Lenovo Converged HX7510 Appliances

Lenovo Converged HX Series Nutanix Appliances are designed to help you simplify IT infrastructure, reduce costs, and accelerate time to value. These hyperconverged appliances from Lenovo combine industry-leading hyperconvergence software from Nutanix with Lenovo enterprise platforms that feature Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v4 product family.

Several common uses for the Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliance that is optimized for high-performance workloads include databases, e-mail and collaboration, and load-balancing clusters. Starting with as few as three nodes to keep your acquisition costs down, the HX Series is capable of immense scalability as your needs grow.

The Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliance is shown in the following figure.

Figure 1. Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliance

The Lenovo Converged HX Series appliances are built on industry-leading Lenovo servers that feature enterprise-class reliability, management, and security.

The Lenovo Converged HX Series appliances deliver the industry’s most feature-rich hyperconverged infrastructure to enterprise datacenters, bringing the benefits of web-scale technologies to enterprise applications through enterprise storage, data protection, infrastructure resilience, management and analytics, and security.

The Lenovo Converged HX Series Nutanix Appliances deliver the industry’s most feature-rich hyperconverged infrastructure to enterprise datacenters (shown in the following figure). Nutanix brings the benefits of web-scale technologies to enterprise applications through enterprise storage, data protection, infrastructure resilience, management and analytics, and security.

Figure 2. HX Series hyperconverged infrastructure

The Lenovo Converged HX Series appliances offer the following key features:

• Enterprise storage

  The Lenovo Converged HX Series Nutanix Appliances deliver enterprise data storage as an on-demand service by employing highly distributed software architecture. The Nutanix Software eliminates the need for traditional SAN and NAS solutions, and delivers a rich set of software-defined services that are entirely VM-centric, including snapshots, high availability, disaster recovery, deduplication and more.

  • Inline and post-process compression at the sub-block level increase effective storage capacity by up to four times.
  • Redirect-on-write snapshots and writeable clones at the granularity of a single VM increase efficiency.
  • Distributed caching of VM data improves performance in multi-reader scenarios, such as VDI with linked clones.
  • Inline deduplication in the read cache and post-process deduplication in the capacity tier improve performance and effective capacity.
  • Powerful acceleration capabilities such as caching, automatic data tiering and data locality speed storage performance.
• Data protection

  The Nutanix Software offers a natively integrated solution for data protection and continuous availability at VM granularity. It gives administrators an affordable range of options to meet the recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) for different applications.

  • Unlimited local backups using VM-centric snapshots and integrated workflows delivering RPO in minutes.
  • Natively integrated solution for disaster recovery enables simple VM-centric backup, recovery and replication with application-level consistency.
  • Built-in Cloud Connect hybrid cloud technology enables seamless backup of data to public cloud services.
  • Metro availability feature provides continuous availability of data across different sites during planned maintenance or disasters through synchronous replication.
  • Support for Microsoft Volume Shadow Services (VSS), VMware vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP), and seamless integration with third-party backup providers.
• Infrastructure resilience

  The platform for the Lenovo Converged HX Series Nutanix Appliances is fault resistant, with no single point of failure and no bottlenecks. The system uses a shared-nothing architecture, where all data, metadata and services are distributed to all nodes within the cluster, and is built to detect, isolate and recover from failures anywhere in the system. Lenovo hyperconverged appliances deliver always-on operation, and can survive system hardware, software and hypervisor issues and maintain 100% availability to applications and data.

  • Intelligent data placement in different physical failure domains, or availability domains, (for example, separate racks or power sources) delivers greater fault tolerance.
  • Data and metadata replicated across multiple nodes provide user-defined resilience against hardware failures.
  • Multiple copies of data ensure 100% data availability in the event that a Nutanix controller VM is unavailable due to failure or maintenance.
  • Automatic integrity checks during reads and silent at-rest error detection for data consistency.
• Management and analytics

  The platform for the Lenovo Converged HX Series Nutanix Appliances marries web-scale capabilities with an intuitive user-centric management experience to simplify every aspect of the IT infrastructure lifecycle. Nutanix Prism provides a single pane of glass to monitor and control one or more Nutanix clusters, with simplified workflows and rich automation for common administrative tasks.

