Lenovo data center solutions
In 2004, Lenovo bought a PC manufacturing unit from IBM, which caused a wave of skepticism among users and journalists. In 2014, when Lenovo had already led the world ranking of PC manufacturers in terms of sales in monetary and quantitative terms, according to IDC, the company set itself a new goal: to become a leader in the market of equipment manufacturers for data centers. And bought from IBM business for the production of servers based on x86 architecture.
For several years after the transaction was completed, Lenovo offered its customers two lines of equipment for data centers: its own ThinkServer and purchased from IBM System x. In order to optimize and expand the product portfolio, this summer, Lenovo introduced two new brands of data center equipment - ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile, which are replacing all previous generations of systems. It is worth noting that both new brands are built on the basis of technologies System x. Presented update is the largest in the history of the company. In total, Lenovo announced 26 new systems. In August in Moscow, the company spoke in more detail about new products and its development strategy. We offer you the first part of the article with a story about the transformation of the company.
The data center market is changing. According to IDC forecasts, by 2020 the cost of hardware infrastructure will be distributed as follows: provided that the total market volume grows by $ 13 billion, the traditional server infrastructure segment will decrease by 4%, while the segments of software-defined infrastructure, high-performance computing ( HPC) and hyper-scalable infrastructure will grow. According to IDC, today Lenovo is ranked 3rd in terms of sales in the global market for server manufacturers on x86-architecture, and plans to increase its share, working with each of these segments, said Dmitry Parshin, CEO of Lenovo Global Technology Russia.
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The market of traditional infrastructure solutions for data centers is the largest and highly competitive. Although this segment will shrink, it will remain the largest by 2020 and Lenovo will continue to work with it.
Lenovo not only updated its line of infrastructure solutions, but also announced a number of new products, among them: 4-processor high-density servers SR850, DS series storage systems, 25 and 100 Gigabit NE2572 and NE10032 switches, respectively. In addition, Lenovo introduced the densest 8-processor x86 server in the SR950 world, which takes up only 4U in a rack. Using the new product portfolio, Lenovo can offer a wide range of data center solutions and, more importantly for customers, provide comprehensive service support.
New server hardware built on Intel Xeon Scalable processors . All solutions for traditional infrastructure are presented under the brand new ThinkSystem. It includes: servers, storage systems, switches.
Unlike the traditional infrastructure segment, the remaining areas of the hardware infrastructure market will grow by 2020. There is a trend in the market - customers are less likely to buy components to solve problems separately, it is more profitable to purchase everything from a single supplier and obtain comprehensive service support. In addition, when purchasing servers, storage, switches and software separately, they still need to be configured and integrated with each other. This process is often long and complicated.
Now you can order pre-configured and pre-integrated solutions directly from the factory of production: often the entire complex is delivered already in the rack, and to get started it can simply be connected to the network. The ThinkAgile brand is such a solution for software-defined infrastructure. It includes:
- Hyper-converged systems
- Software defined storage
- Software and hardware systems
The most active development by 2020 will show a segment of hyper-scalable infrastructure - it will grow by 18%. Hyper-scaled data centers include complexes with a minimum of 5,000 servers located on an area of more than 1,000 square meters.
The largest customers in this segment are the so-called “Super 7 + 1”, which includes companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, AT & T.
Lenovo systems are used in 6 of the 7 largest data centers in the world. A recent example of the company's competencies is the Alibaba data center in Russia. Lenovo delivered 1,500 customized, pre-configured and pre-integrated servers, and their commissioning took only 7 days.
According to IDC research, in the High Perfomance Computing (HPC) segment, Lenovo is the fastest growing manufacturer in the world. In 2015, the company installed 23 clusters, for incomplete 2017 - already 92. More than 100 specialists in the company around the world promote only HPC solutions.
An example of Lenovo HPC implementations in Russia is cooperation with Sukhoi Civil Aircraft. With the help of the company's equipment, aerodynamic calculations are made, aircraft flow around in icing conditions, optimization of the aircraft and engine layout.
Dmitry Parshin separately noted the importance of customer experience when interacting with Lenovo. It is not enough to produce high-quality and efficient equipment and sell it at an affordable price. It is important to consider other factors.
First, the speed of delivery. According to Gartner, Lenovo is in the top 25 global companies with the most advanced supply chain. The company can deliver 90% of all SKUs in 7 days. Unfortunately, in Russia it is difficult to do - you need to take into account 10-14 days only for customs clearance. Total Lenovo 5 factories around the world. There are cases when for one customer the equipment is delivered to the distributor hub simultaneously from Mexico, Hungary and China, in order to bring it to Russia in one truck.
