There’s no doubt that data is a key driver in most organisations today. New types and sources of data such as social media, and new technologies like smart devices mean that more data is generated, shared and ultimately, kept than ever before. This is why data management has become so critical.
Storage, once considered to be a static background IT process, today plays a critical role in delivering on business success. In fact, says Ketan Jeevan, Lenovo Brand Manager at First Distribution, the right storage can deliver the optimal mix of performance and cost for different application tiers. This is particularly true, he says, with the introduction of not only flash storage, but also NVMe over Fabric, which is able to maximise the potential of flash.
“Innovations in solid state drive (SSD) technology have resulted in performance levels that are so high, they create bottlenecks with traditional interfaces. NVMe over Fabric reduces the storage bottleneck, delivering the speed and agility organisations need for business-critical cloud and on-premises applications. These could be anything from streaming to big data or high-performance computing,” he says.
“Bearing in mind that high performance is essential for many of today’s business applications, as enterprises strive to become more agile, flash storage is becoming increasingly vital. The high performance it can deliver is clear, but it can be expensive; however, it also delivers economic benefits including improved application performance, better total cost of ownership (TCO), reduced operational expenses, reduced power consumption, and reduced or deferred hardware capital expenses.”
A single system
Jeevan notes that the Lenovo ThinkSystem DM and DE series are the first products based on the strategic partnership and collaborative development between Lenovo and NetApp. He says the DM Series offers unified all-flash and hybrid storage arrays, as well as NetApp ON-TAP. DM now also supports Block, File and Object.
It can be made into Block only mode, with an option to turn on and off File and/or Object as necessary. The latter, he adds, provides the unified capability that enables companies to reduce their hardware requirements by deploying both storage area networks (SANs) and network attached storage (NAS) workloads in a single system.
“The DE Series, is a cost-effective business solution that optimises value versus performance. This series provides block-only all flash and hybrid storage and is designed for small to medium sized companies.
“In today’s competitive landscape, business success often depends on ensuring continuous access to critical data.
This is why the ThinkSystem DM Series delivers 99.9999% availability eliminating unexpected downtime. Most crucially, Lenovo validates its solutions end-to-end to ensure that storage, servers, and networking components function properly together.”
According to Greg Pothitos, Channel Manager for Lenovo’s Infrastructure Solutions Group, without storage, organisations would simply be unable to function as all their business information has to be kept somewhere.
“To this end, our technology solutions are designed to meet the needs of a vast array of environments like standard, cloud or hyperconverged, and are serviceable, uncomplicated, robust, hardy and, above all have been trialled and tested.
“First Distribution is our longest serving distributor and has the requisite experience and deep focus on our solutions and offerings, as well as a strong team that understands both the Lenovo product range and its culture; they live and breathe our ethos to their customer base. Moreover, they service a unique segment of our customers who are very project-focused and have proven that they can deliver the least complicated solution in the most effective manner. For this reason they are the ISG Distributor of the Year, and remain a proven force for us in the market,” he concludes.
Get in touch with our First Distribution Lenovo team lenovo.isg@firstdistribution.com.