  • Elegantly simple management framework with intuitive workflows delivers radical simplicity and powerful control to IT management.
  • Single pane of glass delivers centralized visibility and management of multiple Nutanix clusters across the world.
  • Rich automation and intuitive workflows simplify deployment, provisioning, orchestration and maintenance of Nutanix clusters.
  • End-to-end visibility of VMs, nodes and disks and the ability to visually diagnose potential issues gives administrators total infrastructure control.
  • Programmatic control of every aspect of cluster management, including deployment, upgrades, data protection, and performance management enables powerful automation.
  • Streamlined management for hypervisor and virtual machines on Nutanix.
• Security

  Nutanix software combines powerful features, such as two-factor authentication and data-at-rest encryption, with a security development lifecycle that is integrated into product development to help customers meet the most stringent security requirements.

  • Security incorporated into every step of the software development process enables verifiably secure software releases.
  • Encryption of sensitive data with self-encrypting drives (SEDs) that are FIPS 140-2 Level 2 conformant supports stringent encryption requirements.
  • Two-step authentication using a client certificate and username/password, along with cluster lockdown, provides protection against unauthorized access.

The following figure shows the front view of the HX7510 appliance.

Figure 3. HX7510 front view

The following figure shows the rear view of the HX7510 appliance.

Figure 4. HX7510 rear view

The following table lists the system specifications of the Converged HX7510 appliances.

The Converged HX7510 appliances are factory-integrated offerings; they are configured by using one of the following configuration tools:

• Lenovo Enterprise Solutions Configurator (LESC):
  http://lesc.lenovo.com
• System x and Cluster Solutions Configurator (x-config):
  http://lesc.lenovo.com/products/hardware/configurator/worldwide/bhui/asit/

During the configuration process, you are selecting one of the base models first, and then you are adding components (processors, memory, drives, and network adapters) to the selected model according to the output from the Nutanix Sizer tool:
http://services.nutanix.com/

Note: You are required to engage a Lenovo representative in the project that includes the Converged HX Series appliances.

The following table lists the base models of the Converged HX7510 appliances.

The following table lists the default configurations of each appliance.

It is possible to perform a hardware upgrade after the initial deployment, such as adding more memory or network adapters, by purchasing the hardware upgrade option listed in the following table.

Configuration note: You should request a quote for the Nutanix HW Upgrade part number from Lenovo and provide additional details on the existing installation and planned upgrade.

The Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliances ship with two processors. The following table lists the processor options that are available for selection.

The Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliances support Lenovo TruDDR4 memory. TruDDR memory is selected, tested and tuned to maximize performance and reliability, and it enables extended memory performance features to support memory speeds that exceed industry standards.

The appliances support up to 24 DIMMs (12 DIMMs per processor). Each processor has four memory channels, and there are three DIMMs per channel.

The appliance supports ECC and Chipkill memory protection technologies.

The following table lists the memory options that are available for selection.

The following table lists supported memory configurations and maximum operating speeds.

Note: Cells highlighted with a gray background indicate when the number of DIMMs per channel allows the DIMMs to operate faster than Intel specifications define, while still maintaining world-class reliability.

The Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliances support the internal drive bay configurations that are listed in the following table.

* Each N2215 controls eight drives.

The following table summarizes features of the N2215 storage controller.

The following table lists the hard drive options that are available for selection.

The following table lists the solid-state drive options that are available for selection.

Note: Self-encrypting drives and drives without encryption (HDDs and SSDs) cannot be intermixed in the same appliance, that is, all drives in the appliance (HDDs and SSDs) should be either self-encrypting or without encryption.

The Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliances provide two- or four-port 10 GbE network connectivity. 10 GbE network connectivity can be configured by selecting one or two Intel X520 adapters that provide two 10 GbE ports with SFP+ connectors each, or Intel X550-T2 adapters that provide two 10 GbE ports with RJ-45 connectors each.

