Top
Published
26 Jun 2023Form Number
LP1757PDF size
11 pages, 372 KBSubscribed to LP1757.
Thank you for your feedback.
Table of Contents
- Business Trends
- Lenovo Solution
- ThinkAgile VX V3 Systems
- ThinkAgile VX V3 with 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors
- 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors
- Performance Gain from 3rd Gen Intel Xeon SP
- Use Case: Virtual Desktop Performance with VMware Horizon and vSAN ESA
- VMware vSAN Express Storage Architecture Configuration
Business Trends
Accelerating Hybrid Cloud Adoption: The growth of technology, cloud and data-driven ecosystems bring the need for on-premise infrastructure to meet hybrid cloud requirements. Servers need to have virtualization and hybrid cloud capabilities – and be able to scale and operationalize quickly. Also, due to cost and operational factors a variety of workloads are being migrated back to on-premises infrastructure. This trend means businesses need faster servers and storage to achieve the performance and low latency required.
Infrastructure and Workloads Modernization: Many business-critical applications - database, VDI, data science and AI/ML workloads - need increased processing and data storage capabilities. Ever growing data and AI/ML workloads require processors with built-in acceleration and servers with high-speed memory, network adapters, drives and interconnects that are pre-tested and pre-validated engineered solution to reduce deployment complexities.
Lenovo Solution
Lenovo ThinkAgile VX V3 hyperconverged systems are equipped with 4th generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors and VMware vSAN™ 8 to address these customer trends and lower operations management. The new Intel processors offer up to 60 cores, up to 8TB memory (32x 4800 MHz DDR5 DIMMs), and support PCIe 5.0, NVMe and embedded accelerators for analytics and security.
ThinkAgile VX V3 systems support VMware’s new Extended Storage Architecture (ESA) with NVMe memory in addition to OSA (Original Storage Architecture) with all-flash or hybrid configurations. They also support NVIDIA BlueField-2 data processing units (DPUs) to offload CPU processing power to SmartNICs for improved workload performance.
Lenovo ThinkAgile VX V3 systems based on VMware vSAN provide the ideal cloud-ready foundation for critical applications like Database, Big Data and AI/ML solutions. They are Accelerated by Intel offerings that drive greater performance through Intel optimized enhancements.
Highlights
- Realize up to 50% better performance on workloads with double the number of cores in Lenovo servers equipped with 4th gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors than on similar servers equipped with Intel’s previous generation processors.
- Improve performance of critical applications, Big Data and AI/ML solutions with higher cores, embedded accelerators, GPU, DPU, DDR5 and PCIe Gen 5 components
- Achieve 4x higher performance, reduce TCO by up to 40% and reduce the storage footprint by half with new vSAN Express Storage Architecture in VMware vSAN 8
- Improve security and offloading support with NVIDIA Bluefied-2 DPU (data processing unit) cards (SmartNICs)
ThinkAgile VX V3 Systems
Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series V3 servers powered by 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors provide increased performance, bandwidth and speed than ThinkAgile V2 with 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. The 4th Gen processors are modernized to support more cores and performance and embedded accelerators.
Applications where the servers would excel include:
- Mission Critical applications
- SAP HANA and ERP applications
- CRM
- Business Intelligence (BI)
- Databases and Data Warehouse
- Analytics
- Virtual Desktops
- Artificial Intelligence
- Server Consolidation
- Virtualization
ThinkAgile VX650 V3
ThinkAgile VX630 V3
Lenovo ThinkAgile VX V3 servers are available as Integrated Systems and Certified Nodes. Both are factory integrated, pre-configured systems with Lenovo hardware, VMware software, and deployment services. Integrated systems provide a quick and convenient path to implement a hyperconverged solution powered by VMware vSAN and a single point of contact provided by Lenovo for purchasing, deploying, and supporting the solution. VX Certified Nodes come with optional VMware software and services.
ThinkAgile VX integrated systems can also be up and running quickly with a web-based deployment wizard. The installer can install and configure VMware ESXi, vCenter Server and Lenovo XClarity Integrator and either create or join a cluster.
ThinkAgile VX V3 with 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors
All ThinkAgile VX V3 models support vSAN All Flash and Hybrid deployment and VMware vSAN Original Storage Architecture and Express Storage Architecture. The vSphere Distributed Services Engine does not support GPU currently and VX V3 DPU systems are with NVIDIA vSAN ESA is with single storage tier and no cache drive or disk groups are required.
