Lenovo has introduced a turnkey software-defined storage (SDS) appliance that leverages its robust server platform combined with advanced storage virtualization software and multi-core optimizing parallel I/O – SANsymphony™ from DataCore Software. This new offering is the latest milestone in Lenovo’s effort to drive adoption of software-defined data center technology, which offers compelling customer benefits such as higher agility and simplicity, as well as better cost economics.
Lenovo plans to offer the DX8200D as a pre-integrated appliance, which promises to greatly simplify deployment and reduce management expenses while providing a single point of support. The latest offering in Lenovo’s SDS portfolio, it enables data centers to rapidly deploy a turnkey solution that harnesses the capabilities of existing SAN arrays. It can optimize heterogeneous storage infrastructures, enabling them to scale as needs grow and easily replace older storage arrays. Through the centralized interface, the DX8200D provides data protection, replication, de-duplication, compression, and other enterprise storage capabilities at a much lower price point than traditional SAN arrays.
Built on Lenovo’s System x3650 M5 server, which offers leadership reliability and performance, the DX8200D is designed to deliver the highest levels of response times, availability and utilization. Lenovo will pre-test the appliances working with DataCore to reduce deployment risks and increase time-to-value. With Predictive Failure Analysis and a next-generation diagnostic panel to facilitate easy serviceability, the x3650 M5 server helps reduce downtime and costs. Lenovo Trusted Platform Assurance, a built-in set of security features and practices, protects the hardware and firmware.
The Lenovo DX8200D takes isolated storage devices, sometimes spread between different locations, and places them under one common set of enterprise-wide services. It pools their collective resources, managing them centrally and uniformly despite the differences and incompatibilities among manufacturers, models and generations of equipment.
With these appliances, data centers can realize lower total cost of ownership, with an up to 90-percent decrease in time spend on storage management and support tasks, up to a 75-percent reduction in storage costs and up to 100-percent reduction in storage-related downtime. With a 10-fold increase in performance, data centers also can realize higher availability of mission-critical data.
Finally, the Lenovo DX8200D can centrally automate discovery, inventory tracking, real-time monitoring, configuration, fault detection, and alert handling over its lifecycle with Lenovo’s own XClarity software, a best-in-class enterprise management tool.
