Lenovo ThinkAgile Disaggregated Solution with Azure Local for Hybrid Cloud and AI

Today, as organizations accelerate into an AI-driven era, IT leaders are urgently seeking true hybrid cloud agility to capitalize on AI workloads while leveraging vast volumes of valuable information, stranded on existing storage. The goal is clear: deliver scalable, flexible, and future-ready infrastructure, without the complexity or cost of a complete overhaul. Organizations need solutions that unlock efficiency, reduce risk, and accelerate business outcomes.

Lenovo’s ThinkAgile MX Series, combined with ThinkSystem Storage Arrays, delivers a disaggregated infrastructure approach that empowers businesses to modernize at their own pace. This solution blends the agility of hyper-converged systems with the scalability of traditional architectures, enabling independent scaling of compute and storage while unlocking Azure Local capabilities, all without costly data migrations.

The complexity compelling IT leaders to rethink infrastructure is driven by two integrated pressures: the operational reality of AI and surging data volumes, alongside the growing complexity of hybrid environments.

The need for a change is immediate because AI is now operational, requiring infrastructure capable of delivering consistent, low-latency access to massive datasets for real-time inference and model training. This demand is increasingly difficult to meet as organizations face high annual data growth rates while simultaneously battling systems that strand valuable data and struggle to provide the higher performance and lower latency required by data-intensive AI workloads.

These data and AI challenges intersect with the expanding, complex challenge of managing hybrid environments (virtual machines, containers, and cloud services across edge and core data centers).

To address both the complexity of the hybrid landscape and the operational demands of AI, IT teams urgently require unified, automated management capabilities to cut overhead and accelerate innovation. Furthermore, the financial burden of shifting virtualization licensing models, which are adding cost and limiting flexibility, is actively pushing organizations to adopt open, disaggregated solutions.

The strategic goal is clear: reduce expenses and future-proof infrastructure specifically for both hybrid and emerging AI workloads.

Lenovo’s disaggregated infrastructure solution for Microsoft Azure Local, powered by ThinkAgile MX Series and ThinkSystem Storage Arrays, solves these challenges by enabling independent scaling of compute and storage. This modular, disaggregated approach supports both legacy and modern workloads, from virtual machines to containers and AI inferencing, without the rigid scaling and resource lock-in typical of monolithic systems.

As data volumes grow and budgets tighten, Lenovo helps customers maximize existing investments. By integrating existing ThinkSystem storage with Azure Local, businesses can activate hybrid-cloud and private-AI capabilities without migrating data, reducing cost, accelerating deployment, and maintaining compliance.

Rising virtualization licensing costs are prompting a shift towards open, flexible platforms. Lenovo’s solution enables customers to accelerate growth without disruption, giving organizations the freedom to choose, and change, without being locked into expensive software or requiring major infrastructure overhauls.

Managing complex infrastructure can be a drain on IT resources, especially in environments that span on-premises, cloud, and edge. Lenovo simplifies this with integration of Lenovo XClarity into centralized management tools like the Azure Portal and Windows Admin Center. These platforms provide unified visibility and control across the entire stack, streamlining provisioning, patching, and scaling. The result is reduced operational overhead, faster response times, and a more agile IT organization ready to support innovation.

Lenovo’s disaggregated solution with ThinkAgile MX Series powered by Microsoft Azure Local and ThinkSystem Storage Arrays is designed to help you turn everyday bottlenecks into breakthrough outcomes, unlocking hybrid-cloud and AI capabilities while leveraging existing investments.

• Unlock the Value of the Data You Already Have

  Many organizations sit on massive amounts of valuable data, spread across aging storage arrays in data centers and edge locations that remain underutilized. Migrating or replicating that data to hybrid cloud environments is costly and disruptive. With Lenovo’s solution, you can connect existing Lenovo ThinkSystem storage arrays to an Azure Local stack via ThinkAgile MX Series. By leveraging what you already own, you activate hybrid-cloud and private-AI capabilities faster while preserving past investments and avoiding a rip-and-replace overhaul.

• Modernize for AI-Ready Performance

  As AI workloads move from pilot to production, infrastructure performance becomes critical. Analytics teams and developers need high-speed, low-latency data access, but traditional systems can’t keep up. By integrating ThinkAgile MX with ThinkSystem DS/DM/DG Series storage arrays with NVMe storage and NVIDIA GPUs, organizations gain a purpose-built architecture for AI and data-intensive workloads. The result is faster insights, predictable performance, and a foundation ready for next-generation innovation.

• Expand Storage Capacity and Free Up Compute Power

  In many edge and on-prem environments, compute nodes are consumed by storage tasks like snapshots, deduplication, and compression, limiting their ability to handle AI inferencing or virtualization. With Lenovo’s disaggregated approach, ThinkSystem Storage Arrays take over data services, freeing resources on ThinkAgile MX nodes for compute. This increases core utilization, reduces costs, and improves performance across workloads.

• Simplify Virtualization and Reduce Costs

  Rising virtualization licensing costs are straining IT budgets and slowing modernization. Lenovo helps organizations transition from costly, rigid platforms to open, flexible architectures. Workloads can migrate gradually from VMware to Microsoft Azure Local on ThinkAgile MX using shared external storage with ThinkSystem storage arrays, allowing both environments to coexist during the transition. This seamless path reduces risk, cuts licensing and hardware costs, and prepares infrastructure for hybrid and AI growth.

To learn more, contact your Lenovo Sales Representative or Business Partner.

Brian Faleiro is the Worldwide Product Manager for Lenovo's ThinkAgile Converged Infrastructure Solutions for Lenovo's virtualization software ecosystem. Brian is responsible for showcasing the business value and differentiation of Lenovo’s hybrid cloud solutions with the software defined infrastructure and storage portfolio and contributing to the product lifecycle process.