Author
Published
29 Jun 2023Form Number
LP1766PDF size
9 pages, 387 KBBusiness 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, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), data science and Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning (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 HX V3 hyperconverged systems are equipped with 4th generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors and Nutanix software to address these customer trends and lower operations management. The systems unite public cloud simplicity and agility with private cloud performance and security. Whether on-premises or hybrid, you’ll ensure cost-effective business continuity through unified management, one-click operations, and AI-driven automation.
Lenovo ThinkAgile HX V3 systems based on Nutanix software 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.
- Double the density for virtual desktops, web and general compute workloads.
- Reduce operations and management and consolidate more applications with unified storage
- Accelerate Big Data and AI/ML applications with Intel embedded accelerators, DDR5, GPU and PCIe Gen 5 components
ThinkAgile HX V3 Systems
Lenovo ThinkAgile HX 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 and situations where the servers would excel include:
- ROBO (Remote Office / Branch Office)
- Virtual Desktops
- Databases and Data Warehouse
- SAP HANA
- ERP and CRM applications
- Data Science and AI
- Server Consolidation
ThinkAgile HX650 V3
ThinkAgile HX630 V3
Lenovo ThinkAgile HX V3 servers are available as Integrated Systems and Certified Nodes. Both are pre-validated and factory integrated systems with Lenovo hardware, Nutanix software, and deployment services. Integrated systems provide a quick and convenient path to implement a hyperconverged solution powered by Nutanix and a single point of contact provided by Lenovo for purchasing, deploying, and supporting the solution. HX Certified Nodes come with optional Nutanix software and services. All ThinkAgile HX V3 models support configurations for all flash and hybrid storage deployments to support a wide range of workload requirements.
Hypervisors supported are Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor based on KVM (AHV) and VMware ESXi 6.7 and 7.0. The table below shows all ThinkAgile HX models and supported configurations.
ThinkAgile HX V3 with 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors
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 generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors support more cores, DDR5 memory and accelerators, providing better performance than 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors. Here is the comparison between Intel Xeon 8480 56C (4th generation) vs Intel Xeon 8380 40C (3rd generation) processors.
- 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
Nutanix Cloud Platform with ThinkAgile HX V3
Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP) is a unified solution built on top of hyperconverged infrastructure to address hybrid cloud requirements and simplify operations for different workload scenarios. Lenovo ThinkAgile HX systems support NCP to provide reliable infrastructure as a foundation for a variety of use cases in hybrid cloud deployments. The platform comprises of the following key components which can be chosen based on the solution requirements:
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is a software defined infrastructure solution with compute, storage and networking for virtual machines and containers that can be deployed in private data centers on the hardware of your choice or in public clouds. The core platform is designed with AOS Storage, AHV, Karbon (Kubernetes Engine), Leap (Disaster Recovery) and Flow Network Security and Virtual Networking.
Nutanix Cloud Manager provides infrastructure management and operational support to build, manage and monitor deployments of virtual machines, containers and applications. It also delivers insights and automated remediation. The management stack includes Prism(Operations and Management), Calm (Self Service), Beam(Cost Governance) and Security Central.
Nutanix Unified Storage is software defined storage for multiple protocol volumes, files, and objects with Mine integrated backup.
Nutanix Virtual Desktop infrastructure(VDI) enables delivering virtual apps and desktops to users from public, private, and hybrid cloud infrastructure and supports Citrix, VMware Horizon and Nutanix Frame platforms.
Nutanix Database Service (NDB) is a database as a service solution that provides management and deployment across hybrid multicloud environments for database engines like PostgreSQL®, MySQL®, Microsoft® SQL Server, and Oracle® Database.
Figure 1. Nutanix Cloud Platform
Prism Central is the global control plane for Nutanix. Many of the Nutanix Cloud Platform components can be deployed as virtual machines from Prism Central. Nutanix NCP software editions are available on all Lenovo ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile HX models based on Nutanix Portfolio 2.0 (PnP) Licensing Model
Nutanix Licensing
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on Lenovo ThinkAgile HX V3
The evolution of microservices, containers and DevOps/DevSecOps and hybrid cloud deployment requires a first in class container orchestration platform and robust software defined infrastructure solution without compromising performance and security. Lenovo ThinkAgile HX with Intel 4th Gen Xeon Scalable Processors and Nutanix AHV provide a solid base to enable Red Hat OpenShift container application platform to develop and deploy modern applications by substantially hosting more containers per node. Red Hat OpenShift on Nutanix Cloud Platform is an enterprise grade unified solution stack to meet hybrid cloud deployments and accelerate cloud native applications at scale.
Nutanix AHV is a Red Hat certified hypervisor and Red Hat Enterprise Linux is certified on Nutanix AHV. Lenovo ThinkAgile HX systems are designed to outperform for a wide range of workloads, and with Lenovo Open Cloud Automation (LOCA) simplify deployment, provisioning and management of Red Hat OpenShift infrastructure. Refer to the Lenovo reference architecture RedHat OpenShift on Lenovo Servers for a detailed design.
Figure 2. Red Hat OpenShift on Lenovo ThinkAgile HX with Nutanix
Bill of Material - ThinkAgile HX650 V3 All Flash Configuration with Nutanix
Conclusion
ThinkAgile HX V3 integrated systems and certified nodes with Nutanix software 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 pre-validated and factory installed with Nutanix software which simplifies deployment and provides an integrated solution to address a wide range of use cases in hybrid cloud deployments - including Red Hat OpenShift. These next generation engineered hardware and software solutions from Lenovo, Intel and Nutanix are a one-stop scalable solution for modern application development with reduced TCO to achieve IT efficiency.
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 HX650 V3 and HX630 V3 servers, contact your Lenovo Business Partner or visit: https://www.lenovo.com/systems/solutions
References:
Lenovo ThinkAgile HX650 V3 Integrated System and Certified Node: https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/lp1668
Lenovo ThinkAgile HX630 V3 Integrated System and Certified Node: https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/lp1667
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®
ThinkAgile®
ThinkSystem®
The following terms are trademarks of other companies:
Intel® and Xeon® are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries.
Linux® is the trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.
Microsoft® and SQL Server® are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.
Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.
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