Lenovo Scalable Infrastructure (LeSI) SolutionsProduct Guide

Lenovo Scalable Infrastructure (LeSI) is a framework for designing, manufacturing, integrating and delivering data center solutions, with a focus on High Performance Computing (HPC), Technical Computing, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) environments.

Lenovo Scalable Infrastructure provides Best Recipe guides to warrant interoperability of hardware, software and firmware among a variety of Lenovo and third-party components.

Addressing specific needs in the data center, while also optimizing the solution design for application performance requires a significant level of effort and expertise. Customers need to choose the right hardware and software components, solve interoperability challenges across multiple vendors, and determine optimal firmware levels across the entire solution to ensure operational excellence, maximize performance, and drive best total cost of ownership.

LeSI reduces this burden on the customer by pre-testing and validating a large selection of Lenovo and third-party components, to create a “Best Recipe” of components and firmware levels that work seamlessly together as a solution. From this testing, customers can be confident that such a best practice solution will run optimally for their workloads, tailored to the client’s needs.

In addition to interoperability testing, LeSI hardware is pre-integrated, pre-cabled, pre-loaded with the best recipe and optionally an OS-image and tested at the rack level in manufacturing, to ensure a reliable delivery and minimize installation time in the customer data center.

With LeSI, customers can focus their efforts on maximizing their business value, instead of consuming valuable resources to design, optimize, install, and support the infrastructure required to meet business demands. Whether the need is for a small AI training solution, a mid-sized HPC cluster, or the world’s largest supercomputers, customers can take advantage of the decades of Lenovo experience, innovation, and expertise in solution deployment with Lenovo Scalable Infrastructure. LeSI delivers optimized IT solutions to the customer pre-integrated, pre-loaded, and tested, and ready to install, increasing time-to-value and reducing deployment risk.

LeSI solutions are based on:

• Industry-leading Lenovo ThinkSystem servers, storage and networking
• Open source and OEM software
• Best-of-breed third-party components especially in high performance networking and acceleration.

Lenovo thoroughly tests and optimizes all LeSI components for reliability, interoperability and maximum performance, so clients can quickly deploy the system and get to work achieving their business goals.

LeSI supports the following hardware components.

• Lenovo Servers
• Lenovo Ethernet Networking
• Lenovo Storage Expansion Units and Arrays
• Rack Cabinets and Options
• Other Lenovo ThinkSystem Hardware
• HPC Acceleration
• InfiniBand Interconnects
• Omni-Path Architecture

Servers

• ThinkSystem SD530

  The Lenovo ThinkSystem SD530 is an ultra-dense and economical two-socket server in a 0.5U rack form factor. With four SD530 server nodes installed in the ThinkSystem D2 enclosure, and the ability to cable and manage up to seven D2 enclosures as one asset, you have an ideal high-density 2U four-node (2U4N) platform for performance-oriented enterprise and cloud workloads. Leveraging Lenovo Neptune liquid cooling technology within a Thermal Transfer Module it is the only dense system in the market supporting up to 205W TDP processors at 35°C (ASHRAE A2) ambient temperature without throttling. For more information, see the SD530 product guide.

• ThinkSystem SD650

  The ThinkSystem SD650 direct water-cooled server is a flexible and simple data center solution for users of high performance and technical computing, grid deployments, analytics workloads, and large-scale cloud infrastructures. The direct-to-node water cooled solution based on Lenovo Neptune liquid cooling technology, with up to 95% cooling efficiency, is designed to operate by using either cold or warm water, up to 50°C (122°F). Chillers are not needed for most customers, meaning even greater savings and a lower total cost of ownership. For more information, see the SD650 product guide.

• ThinkSystem SR670

  The Lenovo ThinkSystem SR670 is a purpose-built two-socket 2U node for GPU-accelerated workloads. Supporting the latest NVIDIA GPUs and Intel Xeon Scalable processors, the SR670 has been designed for optimal performance for high-end computation required by both Artificial Intelligence and High Performance Computing workloads, as well as high-end Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). The SR670 is key for Lenovo’s AI strategy, delivering up to 4 double-wide or 8 single-wide GPUs per node and providing the optimal hardware for the LiCO platform. For more information, see the SR670 product guide.

