Lenovo and VMware partner for resilient edge servers

VMware and Lenovo have collaborated on edge computing systems, with the goal of making  them more robust and resilient.

As part of the deal, Lenovo’s Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) will pre-load VMware’s edge software on its ThinkSystem SE350 Edge servers, a pair of ruggedized servers designed specifically for edge deployments. This includes vSphere, vSan, and Tanzu.

The SE350 is a 1U hight, half-width server with one socket for an Intel Xeon D-2100, featuring up to 16 cores, up to 256GB of memory in four slots, four M.2 2280 SATA drives with SED, high temperature, high capacity, and high endurance drive options, RAID 0/1 for the SSDs, 2x10GbE wired network connectors and LTE and Wi-Fi for wireless connectivity.

ThinkSystem SE350 Edge server can survive extreme temperatures and high levels of shock. It comes with motion- and tamper-detection, and its hard disks are encrypted to prevent data compromise.

It reflects a maturing of the edge, which started out with mostly single-purpose appliances, notes Charles Ferland, vice president and general manager, edge computing and communication service providers at Lenovo ISG.

However, as companies adopted edge architectures, they deployed more single-purpose devices and ended up with a sprawl of them at the edge. What started out with one edge-automation task could easily expand to seven, and you end up with seven different devices.

“So just like in the industry, there’s a demand constantly for convergence and consolidations, over a virtualized environment,” said Ferland.

Lenovo also announced enhancements to its Open Cloud Automation software, to automate the planning, deployment and ongoing management of both datacenter cloud deployments and edge sites, using the same management software. 

The ThinkServer hardware is available for purchase or through Lenovo’s TruScale consumption-based leasing model.