Lenovo Delivers Enterprise Class Open-Source Storage for AI Workloads with Lenovo Ceph Storage Solutions

Our customers are on a continuous journey to extract meaningful and actionable insights from their data to help them transform their business and gain competitive advantages in the marketplace. Lenovo surveys 100s of CIOs annually to understand their priorities for driving their business. A top priority of CIOs is utilizing AI to gain better insights from their unique data to deliver better business outcomes.

Accelerating AI implementation requires addressing important data management challenges, including:

• Maintaining and addressing security risks.
• Managing the fast pace of data growth within IT budgets.
• Enabling data for hybrid cloud deployments.
• Integrating and managing diverse data types.

For large scale AI datasets, customers demand an open and efficient data management infrastructure that is secure, scalable, and efficient. Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) delivers end-to-end enterprise AI solutions for compute and storage, ranging from cloud to edge, all backed by Lenovo Services 24x7x365 support to deliver a comprehensive integrated suite of solutions over its lifecycle.

Lenovo is building on our leadership in AI and data management with our new Lenovo Ceph® Storage Solutions.

Figure 1. Lenovo ThinkSystem HS350X V3 and SR650 V3 Ready Nodes and IBM® Storage Ceph Software

Lenovo Ceph Storage Solutions combine the world’s most reliable and secure Lenovo ThinkSystem server Ready Nodes with IBM® Storage Ceph® software to deliver a comprehensive software-defined storage platform for AI Data Lakehouses, backup and archive, and Data as-a-service use cases for hybrid cloud environments.

The Lenovo ThinkSystem SR650 V3 All Flash Ready Nodes are ideal for use cases requiring higher performance, and the Lenovo ThinkSystem HS350X V3 Storage Dense Ready Nodes are ideal for use cases requiring cost-effective secondary storage capacity.

Lenovo works with the industry’s most trusted technology partners to deliver innovative solutions for our customers. For this solution, we partnered with IBM as they have the most robust enterprise-grade version of Ceph and the expertise to jointly deliver a software-defined solution with the right set of features and support that Lenovo customers expect.

Denis Kennelly, General Manager IBM Storage, had this to say about the Lenovo IBM partnership:

“As customers evolve to operationalize hybrid cloud and AI infrastructure, IBM Storage Ceph provides a state-of-the-art enterprise data storage platform that consolidates block, file and object storage on premises with a cloud-native experience. IBM is expanding our strategic partnership with Lenovo to deliver an IBM Storage Ceph solution built on Lenovo’s ThinkSystem server technology. This integration delivers a pre-configured solution that makes IBM Storage Ceph easier to deploy to reduce the risks normally associated with manual installations. This solution is available with 24/7 support to help customers protect their IBM Storage Ceph investments”.

The Lenovo validated enterprise-class storage solutions deliver secure, reliable, and scalable unified storage management that are designed to be easier to architect and deploy.

The new Lenovo Ceph Storage Solutions deliver:

• Validated Design: Easy to configure and order with proven performance and manageability.
• Turnkey Solution: Combines Lenovo ThinkSystem Server Ready Nodes with commercial IBM Storage Ceph software for an enterprise-class turnkey software-defined storage solution and support experience.
• Data Security: Data governance, protection, and server-side encryption to optimize data security and integrity.
• Cost-Effective: Reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with cost-effective software-defined storage deployments.
• Scalability: Non-disruptively scales as your data grows with scalability to 100s of petabytes.
• Enterprise Support: Advanced technical support available 24x7x365 to maximize uptime and provide an enterprise-class support experience.
• Comprehensive Storage Protocol Support: Unified file, block, and object storage support for your data management operations.
• Open Source: Enterprise-grade software-defined storage featuring an open-source development model with industry-standard protocol support.
• Use Cases: Ideal for AI Data Lakehouses, data analytics, backup and archive, cloud native applications using S3 API, and container management platforms.

For more information on the enterprise class Lenovo Ceph Storage Solutions, see these resources:

• Lenovo Software-Defined Storage home page
• ThinkSystem HS350X V3 Storage Server product guide
• ThinkSystem SR650 V3 Server product guide

Stuart McRae is the Executive Director and GM for Data Storage in the Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group, where he is responsible for product offering, strategy, and P&L. Stuart has deep industry experience and leadership roles in the storage industry and in delivering mission critical infrastructure.