see it not as performance but as sustainability ad reducing carbon commitment. Now it can be deployed with an air-cooled server on 1U rack, like all partners deploy. This is where we believe our Neptune technology has evolved around sustainability.”