• ThinkSystem SR630

  The Lenovo ThinkSystem SR630 is an ideal 2-socket 1U rack server for small businesses up to large enterprises that need industry-leading reliability, management, and security, as well as maximizing performance and flexibility for future growth. The SR630 server is designed to handle a wide range of workloads, such as databases, virtualization and cloud computing, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), infrastructure security, systems management, enterprise applications, collaboration/email, streaming media, web, and HPC. For more information, see the SR630 product guide.

• ThinkSystem SR650

  The Lenovo ThinkSystem SR650 is an ideal 2-socket 2U rack server for small businesses up to large enterprises that need industry-leading reliability, management, and security, as well as maximizing performance and flexibility for future growth. The SR650 server is designed to handle a wide range of workloads, such as databases, virtualization and cloud computing, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), enterprise applications, collaboration/email, and business analytics and big data. For more information, see the SR650 product guide.

• ThinkSystem SR655

  The Lenovo ThinkSystem SR655 is a 1-socket 2U server that features the new AMD EPYC 7002 family of processors. With up to 64 cores per processor and support for the new PCIe 4.0 standard for I/O, the SR655 offers the ultimate in single-socket server performance. For more information, see the SR655 product guide.

• ThinkSystem SR850

  The Lenovo ThinkSystem SR850 is a 4-socket 2U rack server with a streamlined rack design that is optimized for price and performance, with best-in-class flexibility and expandability. Models of the SR850 are powered by up to four Intel Xeon Processor Scalable Family processors, each with up to 28 cores, for an efficient 4-socket solution. The ThinkSystem SR850’s agile design provides rapid upgrades for processors and memory, and its large, flexible storage capacity helps to keep pace with data growth. For more information, see the SR850 product guide.

• ThinkSystem SR860

  The Lenovo ThinkSystem SR860 is a 4-socket server that features a 4U rack design with support for GPUs, and is optimized for price and performance and best-in-class expandability. Models of the SR860 are powered by up to four Intel Xeon Processor Scalable Family processors, each with up to 28 cores, for an efficient 4-socket solution. Using the same design as the 2U ThinkSystem SR850, the SR860’s agile design provides rapid upgrades for processors and memory, and its large, flexible storage capacity helps to keep pace with data growth. For more information, see the SR860 product guide.

  Note: The ThinkSystem SR860 server is only available in EMEA and China.

• ThinkSystem SR950

  The Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950 is Lenovo's flagship server, suitable for mission-critical applications that need the most processing power possible in a single server. The powerful 4U ThinkSystem SR950 can expand from two to as many as eight Intel Xeon Scalable Family processors. The modular design of SR950 speeds upgrades and servicing with easy front or rear access to all major subsystems that ensures maximum performance and maximum server uptime. For more information, see the SR950 product guide.

The following table lists all the Lenovo ThinkSystem Servers that are supported by LeSI.

Ethernet Networking

• 1 Gb Ethernet

  The 1 Gb Lenovo ThinkSystem networking series is ideal for next-generation data centers. They deliver unmatched price performance, along with benefits such as server-matched airflow, lower power consumption, low latency, and easy switch management. For more information on these products, see the relevant product guides:

  • Lenovo RackSwitch G8052 – 52-port layer 2/3 switch
  • Lenovo ThinkSystem NE0152T – 52-port layer 2/3 switch
  • Lenovo RackSwitch G7052 – 52-port layer 2 switch
  • Lenovo RackSwitch G7028 – 28-port layer 2 switch
• 10 Gb Ethernet

  The 10 Gb Lenovo RackSwitch series delivers exceptional performance, being both lossless and low latency. These switches also deliver excellent cost savings as you consider acquisition costs, energy costs, operational expenses, and ease of use and management. They have feature-rich design with key virtualization features, such as CEE/FCoE, high availability, and enterprise class Layer 2 and Layer 3 functionalities. For more information on these products, see the product guides:

  • Lenovo RackSwitch G8264 – 48x 10Gb SFP+ + 4x 40Gb QSFP+ ports
  • Lenovo RackSwitch G8124E – 24x 10Gb ports
  • Lenovo RackSwitch G8272 – 48x 10Gb SFP+ + 6x 40Gb QSFP+ ports
  • Lenovo RackSwitch G8296 – 86x 10Gb SFP+ + 10x 40Gb QSFP+ ports
  • Lenovo ThinkSystem NE1032 RackSwitch – 32 10Gb SFP+ ports
  • Lenovo ThinkSystem NE1032T RackSwitch – 24 10GBASE-T + 8 10Gbit SFP+ ports
  • Lenovo ThinkSystem NE1072T RackSwitch – 48 10GBASE-T + 6 40Gbit QSFP+ ports
• 25 Gb Ethernet