* These VX V3 SAP systems are being certified
4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors
All processors support the following configurations:
- 8 DDR5 memory channels at 2 DIMMs per channel. Many of the 4th Gen processors support a maximum speed of 4800MHz and low-end processors support 4000MHz-4400MHz
- Up to 4 UPI links between processors at 16 GT/s
- 80 PCIe 5.0 I/O lanes
- Embedded accelerators including Intel Data Streaming Accelerator (Intel DSA), QuickAssist Technology (Intel QAT), Intel Dynamic Load Balancer (Intel DLB) and Intel In-Memory Analytics Accelerator (Intel IAA)
Performance Gain from 3rd Gen Intel Xeon SP
4th Gen Intel Xeon processors support for more cores, DDR5 and accelerators and it provides better performance than 3rd Gen Intel Xeon processors. Here is the comparison between Intel Xeon 8480 56C vs Intel Xeon 8380 40C.
- Up to 40% increase in memory bandwidth
- Up to 50-60% increase in general compute
- Up to 30-50% increase in technical compute
- Up to 40% increase in web workloads
- Up to 45% increase in media workloads
- Up to 200-400% increase in AI inference performance
Use Case: Virtual Desktop Performance with VMware Horizon and vSAN ESA
A virtual desktop benchmark for knowledge worker profile on ThinkAgile VX650 V3 with 4th Gen Intel Xeon processors shown better virtual machine density and performance than 3rd Gen Intel Xeon processors. The benchmark details are given below.
4 Node ThinkAgile VX 650V3 Cluster
- 2 x Intel Xeon Platinum 8468 48C 2.1 GHz
- 32 x 64GB DDR5 4800 MHz
- 4 x 3.20TB NVMe SSD
- Broadcom 57504 25GbE SFP28 4-port OCP Ethernet Adapter
- VMware vSAN 8 Express Storage Architecture (ESA), RDMA Enabled/Disabled
- VMware ESXi, 8.0.1, 21495797
- Horizon 8.9.0 version 2303
VDI Benchmark
- Knowledge worker 3 VCPU, 2GB Memory and 60 GB disk
- 1500 users test with LoginEnterprise 5.1.2
- Persistent desktops, Roaming profile
- Horizon Instant Clones
Results
- The test with RDMA achieved VSIMax value 1425 and it provides ~356 virtual desktop per node at full capacity utilization. On an average ~270 virtual desktops can be hosted per node considering headroom for growth and failover scenarios.
- The test with disabling RDMA resulted ~5% less virtual desktops
- The test with 10GbE links (without RDMA) resulted ~25% less virtual desktops than 25GbE with RDMA
- The EUX score is above 8 and it shows the application response time is good from the start of the test and it starts declining after ~1000 users. The VSIMax is based on application response time threshold and though EUX score is dropping over a period, but it does not mean that application performance is degrading and EUX score above 6 is a good indicator and it proves 4th Gen Intel Xeon processors perform well.
- The application response time is ~30% better with VMware vSAN ESA and 4th Gen Intel Xeon processors than vSAN Original Storage Architecture (OSA) with 3rd Gen Intel Xeon processors with same speed.
Figure 1. VMware Horizon Virtual Desktop Performance
VMware vSAN Express Storage Architecture Configuration
vSAN ESA is single tier storage solution composed of NVMe drives to provide better performance.
- Minimum 4 drives are needed and supported up to 24 drives
- Minimum 25GbE connectivity is required and the cards should support RDMA (RoCE v2). It is recommended to use 100GbE as 25GbE can be saturated during high workload.
- RAID-1(mirroring) and RAID-5/6 (Erasure Coding) storage policies are supported as in vSAN OSA. RAID-5/6 provides space efficiency without compromising performance.
- The table below shows the list of NIC cards supported for ESA solution.
vSphere Data Processing Engine and NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPU Support
ThinkAgile VX V3 platforms support NVIDIA BlueField-2 data processing units (DPUs), which provide a hardware acceleration engine to offload networking and computing services. VMware vSphere 8 leverages DPUs to offload many of the management and network functions from the CPU and it is integrated with SDDC components. Lenovo XClarity supports the management of NVIDIA BlueField-2 and is integrated with VMware vCenter to upgrade and patch.
- Unified installation of ESXi and DPU and DPU management via vCenter and vLCM
- vSphere distributed switch offload
- NSX Overlay Offload with Enhanced Data Path (requires license)
- Improve zero-trust and infrastructure security
Lenovo XClarity also supports firmware upgrades for NVIDIA BlueField-2. ThinkAgile VX V3 BIOS settings are applied in factory and are available in the ThinkAgile VX Best Recipe.
