For well over a year now, Lenovo has been making a concerted effort to be more relevant in the data center. While the company is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to laptops, the company’s foray into the data center is comparatively nascent. It provides a range of server platforms, including a hyperconverged appliance jointly developed with Nutanix. But competition across thee IT infrastructure category in the data center is fierce.
To further that effort, Lenovo is now partnering with DataCore Software to create a software-defined storage (SDS) appliance. The DX8200D is a pre-integrated appliance that combines a Lenovo System x3650 M5 server with SANSymphony storage software developed by DataCore that processes I/Os in parallel using standard X86 processors.
Radhika Krishnan, executive director and general manager for software-defined data center and networking, says Lenovo will offer the DX8200D alongside other storage systems it resells, including the hyperconverged appliance that combines storage and servers into a pre-integrated system. In general, Krishnan says IT organizations are embracing software-defined storage in multiple formats across the enterprise.
“SDS is here to stay,” says Krishnan.
The DX8200D is unique in that provides a way to substantially reduce total cost of ownership, while at the same time improving performance by a factor of 10 because I/Os are processed in parallel, says Krishnan.
It remains to be seen just how relevant Lenovo can become in data center environments. But as the Lenovo strategy continues to unfold, it’s clear the company is open to having multiple overlapping partnerships to achieve that goal.