  The 25 Gb Lenovo RackSwitch series is designed for the data center and provides 25 Gb Ethernet connectivity with 100 Gb Ethernet upstream links. They are ideal for big data, cloud, and enterprise workload solutions. For more information on these products, see the product guides:

  • Lenovo ThinkSystem NE2572 RackSwitch – 48 25Gb SFP28 + 6 100Gb QSFP28 ports
• 40 Gb Ethernet

  The 40 Gb Lenovo RackSwitch is designed for the data center and provides speed and interoperability on a proven platform. Most clients regard this class as an ideal aggregation level for connecting multiple 10Gbit class switches. For more information on this product, see the product guide:

  • Lenovo RackSwitch G8332 – 32x 40Gb ports
• 100 Gb Ethernet

  The 100 Gb ThinkSystem Networking series uses 100 Gb QSFP28 and 40Gb QSFP+ Ethernet technology is and specifically designed for the data center. It is ideal for today’s big data, cloud, and enterprise workload solutions. It provides enterprise class Layer 2 and Layer 3 full featured switches that deliver line-rate, high-bandwidth switching, filtering, and traffic queuing without delaying data. Large data center-grade buffers help keep traffic moving, while the hot-swap redundant power supplies and fans (along with numerous high-availability features) help provide high availability for business sensitive traffic.

  • Lenovo ThinkSystem NE10032 RackSwitch – 32 100Gb QSFP28 ports

The following table summarizes all the Lenovo Ethernet Switches that are supported by LeSI.

The following table lists cables for the 10 GbE and 1 GbE RJ-45 adapters.

The following table lists cables for 10 GbE SFP+ port connection.

The following table lists cables for 25 GbE SFP28 port connection.

The following table lists cables for 100 GbE QSFP28 port connection.

The following table lists cables for 10 GbE SR SFP+, 25Gbit SR SFP28, 40Gb SR QSFP+ and 100Gb SR QSFP28 transceiver connections.

The following table lists all the Lenovo Storage Enclosures that are supported by LeSI.

In addition to the storage enclosures listed above, LeSI clusters may leverage the Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series Storage arrays.

• ThinkSystem DE Series All-Flash Storage Array

  The Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series All-Flash Storage Arrays are designed to provide performance, simplicity, capacity, security, and high availability for customers. These storage arrays deliver enterprise-class storage management capabilities with a wide choice of host connectivity options, flexible drive configurations, and enhanced data management features. For more information, see the DE Series All-Flash Storage Array datasheet.

• ThinkSystem DE Series Hybrid Storage Array

  The Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series Hybrid Storage Arrays are designed to provide high performance, simplicity, capacity security, and high availability for customers. These storage arrays deliver enterprise-class storage management capabilities in a performance-optimized system with a wide choice of host connectivity options, flexible drive configurations, and enhanced data management features. For more information, see the DE Series Hybrid Flash Array datasheet.

The following table lists the DE Series Storage arrays for use with LeSI. These arrays are not fully tested within LeSI and are not part of the Best Recipe but may be used in conjunction with LeSI deployments.

Rack Cabinets and Options

The Lenovo rack cabinets are industry-standard 19-inch server cabinets that are designed for high availability server environments. They are optimized to help maximize floor space, expedite installation, simplify cable management, and increase accessibility for improved serviceability. Lenovo also offers rack options, including accessories like a front extension to the rack, heat exchangers and console kits and a rear door heat exchanger, which is part of Lenovo Neptune liquid cooling technologies. These options improve thermal performance and simplify rack management.

The following table lists all the rack cabinets and rack options that are supported by LeSI.

* 1100mm racks with Rear Door Heat Exchangers and/or Rack Extension Kits require extended packaging (part of the AS9Y and B27C bill of materials). Additionally, 1200mm racks in any configuration also require extended packaging (part of the A1MP and A1MQ bill of materials).
** Rear Door Heat Exchangers are only available on Primary Racks.