- XClarity support deploy OS image to ARM system and configure UEFI settings and security
- DPU firmware and driver update will be available in recipe release cycle. Update can be done through vLCM (vSphere Lifecycle Manager) also
- Minimum ESXi 8.0u1 is required
- DPU ESXi DCUI/shell can be accessed through out of band serial console for troubleshooting
The following parts are available for VX650 V3 DPU systems:
Table 4. Network Interface Cards (NICs) supported with the ESA Solution
VMware vSAN Data Persistence Platform
VMware vSAN DPp supports adding third party Kubernetes operators, storage classes and vCenter services to provide object storage for containers and integrate with VMware Cloud Foundation with VMware Tanzu. . It enables running stateful services and it is supported on both vSAN Shared Nothing Architecture (SNA) and vSAN Direct configurations. The complete lifecycle management and maintenance operations are integrated and it provides seamless experience to run third party Kubernetes services.
Software Support
ThinkAgile VX V3 systems come with an option to buy the following software from Lenovo:
- VMware vSAN: Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, Enterprise Plus, ROBO or Desktop
- VMware vCenter Server: Foundation or Standard
- VMware vSphere: Standard, Enterprise Plus or ROBO
- HCI Kit: Essentials, Standard, Advanced, Enterprise or ROBO
- VMware Horizon: Standard, Advanced or Enterprise
- VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF): Basic, Standard, Advanced, Enterprise or for VDI
- VMware Tanzu Basic
- VMware NSX-T
Bill of Material
Conclusion
ThinkAgile VX V3 Integrated systems and certified nodes with VMware vSAN 8 and Intel Xeon 4th Gen Scalable Processors are a perfect fit for mission critical applications and provide higher consolidation for different workloads. ThinkAgile Systems are prevalidated and factory installed with VMware vSphere and vSphere Distributed Engine which simplifies deployment, offloads networking functions and enables applications to address latency and security issues seamlessly. These next generation engineered hardware and software solutions from Lenovo, Intel, VMware and NVIDIA are a one-stop scalable solution for modern application development and hybrid cloud scenarios with reduced TCO.
Accelerated by Intel
To deliver the best experience possible, Lenovo and Intel have optimized this solution to leverage Intel capabilities like processor accelerators not available in other systems. Accelerated by Intel means enhanced performance to help you achieve new innovations and insight that can give your company an edge.
Why Lenovo
Lenovo is a US$70 billion revenue Fortune Global 500 company serving customers in 180 markets around the world. Focused on a bold vision to deliver smarter technology for all, we are developing world-changing technologies that power (through devices and infrastructure) and empower (through solutions, services and software) millions of customers every day.
For More Information
To learn more about Lenovo workload solutions on ThinkAgile VX650 V3 and VX630 V3 servers, contact your Lenovo Business Partner or visit: https://www.lenovo.com/systems/solutions
References:
Lenovo ThinkAgile VX650 V3 Integrated System and Certified Node: https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/lp1673
Lenovo ThinkAgile VX630 V3 Integrated System and Certified Node: https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/lp1672
Trademarks
Lenovo and the Lenovo logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo in the United States, other countries, or both. A current list of Lenovo trademarks is available on the Web at https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/legal/copytrade/.
The following terms are trademarks of Lenovo in the United States, other countries, or both:
Lenovo®
AnyBay®
ThinkAgile®
ThinkSystem®
XClarity®
The following terms are trademarks of other companies:
Intel® and Xeon® are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries.
Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.
Configure and Buy
Please select a locale
Full Change History
Course Detail
Employees Only Content
The content in this document with a is only visible to employees who are logged in. Logon using your Lenovo ITcode and password via Lenovo single-signon (SSO).
The author of the document has determined that this content is classified as Lenovo Internal and should not be normally be made available to people who are not employees or contractors. This includes partners, customers, and competitors. The reasons may vary and you should reach out to the authors of the document for clarification, if needed. Be cautious about sharing this content with others as it may contain sensitive information.
Any visitor to the Lenovo Press web site who is not logged on will not be able to see this employee-only content. This content is excluded from search engine indexes and will not appear in any search results.
For all users, including logged-in employees, this employee-only content does not appear in the PDF version of this document.
This functionality is cookie based. The web site will normally remember your login state between browser sessions, however, if you clear cookies at the end of a session or work in an Incognito/Private browser window, then you will need to log in each time.
If you have any questions about this feature of the Lenovo Press web, please email David Watts at dwatts@lenovo.com.