Secondly, the company pays great attention to service. Lenovo is constantly working on improving it. For example, for all ThinkAgile systems, the company announced a new type of service support: when a problem arises, the customer immediately goes to level L2, bypassing L1, and a dedicated specialist will take care of the solution of the service case.
Third, Lenovo continues to produce the most reliable x86 servers in the world. According to the latest ITIC study, which is attended annually by more than 750 executives and IT directors of companies around the world, Lenovo servers provide the least unplanned downtime per year among all x86 in the industry. It is important to note that, according to this and previous ITIC studies, the reliability of the System x hardware during the transition to Lenovo was maintained at the same high level as at IBM.
It is also worth mentioning separately about the updated management interface for new systems. He is much simpler. The new version is made taking into account modern requirements and practices of user experience. It is visual, intuitive, supports several languages, and within six months it supports the Russian language, which is often important for customers from the public sector.
During the reorganization of Lenovo itself, in 2016, Kirk Skaugen was invited to the position of president of the data center products division, who had worked for 24 years at Intel and held various management positions, including the general director of the server department and senior vice-president. President of the company.
The transformation of Lenovo also led to the separation of the division of products for the data center in a separate vertical within the company - Lenovo Global Technology. If earlier Lenovo sellers could offer customers all the company's products at once, from servers to smartphones, now employees have a specialization. Today, Lenovo Global Technology has a dedicated organizational structure and management, a separate logistics system, and separate marketing. This allows the company to focus on providing optimal solutions and services for data centers.
One recent example of similar solutions from Lenovo is the upgrade of a supercomputer for a computing center in Barcelona (it is this one that is shown in the title photo for the article). Now the supercomputer occupies the 13th line in the Top500 list. The task of the computer center is to identify the genomes responsible for the occurrence of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, one of the most common oncohematological diseases. As a result of the study, 4 associated with this type of lymphocytic leukemia were isolated from 20,000 genomes. Their further analysis will allow scientists to better understand the cause of the disease and get closer to finding a cure. The supercomputer was built using new Lenovo products based on Intel Xeon Scalable processors even before the official announcement of the latter. On the video you can see the whole process of upgrading a supercomputer:
Thanks for attention! On the new systems ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile will tell in the second part of the article.
For several years after the transaction was completed, Lenovo offered its customers two lines of equipment for data centers: its own ThinkServer and purchased from IBM System x. In order to optimize and expand the product portfolio, this summer, Lenovo introduced two new brands of data center equipment - ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile, which are replacing all previous generations of systems. It is worth noting that both new brands are built on the basis of technologies System x. Presented update is the largest in the history of the company. In total, Lenovo announced 26 new systems. In August in Moscow, the company spoke in more detail about new products and its development strategy. We offer you the first part of the article with a story about the transformation of the company.
Traditional infrastructure
The data center market is changing. According to IDC forecasts, by 2020 the cost of hardware infrastructure will be distributed as follows: provided that the total market volume grows by $ 13 billion, the traditional server infrastructure segment will decrease by 4%, while the segments of software-defined infrastructure, high-performance computing ( HPC) and hyper-scalable infrastructure will grow. According to IDC, today Lenovo is ranked 3rd in terms of sales in the global market for server manufacturers on x86-architecture, and plans to increase its share, working with each of these segments, said Dmitry Parshin, CEO of Lenovo Global Technology Russia.
')
The market of traditional infrastructure solutions for data centers is the largest and highly competitive. Although this segment will shrink, it will remain the largest by 2020 and Lenovo will continue to work with it.
Lenovo not only updated its line of infrastructure solutions, but also announced a number of new products, among them: 4-processor high-density servers SR850, DS series storage systems, 25 and 100 Gigabit NE2572 and NE10032 switches, respectively. In addition, Lenovo introduced the densest 8-processor x86 server in the SR950 world, which takes up only 4U in a rack. Using the new product portfolio, Lenovo can offer a wide range of data center solutions and, more importantly for customers, provide comprehensive service support.
New server hardware built on Intel Xeon Scalable processors . All solutions for traditional infrastructure are presented under the brand new ThinkSystem. It includes: servers, storage systems, switches.
Software Defined Infrastructure
Unlike the traditional infrastructure segment, the remaining areas of the hardware infrastructure market will grow by 2020. There is a trend in the market - customers are less likely to buy components to solve problems separately, it is more profitable to purchase everything from a single supplier and obtain comprehensive service support. In addition, when purchasing servers, storage, switches and software separately, they still need to be configured and integrated with each other. This process is often long and complicated.