Other Lenovo ThinkSystem hardware

While LeSI maintains a set of best recipe configurations guaranteeing interoperability, this does not mean that other ThinkSystem hardware is never used. Other Lenovo ThinkSystem hardware system and configurations outside of the defined stack may be compatible with LeSI, though not formally covered by interoperability warranty/support.

For example, the ThinkSystem DS6200 Storage Array may be part of the optimal hardware choices for a client use case. Because LeSI strives to offer the optimal data center solution to every client, a special bid process is available for incorporating these hardware options. For more information, please check with your Lenovo sales representative.

HPC Acceleration

LeSI solutions include GPUs from NVIDIA. For a summary of GPU features, see the Lenovo ThinkSystem GPU Summary.

Click the links below to read the product briefs from NVIDIA:

• NVIDIA Tesla Series
  • NVIDIA Tesla M10
  • NVIDIA Tesla M60
  • NVIDIA Tesla P100
  • NVIDIA Tesla P40
  • NVIDIA Tesla P4
  • NVIDIA Tesla V100
  • NVIDIA Tesla V100S
  • NVIDIA Tesla T4
• NVIDIA Quadro Series
  • NVIDIA Quadro P6000
  • NVIDIA Quadro P4000
  • NVIDIA Quadro P2200
  • NVIDIA Quadro P2000
  • NVIDIA Quadro P620
  • NVIDIA Quadro P600
  • NVIDIA Quadro RTX5000
  • NVIDIA Quadro RTX6000

The following table lists all the graphics processing units (GPU) acceleration options that are supported by LeSI.

InfiniBand Interconnects

• Mellanox SX6000 Series

  Built with Mellanox's latest SwitchX-2 InfiniBand switch device, these switches provide up to 56Gb/s full bidirectional bandwidth per port. These stand-alone switches are an ideal choice for top-of-rack leaf connectivity or for building small to medium sized clusters. They are designed to carry converged LAN and SAN traffic with the combination of assured bandwidth and granular Quality of Service (QoS). For more information, see the Mellanox product briefs below:

  • Mellanox SX6036 – 36-port Non-blocking Managed 56Gb InfiniBand/VPI SDN Switch
  • Mellanox SX6025 – 36-port Non-blocking Unmanaged 56Gb InfiniBand SDN Switch
• Mellanox SB7700 Series

  Built with Mellanox's latest Switch-IB InfiniBand switch device, these switches provide up to 100Gb/s full bidirectional bandwidth per port. These stand-alone switches are an ideal choice for top-of-rack leaf connectivity or for building small to medium sized clusters. They are designed to carry converged LAN and SAN traffic with the combination of assured bandwidth and granular Quality of Service (QoS). For more information, see the product briefs below:

  • Mellanox SB7700 – 36-port Non-blocking Managed EDR 100Gb/s InfiniBand Switch
  • Mellanox SB7790 – 36-port Non-blocking Externally-managed EDR 100Gb InfiniBand Switch
• Mellanox SB7800 Series

  Built with Mellanox’s Switch-IB 2 InfiniBand switch device, the SB7800 series provides up to 100Gb/s full bi-directional bandwidth per port. SB7800 smart network switch is designed to enable in-network computing through the Co-Design Scalable Hierarchical Aggregation Protocol (SHARP) technology. The Co-Design architecture enables the usage of all active data center devices to accelerate the communications frameworks using embedded hardware, resulting in significant applications performance improvements. For more information, see the product briefs below:

  • Mellanox SB7800 – 36-port Non-blocking Managed EDR 100Gb InfiniBand Smart Switch
  • Mellanox SB7890 – 36-port Non-blocking Externally-managed EDR 100Gb InfiniBand Smart Switch
• Mellanox QM8700 Series

  Built with Mellanox’s Quantum InfiniBand switch device, the QM8700 series provides up to 200Gb/s full bi-directional bandwidth per port. QM8700 is the world’s smartest network switch, designed to enable in-network computing through the Co-Design Scalable Hierarchical Aggregation Protocol (SHARP) technology. The Co-Design architecture enables the usage of all active data center devices to accelerate the communications frameworks using embedded hardware, result in order of magnitude applications performance improvements. For more information, see the product briefs below:

