Lenovo Unveils Data Management Solutions for Enterprise AI

Lenovo announced its latest innovation in data management, launching ThinkSystem DG Enterprise Storage Arrays and ThinkSystem DM3010H Enterprise Storage Arrays. These all-flash arrays are designed to simplify enabling AI workloads and unlock the value of data.

The company also revealed two integrated and engineered ThinkAgile SXM Microsoft Azure Stack servers. These provide a unified hybrid cloud option, simplifying data management.

Simplify AI workloads with all-flash arrays

Businesses are facing growing challenges in scaling their operations to meet growing demands for data, security and sustainability. Lenovo said its new flash solutions offer accelerated deployment of AI workloads.

According to the company, the new solutions, enhanced with ransomware protection, will provide enhanced security capabilities in edge-to-cloud environments, promoting workload consolidation and facilitating faster insights.

The company said it recognizes the need for data management solutions to navigate different data complexities and to simplify storage, analysis and management. The new storage arrays aim to address these challenges by eliminating data silos and accelerating insights from data in hybrid multicloud environments.

“Providing more efficient and easy-to-use end-to-end solutions is key to enabling new workloads and customers to benefit from AI. The DG Series all-flash arrays will deliver new flash performance for petabyte-scale datasets to power AI workloads,” Stuart McRae, executive director and general manager of data storage at Lenovo, told VentureBeat. As AI becomes more ubiquitous and customers look to deploy distributed AI and AI at the edge, the new ThinkSystem DG series will deliver a new level of cost-effective flash performance and scalability for unstructured data.”

Lenovo ThinkSystem DG Enterprise storage arrays are a new line of all-flash arrays (AFA) with quad-level cell (QLC) memory technology. The company claims these arrays deliver up to six times faster performance and cost savings of up to 50% compared to HDD arrays.

They are specifically designed to handle read-intensive enterprise AI workloads and large dataset workloads, enabling faster data intake and accelerating time to understanding.

New servers, better performance

In addition, Lenovo introduced the ThinkAgile SXM4600 and SXM6600 servers, integrated systems designed for Microsoft Azure Stack Hub. These servers aim to simplify and accelerate the realization of value in Azure hybrid and multicloud environments.

Lenovo says these solutions deliver significant improvements, with transactional database performance improving by up to 183 percent and a consolidation ratio of up to three to one for Microsoft applications.

“SXM Servers provide consistent Azure services on premises. This allows customers to extend Azure services to on-premises infrastructure, enabling them to address business requirements such as data governance, latency, cost management, or integration with legacy technologies,” said McRae of Lenovo to VentureBeat.“This will greatly simplify the configuration of Azure hybrid ecosystems and accelerate time-to-value.The Azure Arc technology enables interoperability with multiple cloud technologies.

Lenovo’s ThinkAgile SXM solutions incorporate lifecycle management, easy integration with Azure, and the ability to extend applications across public and private cloud infrastructures.

“For new DG products and all DM products, Lenovo offers new Unified Complete Software solutions that provide an all-in-one offering for all functions. Unified Complete also includes standalone ransomware protection and hybrid cloud data management at no additional cost,” McRae said. “In Q4, all DM-series systems currently installed with Premium SW can upgrade to Unified Complete without additional costs.”

Next-generation archiving solutions for faster data inference

Lenovo said the DG series is designed for high performance unstructured data. With six times the performance of legacy systems and scalability to over 17 petabytes (PB) of data, DG can scale to large AI datasets. It can handle approximately 1 PB of edge inferencing data in an efficient 2U design.

DG and DM archiving solutions leverage the full suite of Lenovo Unified Complete Software. This suite safeguards corporate data throughout the data lifecycle and incorporates essential features to fight ransomware and protect against data breaches. Ransomware protection is built in, as are multi-tenant key management and immutable file copies to enhance data security.

Lenovo also emphasizes that efficiency in power and design can significantly contribute to business sustainability. By reducing energy consumption and minimizing the need for rack space and cooling in data centers, customers can reduce their carbon footprint.

That’s why Lenovo developed DG storage solutions focused on increased efficiency, reduced power consumption, and optimized cooling. The company says these solutions can deliver up to 25 percent energy savings over hybrid arrays. They also facilitate workload consolidation, leading to reduced rack space and a smaller data center footprint.

“Compared to legacy arrays, the DG Series offers energy-efficient flash capabilities with advanced four-to-one data efficiency capabilities that allow customers to consolidate multiple legacy hybrid storage devices into a single efficient DB Series solution,” said McRae. “Support for multi-protocol data (block, file, object) makes it easy to consolidate multiple storage devices into one efficient flash solution.”

TruScale: A consumption-based server/storage model

Lenovo also announced the launch of TruScale Infinite Storage, a consumption-based model of servers and storage, which allows customers to pay for capacity used monthly.

According to Lenovo, TruScale offers a services-based approach for DM and DG series storage. Includes non-disruptive technology upgrades and optional comprehensive storage infrastructure management.

“TruScale Infinite Storage delivers a true on-premises cloud-like business experience by delivering dynamic scaling without disruption to performance and capacity, plus never having to worry about infrastructure becoming outdated,” added McRae.

The company said Unified Complete software will be included with the DG series and upcoming DM products in the coming year. Partners and customers no longer need to determine which features are needed for specific datasets or manage separate license keys.