The onboard 1 GbE network interface controller (NIC) that is based on the Broadcom BCM5719 chip provides four 10/100/1000 Mb Ethernet ports with RJ-45 connectors. 10 GbE ports are bonded with the 1 GbE ports on the system board.

The following table lists the 10 GbE network adapter options that are available for selection.

Note: The Intel X520 and X550-T2 adapters cannot be intermixed in the same appliance, that is, either X520 or X550-T2 adapter can be selected for the appliance, but not both adapter types.

The following table summarizes features of the 10 GbE network adapters.

The SFP+ adapters require SFP+ transceivers or direct-attach copper (DAC) cables that must be ordered separately (two SFP+ transceivers or DAC cables per adapter). The following table lists supported SFP+ transceiver and cable options.

The Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliances support the following hypervisors:

• Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV)
• VMware ESXi 5.5 Update 3
• VMware ESXi 6.0 Update 1
• VMware ESXi 6.0 Update 2
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 DataCenter Edition (Hyper-V)

Notes:

• The HX Series appliances ship with Nutanix AHV (default) or VMware ESXi (optional) preloaded.
• Microsoft Hyper-V is supported as a field-installable option only.

The Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliances can be configured with one of the Nutanix Software editions that are listed in the following table. The Starter edition is factory-preloaded and the appropriate license can be downloaded from the Nutanix website to match the serial number of the appliance.

The Starter edition offers the core set of Nutanix software functionality. This edition is ideal for small-scale deployments with a limited set of workloads.

The Pro edition offers rich data services, along with resilience and management features. This edition is ideal for enterprises running multiple applications on a Nutanix cluster or with large-scale single workload deployments.

The Ultimate edition offers the full suite of Nutanix software capabilities to tackle complex infrastructure challenges. This edition is ideal for multi-site deployments.

It is possible to upgrade a software edition after the installation by purchasing one of the software upgrade options listed in the following table.

Configuration note: You should request a quote for the selected Nutanix SW Upgrade part number from Lenovo and provide additional details on the existing installation and planned upgrade.

The following table compares features of the Nutanix software editions.

* Data-at-rest encryption requires self-encrypting drives (SEDs).

The Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliances support the following systems management tools:

• Integrated Management Module
• Light path diagnostics
• Lenovo XClarity Administrator
• Nutanix Prism
• Lenovo XClarity Energy Manager

Integrated Management Module

The Converged HX7510 appliances contain Integrated Management Module II (IMM2.1), which provides advanced service-processor control, monitoring, and an alerting function. If an environmental condition exceeds a threshold or if a system component fails, the IMM2 lights LEDs to help you diagnose the problem, records the error in the event log, and alerts you to the problem. The Integrated Management Module Advanced Upgrade comes standard with the appliances, and it provides a virtual presence for remote management capabilities of the appliances.

The IMM provides remote appliance management through industry-standard interfaces:

• Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) Version 2.0
• Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) Version 3
• Common Information Model (CIM)
• Web browser

The remote presence feature provides the following functions:

• Remotely viewing video with graphics resolutions up to 1600x1200 at 75 Hz with up to 23 bits per pixel colors, regardless of the system state
• Remotely accessing the appliance using the keyboard and mouse from a remote client
• Mapping the CD or DVD drive, diskette drive, and USB flash drive on a remote client, and mapping ISO and diskette image files as virtual drives that are available for use by the appliance
• Uploading a diskette image to the IMM memory and mapping it to the appliance as a virtual drive

Light path diagnostics

The Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliances include basic light path diagnostics, which includes system LEDs on the front of the appliance and LEDs near the monitored components (for example, the DIMM error LED on the system board).

Lenovo XClarity

Lenovo XClarity is a centralized systems management solution that helps administrators deliver infrastructure faster. This solution integrates easily with Lenovo System x M5 and X6 rack servers, Converged HX Series appliances, and Flex System, providing automated agent-less discovery, monitoring, firmware updates, configuration management, and bare metal deployment of operating systems and hypervisors across multiple systems.

Lenovo XClarity is an optional software component for the Lenovo Converged HX Series appliances which can be used to manage firmware upgrades outside of the Nutanix Prism software.