  • Mellanox QM8700 – 40-port Non-blocking Managed HDR 200Gb InfiniBand Smart Switch
  • Mellanox QM8790 – 40-port Non-blocking Externally-managed HDR 200Gb InfiniBand Smart Switch
• Mellanox InfiniBand Adapters

  Data centers, high scale storage systems and cloud computing require I/O services such as bandwidth, consolidation and unification, and flexibility. Mellanox InfiniBand adapters provide advanced levels of data center IT performance, efficiency and scalability. In addition, Mellanox's InfiniBand adapters support traffic consolidation and provides hardware acceleration for server virtualization as well as functioning as both InfiniBand and Ethernet adapters. For more information, see the product briefs below:

  • Mellanox ConnectX-4 EDR InfiniBand Adapter
  • Mellanox ConnectX-4 Lx Ethernet Adapter (EN only)
  • Mellanox ConnectX-5 EDR InfiniBand Adapter
  • Mellanox ConnectX-6 HDR InfiniBand Adapter

  Note: The ConnectX-5 EDR InfiniBand  adapters are only available to Lenovo customers through LeSI.

The following table lists all the InfiniBand switches that are supported by LeSI.

The following table lists all InfiniBand adapters that are supported by LeSI.

* Note: These InfiniBand Adapters are only available to Lenovo customers through LeSI.

The following table lists all the InfiniBand cables that are supported by LeSI.

The following table lists all the Omni-Path switches that are supported by LeSI.

The following table lists all Omni-Path adapters that are supported by LeSI.

The following table lists all the Omni-Path cables that are supported by LeSI.

LeSI best recipe supports the following software components. The licenses are usually packaged with 3 years subscription and/or support, with the option to extend the license coverage to 5 years. For additional years or renewal of existing licenses bought through Lenovo, please contact your Lenovo Services sales representative.

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

  SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) is a world-class, secure open source server operating system, built to power physical, virtual and cloud-based mission-critical workloads. The operating system further raises the bar in helping organizations to accelerate innovation, enhance system reliability, meet tough security requirements and adapt to new technologies. For more information, see the SLES Product Features web page.

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server

  Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (RHEL) is the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server orchestrates the hardware resources that fulfill the infrastructure’s basic computing requirements such as CPU, memory, networking, and storage. For more information, see the RHEL product datasheet.

• CentOS

  CentOS is a stable, predictable, manageable and reproducible Linux distribution derived from the sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. CentOS provides a development framework for cloud providers, the hosting community, and scientific data processing. For more information, see the CentOS Project Wiki.

• IBM Spectrum Scale

  IBM Spectrum Scale is a cluster file system that provides concurrent access to a single file system or a set of file systems from multiple nodes. The nodes can be SAN attached, network attached, a mixture of SAN and network attached, or in a shared nothing cluster configuration. This enables high performance access to this common set of data to support a scale-out solution or to provide a high availability platform. For more information, see the IBM Spectrum Scale product documentation.

• xCAT/Confluent

  xCAT enables users to easily manage large number of servers for any type of technical computing workload. xCAT is known for exceptional scaling, wide variety of supported hardware and operating systems, virtualization platforms, and complete “day 0” setup capabilities. Confluent is an easy-to-use adaptation of xCAT with faster performance for larger solutions. For more information, see the xCAT/Confluent product documentation.

• LiCO (Lenovo Intelligent Computing Orchestration)

  Lenovo Intelligent Computing Orchestration (LiCO) is a Lenovo-developed software solution that simplifies the management and use of distributed clusters for High Performance Computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) environments. LiCO provides a consolidated Graphical User Interface (GUI) for monitoring and usage of LeSI cluster resources, allowing you to easily run both HPC and AI workloads across a choice of Lenovo infrastructure, including both CPU and GPU solutions to suit varying application requirements. For more information, see the LiCO product guide.

• Excelero

  Excelero delivers low-latency distributed block storage for web-scale applications. NVMesh enables shared NVMe network and supports any local or distributed file systems. The solution features an intelligent management layer that abstracts underlying hardware with CPU offload, creates logical volumes with redundancy, and provides centralized intelligent management and monitoring. Applications can enjoy the latency, throughput, and IOPs of a local NVMe device with the convenience of centralized storage while avoiding proprietary hardware lock-in and reducing the overall storage TCO. For more information, see the Excelero NVMesh2 datasheet.