Now you can order pre-configured and pre-integrated solutions directly from the factory of production: often the entire complex is delivered already in the rack, and to get started it can simply be connected to the network. The ThinkAgile brand is such a solution for software-defined infrastructure. It includes:
- Hyper-converged systems
- Software defined storage
- Software and hardware systems
Hyperscale Infrastructure
The most active development by 2020 will show a segment of hyper-scalable infrastructure - it will grow by 18%. Hyper-scaled data centers include complexes with a minimum of 5,000 servers located on an area of more than 1,000 square meters.
The largest customers in this segment are the so-called “Super 7 + 1”, which includes companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, AT & T.
Lenovo systems are used in 6 of the 7 largest data centers in the world. A recent example of the company's competencies is the Alibaba data center in Russia. Lenovo delivered 1,500 customized, pre-configured and pre-integrated servers, and their commissioning took only 7 days.
High performance computing and artificial intelligence
According to IDC research, in the High Perfomance Computing (HPC) segment, Lenovo is the fastest growing manufacturer in the world. In 2015, the company installed 23 clusters, for incomplete 2017 - already 92. More than 100 specialists in the company around the world promote only HPC solutions.
An example of Lenovo HPC implementations in Russia is cooperation with Sukhoi Civil Aircraft. With the help of the company's equipment, aerodynamic calculations are made, aircraft flow around in icing conditions, optimization of the aircraft and engine layout.
Customer experience
Dmitry Parshin separately noted the importance of customer experience when interacting with Lenovo. It is not enough to produce high-quality and efficient equipment and sell it at an affordable price. It is important to consider other factors.
First, the speed of delivery. According to Gartner, Lenovo is in the top 25 global companies with the most advanced supply chain. The company can deliver 90% of all SKUs in 7 days. Unfortunately, in Russia it is difficult to do - you need to take into account 10-14 days only for customs clearance. Total Lenovo 5 factories around the world. There are cases when for one customer the equipment is delivered to the distributor hub simultaneously from Mexico, Hungary and China, in order to bring it to Russia in one truck.
Secondly, the company pays great attention to service. Lenovo is constantly working on improving it. For example, for all ThinkAgile systems, the company announced a new type of service support: when a problem arises, the customer immediately goes to level L2, bypassing L1, and a dedicated specialist will take care of the solution of the service case.
Third, Lenovo continues to produce the most reliable x86 servers in the world. According to the latest ITIC study, which is attended annually by more than 750 executives and IT directors of companies around the world, Lenovo servers provide the least unplanned downtime per year among all x86 in the industry. It is important to note that, according to this and previous ITIC studies, the reliability of the System x hardware during the transition to Lenovo was maintained at the same high level as at IBM.
It is also worth mentioning separately about the updated management interface for new systems. He is much simpler. The new version is made taking into account modern requirements and practices of user experience. It is visual, intuitive, supports several languages, and within six months it supports the Russian language, which is often important for customers from the public sector.
Separate structure
During the reorganization of Lenovo itself, in 2016, Kirk Skaugen was invited to the position of president of the data center products division, who had worked for 24 years at Intel and held various management positions, including the general director of the server department and senior vice-president. President of the company.
The transformation of Lenovo also led to the separation of the division of products for the data center in a separate vertical within the company - Lenovo Global Technology. If earlier Lenovo sellers could offer customers all the company's products at once, from servers to smartphones, now employees have a specialization. Today, Lenovo Global Technology has a dedicated organizational structure and management, a separate logistics system, and separate marketing. This allows the company to focus on providing optimal solutions and services for data centers.
One recent example of similar solutions from Lenovo is the upgrade of a supercomputer for a computing center in Barcelona (it is this one that is shown in the title photo for the article). Now the supercomputer occupies the 13th line in the Top500 list. The task of the computer center is to identify the genomes responsible for the occurrence of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, one of the most common oncohematological diseases. As a result of the study, 4 associated with this type of lymphocytic leukemia were isolated from 20,000 genomes. Their further analysis will allow scientists to better understand the cause of the disease and get closer to finding a cure. The supercomputer was built using new Lenovo products based on Intel Xeon Scalable processors even before the official announcement of the latter. On the video you can see the whole process of upgrading a supercomputer:
Thanks for attention! On the new systems ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile will tell in the second part of the article.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/339980/
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