Notes:

• Lenovo XClarity Administrator can be downloaded and used at no charge to discover and monitor HX Series appliances and manage firmware upgrades for them.
• Optional Lenovo XClarity Pro subscription license that can be selected in the configurator provides software support for XClarity Administrator and XClarity Integrators for the duration of the selected warranty period. If Lenovo XClarity software support is required, the XClarity Pro option must be selected.

Lenovo XClarity Administrator is available from Lenovo at no charge, and it offers the following features:

• Auto-discovery and monitoring of Converged HX Series appliances
• Firmware updates and compliance enforcement
• External alerts and notifications via SNMP traps, syslog remote logging, and e-mail
• Secure connections to managed endpoints
• NIST 800-131A or FIPS 140-2 compliant cryptographic standards between the management solution and managed endpoints
• Integration into existing higher level management systems such as cloud automation and orchestration tools through REST APIs, providing extensive external visibility and control over hardware resources
• An intuitive, easy-to-use GUI
• Scripting support with Windows PowerShell, providing command-line visibility and control over hardware resources

In addition, Lenovo XClarity Administrator offers two software plug-in modules (Lenovo XClarity Integrators) at no charge:

• Lenovo XClarity Integrator for Microsoft System Center
• Lenovo XClarity Integrator for VMware vCenter

Lenovo XClarity Integrators allow administrators to manage physical infrastructure from leading external virtualization management software tools from Microsoft and VMware.

Lenovo XClarity Integrators offer the following additional features:

• Ability to discover, manage, and monitor Lenovo server hardware from VMware vCenter or Microsoft System Center
• Deployment of firmware updates to Converged HX Series appliances from the virtualization management tool
• Non-disruptive server maintenance in clustered environments that reduces workload downtime by dynamically migrating workloads from affected hosts during rolling server updates or reboots
• Greater service level uptime and assurance in clustered environments during unplanned hardware events by dynamically triggering workload migration from impacted hosts when impending hardware failures are predicted

Nutanix Prism

Nutanix Prism gives administrators a simple and elegant way to manage virtual environments. Powered by advanced data analytics and heuristics, Prism simplifies and streamlines common workflows within a datacenter eliminating the need to have disparate management solutions.

Nutanix Prism is a part of the Nutanix software preloaded on the appliances, and it includes the following components:

• Prism Starter (included in Starter, Pro, and Ultimate Nutanix software editions): Provides ability to configure, manage, and monitor a Nutanix cluster and centralized management of multiple local and remote Nutanix clusters.
• Prism Pro (Selectable software license; optional): Enables efficiency evaluation, capacity planning, expansion recommendations, custom dashboards, and advanced search capabilities.

The Prism Pro software license can be selected during the initial purchase. Also, Prism Starter can be upgraded to Prism Pro after the initial deployment by purchasing one of the software license options listed in the following table.

Configuration note: You should request a quote for the selected Prism Pro part number from Lenovo and provide additional details on the existing installation.

Nutanix Prism offers the following features:

• Single point of control
  • Accelerates enterprise-wide deployment
  • Manages capacity centrally
  • Adds nodes in minutes
  • Supports non-disruptive software upgrades with zero downtime
  • Integrates with REST APIs and PowerShell
• Monitoring and alerting
  • Tracks infrastructure utilization (storage, processor, memory)
  • Centrally monitors multiple clusters across multiple sites
  • Monitors per-VM performance and resource usage
  • Checks system health
  • Generates alerts and notifications
• Integrated data protection
  • Offers customizable RPO/RTO and retention policies
  • Supports configurable per-VM replication (1:1, 1:many and many:1)
  • Provides efficient VM recovery
  • Deploys affordable DR and backup to the cloud
• Diagnostics and troubleshooting
  • Provides time-based historical views of VM activity
  • Performs proactive alert analysis
  • Correlates alerts and events to quickly diagnose issues
  • Generates actionable alerts and reduces resolution times
  • Analyzes trending patterns for accurate capacity planning

Lenovo XClarity Energy Manager is an optional, separately orderable software component for the Lenovo Converged HX Series appliances that is licensed on a per managed node basis; that is, each managed system requires a license.

The Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliances have the following dimensions and weight (approximate):

• Height: 87 mm (3.4 in.)
• Width: 446 mm (17.5 in.)
• Depth: 800 mm (31.5 in.)
• Weight (maximum): 34 kg (75 lb)

The Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliances are supported in the following environment:

• Air temperature:
  • System on: 5 °C to 40 °C (41 °F to 104 °F); altitude: 0 to 950 m (3,117 ft); decrease the maximum system temperature by 1 °C for every 175-m increase in altitude above 950 m.
  • System off: 5 °C to 45 °C (41 °F to 113 °F)
  • Shipment: -40 °C to +60 °C (-40 °F to 140 °F) at up to 10,700 m (35,105 ft)
• Maximum altitude: 3,050 m (10,000 ft) at 5 °C to 28 °C (41 °F to 82 °F)
• Humidity:
  • System on: 8% to 85%, maximum dew point 24 °C, maximum rate of change 5 °C/hr
  • System off: 8% to 85%, maximum dew point 27 °C
• Design to ASHRAE Class A3, ambient of 36 °C to 40 °C (96.8 °F to 104 °F), with relaxed support:
  • Supports cloud-like workload with no performance degradation acceptable (Turbo-Off).
  • Under no circumstance can any combination of worst-case workload and configuration result in system shutdown or design exposure at 40 °C.
  • The worst-case workload (like Linpack, Turbo-On) might have performance degradation.
• Electrical:
  • 200 to 240 (nominal) V AC; 50 Hz or 60 Hz; 7.2 A
  • Input kilovolt-amperes (kVA) (approximately): 1.7 kVA
• BTU output (maximum): 5762 Btu/hr (1689 watts)
• Noise level:
  • 6.6 bels (operating)
  • 6.4 bels (idle)

The Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliances conform to the following regulations:

• AS/NZS CISPR 22, Class A (Australia/New Zealand)
• BSMI CNS 13438, Class A; CNS 14336 (Taiwan)
• CCC GB 4943.1, GB 17625.1, GB 9254 Class A (China)
• CE Mark (European Union)
• CISPR 22, Class A
• EAC (Russia)
• EN 55022, Class A
• EN 55024
• EN/IEC 61000-3-2
• EN/IEC 61000-3-3
• EN/IEC/CSA/UL 60950-1
• Energy Star 2.0
• FCC Part 15, Class A (United States)
• GS/TUV (Germany)
• ICES-003/NMB-03, Class A (Canada)
• MSIP (Korea)
• NOM-019 (Mexico)
• Reduction of Hazardous Substances (ROHS)
• TUV S (Argentina)
• VCCI, Class A (Japan)

The Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliances can be configured with a three-year or five-year hardware warranty and software support with standard call center support and various levels of coverage with a well-defined scope of services, including service hours, response time, term of service, and service agreement terms and conditions.

The Lenovo local support centers perform problem determination and resolution for hardware-related issues and escalate to Nutanix, on behalf of the customer, for software-related problem determination. Nutanix will contact the customer and will own the software-related problem resolution until closure.

Note: Lenovo warranty service coverage levels are region-specific. Not all warranty service levels are available in every region.

The following table explains warranty service definitions in more detail.

In general, the following Lenovo warranty service levels are available for the Converged HX Series appliances:

• Three or five years of 9x5 or 24x7 service coverage
• Parts delivered or technician installed parts from next business day to 4 or 2 hours
• Committed Service Repair

  Committed Service Repair (CSR) enhances the level of Warranty Service Upgrade or Post Warranty/Maintenance Service offering associated with the selected systems. Offerings vary and are available in select regions.

  • Priority handling to meet defined time frames to restore the failing machine to good working condition
  • 24x7x6 committed repair: Service performed 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, within 6 hours
• YourDrive YourData

  Lenovo’s YourDrive YourData service is a multi-drive retention offering that ensures your data is always under your control, regardless of the number of drives that are installed in your Lenovo server. In the unlikely event of a drive failure, you retain possession of your drive while Lenovo replaces the failed drive part. Your data stays safely on your premises, in your hands. The YourDrive YourData service can be purchased in convenient bundles with Lenovo warranty upgrades and extensions.