• WekaIO

  WekaIO Matrix software is the industry’s first flash-native parallel file system that delivers unmatched performance to the most demanding applications, scaling to massive amounts of data in a single namespace. The software-only solution is an NVMe-native, fully parallel and distributed, POSIX compliant file system designed from the ground up to scale to thousands of compute nodes and petabytes of storage. For more information, see the WekaIO file system datasheet.

• Starfish Storage

  Starfish Storage provides end-to-end lifecycle management and digital preservation for institutional file collections. Starfish provides visibility and control into your file systems by allowing users to catalog, manage, move, and report on all files from creation to publication. For more information, see the Starfish website.

The following table lists the HPC versions of all the commercial operating systems that are supported by LeSI. Other versions are supported as well, but would exceed the limits of documentation here.

The following table lists all Orchestration software available with LeSI. Only LiCO is being fully tested within LeSI and part of the Best Recipe. The other packages are supported by the respective software vendor for use within LeSI.

The following table lists the storage software available with LeSI. Only IBM Spectrum Scale file system software is being fully tested within LeSI and part of the Best Recipe. The other packages are supported by the respective software vendor for use within LeSI.

The following table lists the available Excelero block storage software.

For more information about Excelero NVMesh, see the datasheet:
https://www.excelero.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/NVMesh2-Data-Sheet.pdf

LeSI partners with premier cloud providers to provide optimal solutions to customers that need to expand their on-premise HPC capabilities with off-premise resources. Especially for customers that have seasonal HPC requirements that go above and beyond their baseline need, pairing an LeSI cluster with public cloud compute capacity provides a superior Lenovo solution. Customers can also use the cloud provider to prototype workloads on technology for which they may not have business justification.

LeSI partners with cloud provider, Nimbix Cloud. Nimbix is a leading provider of purpose-built cloud computing for machine learning, AI and HPC applications. Powered by JARVICE, the Nimbix Cloud provides high-performance software as a service, dramatically speeding up data processing; customers select their preferred containerized application and server configuration along with the required cluster capacity. Applications run on bare-metal servers within Nimbix’s data centers. The Nimbix cloud offers high speed, low latency network connectivity with no virtualization and access to more than 1,000 application workflows. For more information, see the Nimbix web site.

The following table lists the public cloud offerings available with LeSI. They are supported by the respective cloud vendor for use with LeSI.

For more information, see the Nimbix web site:
https://www.nimbix.net/platform/

Lenovo manufacturing implements a robust testing and integration program to insure LeSI components are fully operational when shipped out of the factory. In addition to the standard component level validation performed on all hardware components produced by Lenovo, LeSI performs rack level testing to verify that the LeSI cluster operates as a solution. The rack level testing and validation includes the following:

• Performing a power on test. Assure device power is present, with no error indicators
• Set up RAID (when required)
• Set up storage devices and verify functionality
• Validate network connectivity and functionality
• Verify functionality of server hardware, network infrastructure, and server configuration correctness. Verify health of components
• Configure all devices per Best Recipe software settings
• Perform stress testing of server CPU and memory via software and power cycling
• Data collection for quality records and test results

Lenovo experts can manage the physical installation of your pre-integrated Racks so you can quickly benefit from your investment. Working at a time convenient to you, the technician will unpack and inspect the systems at your site, install them, verify operation, and dispose of the packaging at the on-site location. Any LeSI solution is eligible for the basic Lenovo Hardware Installation services. Customized installation services are also available to meet the specific needs of the client.

Before installation, the client should complete the following steps to ensure the hardware will be successfully installed:

• Backing up the data being migrated to the new hardware
• Ensuring the new hardware is available and in place
• Designating a representative who is available and able to assist the technician with access, approvals,
• Providing a safe workspace and appropriate access for the technician

Once the client is ready, an expert technician will perform the installation. This process will include the following:

• Initial removal of the product from packaging, including inspection for damage
• Physical installation of the product per the associated documentation
• Physical connection and powering on of hardware
• Consolidation of all packaging materials and disposal within your site

Lenovo can also provide comprehensive onsite configuration of software, including integration and validation for operating systems and software, virtualization and high-availability configurations.

