Lenovo DX8200D Simplified Software-Defined Storage Adoption

Lenovo Enterprise Solutions, Pte Ltd announced a software-defined storage (SDS) appliance that leverages its server platform combined with storage virtualization software and multi-core optimizing Parallel I/O – SANsymphony from DataCore Software Corporation.

DX8200D models: Storage Virtualization (top) and ServerSAN (bottom)

This offering is the latest milestone in company’s effort to drive adoption of software-defined data center technology, which offers compelling customer benefits such as higher agility and simplicity, as well as better cost economics.

DX8200D front and rear

The firm plans to offer the DX8200D as a pre-integrated appliance, which promises to simplify deployment and reduce management expenses while providing a single point of support. The latest offering in company’s SDS portfolio, it enables data centers to rapidly deploy a turnkey solution that harnesses the capabilities of existing SAN arrays. It can optimize heterogeneous storage infrastructures, enabling them to scale as needs grow and easily replace older storage arrays. Through the centralized interface, the DX8200D provides data protection, replication, de-duplication, compression, and other enterprise storage capabilities at a much lower price point than traditional SAN arrays.

Built on firm’s System x3650 M5 server, which offers reliability and performance, the DX8200D is designed to deliver a high levels of response times, availability and utilization. The company will pre-test the appliances working with DataCore to reduce deployment risks and increase time-to-value. With Predictive Failure Analysis and a next-generation diagnostic panel to facilitate serviceability, the x3650 M5 server helps reduce downtime and costs. Firm’s Trusted Platform Assurance, a built-in set of security features and practices, protects the hardware and firmware.

The DX8200D takes isolated storage devices, sometimes spread between different locations, and places them under one common set of enterprise-wide services. It pools their collective resources, managing them centrally and uniformly despite the differences and incompatibilities among manufacturers, models and generations of equipment.

With these appliances, data centers can realize lower TCO, ^[1] with an up to 90% decrease in time spend on storage management and support tasks, up to a 75% reduction in storage costs and up to 100% reduction in storage-related downtime. With a 10-fold increase in performance, data centers also can realize higher availability of mission-critical data.

Finally, the DX8200D can centrally automate discovery, inventory tracking, real-time monitoring, configuration, fault detection, and alert handling over its lifecycle with company’s own XClarity software, a enterprise management tool.

Technical assistance is available 24/7 with the DX8200D appliance, and features a single point of contact for both hardware and software questions from company’s support organization – which is rated #1 for overall x86 server customer satisfaction.

“As an aggressive new player in this space, our cutting-edge SDS solution enables organizations to deploy their systems more quickly so they can reduce the time and resources required to manage their basic infrastructure. This in turn empowers our customers to focus on the business challenges of today, with a view to the future,” said Radhika Krishnan, executive director and GM, software-defined data center and networking, data center group, Lenovo. “This is in stark contrast to traditional storage offerings, from legacy vendors, which often-times require compromises in performance, availability, reliability and functionality- limiting the ability to scale and increasing CAPEX, power, cooling and footprint costs.“

“Lenovo’s powerful and reliable servers combined with DataCore’s parallel I/O processing software reset the standard for performance, cost-efficiency and seamless management across the diversity of storage and enterprise infrastructures,” said George Teixeira, president and CEO, DataCore. “The Lenovo DX8200D, powered by DataCore, makes it simple to not only get started with software-defined storage, but also to grow and future-proof one’s investments. This turnkey appliance deploys quickly and non-disruptively into any environment, delivering immediate savings and performance benefits.“

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^[1] https://www.techvalidate.com/product-research/DataCore-sansymphony-v