Lenovo embraces AMD for faster server computing

Lenovo has announced the Lenovo ThinkSystem SR635 and SR655 server platforms, two of the industry’s most powerful single-socket servers. As businesses are tasked with doing more with less, the new solutions provide the performance of a dual-socket server at the cost of a single-socket. 

These new additions to Lenovo’s expansive server portfolio are powered by next-generation AMD Epyc 7002 Series processors and were designed specifically to handle customers’ evolving, data-intensive workloads, such as video security, software-defined storage, and network intelligence, as well as support for virtualised and edge environments. The result is a solution that packs power along with efficiency for customers who place a premium on balancing throughput and security with easy scalability.

Doug Fisher, COO and Senior VP of Business Units, Lenovo Data Center Group, says: “Lenovo’s endless pursuit of innovations to accelerate our customers’ intelligent transformation has been paramount in our rise to become one of the fastest-growing data center OEMs in the world. Today Lenovo is expanding our AMD relationship with new, fully optimised solutions to help our joint customers address complex and data-intensive workloads, enabling them to do more with less while still providing uncompromised end-to-end security.”

The technological breakthroughs and increased capabilities of the new platforms are in line with recent governmental commitment to further implement fourth industrial revolution (4IR) technology across industry verticals. As South Africa continues to implement new, data- and processing-intensive technology, it is more necessary than ever that the backbone behind it be tailored for growing workloads.

Organisations are juggling business priorities with tight budgets. Lenovo’s new ThinkSystem SR server platforms allow customers to run more workloads on fewer servers, and offer up to 73 percent savings on potential software licensing, empowering users to accelerate emerging workloads more efficiently. Customers can also realise a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) by up to 46 percent2. Further supporting these advances in workload efficiency and TCO savings are the ThinkSystem SR635 and SR655 servers’ 16 world records, including two for energy efficiency3. The net result of all these enhancements is a better price for performance.

The Lenovo ThinkSystem SR provide more throughput, lower latency, and higher core density, as well as the largest NVMe drive capacity of any single-socket on the market. Beyond that, the new 2nd Gen AMD Epyc processor-based systems also provide a solid opportunity for the enablement of additional hyper-converged infrastructure solutions. This gives Lenovo the ability to offer customers SAN and other certified nodes and future ThinkAgile software-defined appliances for simple deployment, management, and scalability.

The new Lenovo ThinkSystem SR635 and SR655 solutions are now available through Lenovo sales representatives and channel partners across the globe.

For more information, please visit https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/data-center/single-socket-innovation.

1 Software licensing:

(a.) 9x x3650 M5 servers -18 sockets VMware vSphere 6 w/ 5 years support ($9,390.48 per socket) =$169,020

(b.) 5x SR655 servers – 5 sockets VMware vSphere 6 w/ 5 years support = $46,950 **software licensing costs taken from DCSC (https://dcsc.lenovo.com/#/) on 6.2.19

2 TCO Calculation: Retrieved 6.9.2019: https://amd.valuestoryapp.com/epyc/sales;  https://dcsc.lenovo.com/#/ | VMware vSphere 6 w/ 5 years support ($9,390.48 per socket) | 9x x3650 M5 servers (Xeon E5-2699 v3 2.3GHz) – 2 CPUs x 18 cores = 320 VMs | Total TCO: $389,908 | 5x SR655 (AMD EPYC 7002 @ 2.2GHz (225W) – 1 CPU x 64 cores = 320 VMs  | Total TCO: $179,822