Besides shipping fully integrated into the Lenovo 1410 rack cabinet, LeSI solution gives clients the choice of  shipping with the Lenovo Client Site Integration Kit (7X74) which allows clients to have Lenovo or a business partner install the solution in a rack of their own choosing. The Lenovo Client Site Integration Kit enables clients to gain the interoperability warranty benefit of a LeSI solution while also providing them flexibility in custom-fitting into the client datacenter.

With the Lenovo Client Site Integration Kit, the LeSI solution is tested at the component level in Lenovo manufacturing, with integration and validation performed on-site by Lenovo Professional Services or the Business Partner. Servers, switches, and other items are packaged in individual boxes with a ship group box for cables, publications, labeling, and other rack documentation. Clients are required to purchase installation services from Lenovo or a business partner. The installation team will install the solution at the customer site into the customer provided rack per racking diagrams and point-to-point instructions.

Lenovo offers a wide variety of services designed to get the most value and effectiveness out of your data center.

Premium and Managed Services

For the relevant systems and workloads, consider advanced services, ranging from Enterprise Software Support over Premier System Support to Managed Services, managing your solution remotely or onsite:

• Lenovo Enterprise Software Support – provides comprehensive support covering server operating systems and business applications.
  • Single-source enterprise software support
  • Additional software support beyond hardware break/fix
  • Reduced problem resolution time and reduced cost to address technical issues and increased uptime
  • Unlimited access to technical experts, fast precise answers from highly trained call center experts
• Lenovo Premier Support Services – provides prioritized call queuing direct to Level 2 technicians for select systems.
  • Direct technician-to-technician access to ensure faster, accurate resolution
  • Live answer, with a simple process through a single point of contact
  • End-to-end ownership of cases for a seamless support experience
• Lenovo Managed Services for HPC Clusters – provides 24x7 monitoring and technical system management for your cluster. This can include:
  • Ongoing monitoring of infrastructure hardware and software
  • Resolving Lenovo hardware and solution-specific, software-related problems
  • Reporting support problems that require your attention
  • Facilitating quarterly meetings as part of ongoing administration and management
  • Designating a client-care manager to interface between you and Lenovo

For more information on Lenovo Services, please contact your Lenovo sales representative.

LeSI exclusive components (Machine Types 1410, 7X74, 0724, 0449; for the other Hardware and Software components configured within LeSI their respective warranty terms apply) have a three-year customer-replaceable unit (CRU) and onsite limited (for field-replaceable units [FRUs] only) warranty with standard call center support during normal business hours and 9x5 Next Business Day Parts Delivered.

Some countries might have different warranty terms and conditions than the standard warranty. This is due to local business practices or laws in the specific country. Local service teams can assist in explaining country-specific terms when needed. Examples of country-specific warranty terms are second or longer business day parts delivery or parts-only base warranty.

If warranty terms and conditions include onsite labor for repair or replacement of parts, Lenovo will dispatch a service technician to the customer site to perform the replacement. Onsite labor under base warranty is limited to labor for replacement of parts that have been determined to be field-replaceable units (FRUs). Parts that are determined to be customer-replaceable units (CRUs) do not include onsite labor under base warranty.

If warranty terms include parts-only base warranty, Lenovo is responsible for delivering only replacement parts that are under base warranty (including FRUs) that will be sent to a requested location for self-service. Parts-only service does not include a service technician being dispatched onsite. Parts must be changed at customer’s own cost and labor and defective parts must be returned following the instructions supplied with the spares parts.

Also available are Lenovo Services warranty maintenance upgrades and post-warranty maintenance agreements, with a predefined scope of services, including service hours, response time, term of service, and service agreement terms and conditions.

The following warranty upgrades are available:

The YourDrive YourData service allows you to retain possession and dispose of failed drives. Otherwise, failed drives under warranty must be returned to Lenovo upon replacement. This service is essential for organizations that must keep their data secure on premises, such as medical, retail, insurance, education, financial and technology sectors.

On top of their individual warranty and maintenance scope or support entitlement, LeSI offers solution-level interoperability support for HPC and AI configurations based on the above selection of Lenovo ThinkSystem portfolio and OEM components.

The extensive testing results in a “Best Recipe” release of software and firmware levels Lenovo warrants to work seamlessly together as a fully integrated data center solution instead of a collection of individual components at the time of implementation.