The Lenovo Converged HX7510 appliances include a three-year or five-year software support and subscription (matches the duration of the selected hardware warranty period) that entitles you to submit service requests to troubleshoot Nutanix software issues and receive code updates, including fixes, patches, and new software releases.

The Lenovo local support centers perform problem determination and resolution for hardware-related issues and escalate to Nutanix, on behalf of the customer, for software-related problem determination. Nutanix will contact the customer and will own the software-related problem resolution until closure.

Software support that is provided by Nutanix includes 24x7 phone and web coverage with the following target response times (priorities are assigned by Nutanix based on the impact on productivity):

• Priority 1 (Emergency: Productivity halted): 2 hours
• Priority 2 (Critical: Significant impact on productivity): 4 hours
• Priority 3 (Normal: Minimal impact on productivity): 8 hours (by next business day)

The following table lists the Ethernet LAN switches that are offered by Lenovo that can be used in Lenovo Converged HX Series solutions.

For more information, see the list of Product Guides in the Top-of-rack Switches category:
http://lenovopress.com/servers/options/switches

The following table lists the rack cabinets that are offered by Lenovo that can be used in Lenovo Converged HX Series solutions.

For more information, see the list of Product Guides in the Rack Cabinets category:
http://lenovopress.com/servers/options/racks

The following table lists the power distribution units (PDUs) that are offered by Lenovo that can be used in Lenovo Converged HX Series solutions.

For more information, see the list of Product Guides in the Power Distribution Units category:
http://lenovopress.com/servers/options/pdu

The following table lists the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units that are offered by Lenovo that can be used in Lenovo Converged HX Series solutions.

For more information, see the list of Product Guides in the Uninterruptible Power Supply Units category:
http://lenovopress.com/servers/options/ups

Lenovo Financial Services reinforces Lenovo’s commitment to deliver pioneering products and services that are recognized for their quality, excellence, and trustworthiness. Lenovo Financial Services offers financing solutions and services that complement your technology solution anywhere in the world.

We are dedicated to delivering a positive finance experience for customers like you who want to maximize your purchase power by obtaining the technology you need today, protect against technology obsolescence, and preserve your capital for other uses.

We work with businesses, non-profit organizations, governments and educational institutions to finance their entire technology solution. We focus on making it easy to do business with us. Our highly experienced team of finance professionals operates in a work culture that emphasizes the importance of providing outstanding customer service. Our systems, processes and flexible policies support our goal of providing customers with a positive experience.

We finance your entire solution. Unlike others, we allow you to bundle everything you need from hardware and software to service contracts, installation costs, training fees, and sales tax. If you decide weeks or months later to add to your solution, we can consolidate everything into a single invoice.

Our Premier Client services provide large accounts with special handling services to ensure these complex transactions are serviced properly. As a premier client, you have a dedicated finance specialist who manages your account through its life, from first invoice through asset return or purchase. This specialist develops an in-depth understanding of your invoice and payment requirements. For you, this dedication provides a high-quality, easy, and positive financing experience.

For your region specific offers please ask your Lenovo sales representative or your technology provider about the use of Lenovo Financial Services. For more information, see the following Lenovo website:
http://www.lenovofs.com

For more information, see these resources:

• Lenovo Converged HX Series appliances product page
  http://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/p/WMD00000036
• Lenovo Enterprise Solutions Configurator (LESC):
  http://lesc.lenovo.com
• System x and Cluster Solutions Configurator (x-config)
  http://lesc.lenovo.com/products/hardware/configurator/worldwide/bhui/asit/
• Nutanix documentation
  http://portal.nutanix.com/#/page/docs
• Lenovo Data Center Support
  http://datacentersupport.lenovo.com
• Lenovo Converged HX Series TCO Calculator
  http://lenovo-hx.esgcalculator.com
• Lenovo Hyperconverged Decision Tool
  http://www.lenovo.com/hxdecisiontool