Lenovo unveils hybrid-cloud management tools

Lenovo Data Center Group has released new storage and data-management tools designed to boost performance and improve monitoring and analytic capabilities across enterprise systems that span the edge, data center and cloud.

The enhancements include a new all-flash storage array with end-to-end NVMe support, an updated cloud-based management platform, and a new fibre channel switch.

Lenovo ThinkSystem DM5100F

The new Lenovo ThinkSystem DM5100F is high-performance, low-latency, all-NVMe storage at an affordable price point, designed to enhance analytics and AI deployments while accelerating applications’ access to data. It’s capable of delivering up to 45% improved performance compared to prior models, according to Lenovo.

The platform allows customers to manage and analyze all data types (block, file and object) within a single storage platform. The Lenovo DM Series of storage systems now includes S3 Object support, which allows customers to create a unified data-management platform between on-premises and the cloud.

Additionally, with Lenovo DM Series storage, customers can add cold-data tiering from hard drives to the cloud, or replicate data to the cloud.

Lenovo ThinkSystem Intelligent Monitoring 2.0

Lenovo has enhanced its cloud-based management platform – Lenovo ThinkSystem Intelligent Monitoring – to use AI to simplify and automate management and optimization of its ThinkSystem storage environment. Customers can monitor and manage storage capacity and performance for multiple locations from a single cloud-based interface, predict issues before they happen, and receive prescriptive guidance, Lenovo says.

Lenovo DB720S Fibre Channel Switch

To accelerate the performance of customers’ applications, Lenovo announced the new DB720S Fibre Channel Switch. The ThinkSystem DB720S is a Gen 7 FC SAN switch designed for extreme performance and autonomous SAN capabilities. It has up to 56 auto-sensing ports with link speeds ranging from 8Gbps to 64Gbps for a total bandwidth of 3.584 Tbps.

The autonomous SAN infrastructure is designed with self-learning, self-optimizing and self-healing capabilities, and Lenovo claims it will deliver a 50% reduction in latency compared to the previous generation of switches. Customers will be able to order the DB720S in the DCSC configuration in late January 2021.

Lenovo TruScale consumption-based infrastructure

All of the new products are available through Lenovo TruScale Infrastructure Services, the company’s leasing service that competes with HP GreenLake and Dell On Demand.

Lenovo has made several partnerships in recent months related to TruScale: It recently collaborated with NetApp and Nvidia to publish a reference architecture for an AI training system that combines ThinkSystem servers with Nvidia GPUs and ThinkSystem DM5000F all-flash storage

Lenovo also scored a deal with SAP to provide a new OPEX private-cloud service – SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, Customer Edition – that’s also available through Lenovo TruScale.