To see the latest Best Recipe for Scalable Infrastructure at Lenovo, see the following link:
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/HT505184#5

The Solution Support is engaged by opening a hardware ticket based on the LeSI Rack (Model 1410) or LeSI Client Site Integration Kit (Model 7X74). The LeSI Support team then will triage the issue and recommend next steps for you, including potentially to open tickets with other components of the solution.

For issues that require debugging beyond hardware and firmware (Driver, UEFI, IMM/XCC) an additional ticket will have to be opened with the software vendor (e.g. Lenovo SW Support or 3rd party SW vendor) to assist working towards a fix. The LeSI Support team will then work with the SW Support team in isolating root cause and fixing the defect

For more information about opening tickets, as well as the scope of support for different LeSI components, see the Lenovo Scalable Infrastructure Support Plan information page.

When a cluster ships the most recent Best Recipe is its compliant version, which is always defined exactly for that specific Scalable Infrastructure release and the cluster is delivered as a solution of that specific release. Using a Support call clients can request a review if their solution is also compatible with a newer Best Recipe release and if it is, are able to upgrade to that while maintaining solution interoperability support.

As long as a cluster (Model 1410, 7X74) is under Lenovo warranty or maintenance entitlement, full solution interoperability support will be provided for the original Best Recipes. Even when newer Best Recipes are available the previous Recipe will remain valid and supported.

Of course, any client is free to choose to not adhere to the Best Recipe and instead deploy different software and firmware versions or integrate other components that were not tested for interoperability. While Lenovo cannot warrant interoperability with those deviations from the tested scope, a client continues to receive full break & fix support for the components based on the individual warranty and maintenance entitlement of the components. This is comparable to the level of support clients will receive when not buying it as a LeSI solution, but building the solution from individual components – so-called “roll your own” (RYO).

In those cases, to minimize risk we suggest still staying as close as possible to the Best Recipe even when deviating. We also suggest when deviating first to test it on a small portion of the cluster and only roll it out completely if this test was stable.

For clients who need to upgrade the firmware or software of a component – for example due to OS entitlement support issues or Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) fixes – that is part of the best recipe, a support call should be placed on the 1410/7X74 rack and serial number. Lenovo product engineering will review the proposed changes, and advise the client on the viability of an upgrade path. If an upgrade can be supported and is performed, LeSI will note the change in the support records for the solution.

Lenovo Scalable Infrastructure does fully comply with ASHRAE class A2 specifications for the air-cooled data center, with ASHRAE class W4 for direct to node water cooling for the LeSI exclusive Lenovo ThinkSystem SD650.

Depending on the hardware configuration, some server models comply with ASHRAE class A3 and class A4 specifications, however the server performance might be impacted when the operating temperature is outside the ASHRAE A2 specifications. Please find more details in the product guides of the individual components.

• Air temperature:
  • Operating: ASHRAE Class A2: 10 °C - 35 °C (50 °F - 95 °F); for altitudes above 900 m (2,953 ft), decrease the maximum ambient temperature by 1 °C for every 300-m (984-ft) increase in altitude
  • Non-operating: 5 °C - 45 °C (41 °F - 113 °F)
  • Storage: -40 °C - +60 °C (-40 °F - 140 °F)
• Maximum altitude: 3,050 m (10,000 ft)
• Humidity:
  • Operating: ASHRAE Class A2: 8% - 80% (non-condensing); maximum dew point: 21 °C (70 °F)
  • Storage: 8% - 90% (non-condensing)
• Electrical:
  • 100 - 127 (nominal) V AC; 50 Hz / 60 Hz
  • 200 - 240 (nominal) V AC; 50 Hz / 60 Hz
  • 180 - 300 V DC (HVDC; supported in China only)

Lenovo Scalable Infrastructure adopts the conformity of its individual components to international standards, as minimum however

• UL/IEC / CSA C22.2 No. 60950-1
• United States FCC Part 15, Class A
• Canada ICES-003, Class A
• Europe CE Mark (EN55032 Class A, EN60950-1, EN55024, EN61000-3-2, EN61000-3-3)
• New Zealand/Australia CISPR 22, Class A
• Russia/GOST ME01; IEC-60950-1; GOST R 51318.22, 51317.3.2, and 51317.3.3
• Japan VCCI, Class A
• China CCC Class A
• CISPR 22, Class A

Please find more details on the regulatory compliance for the individual components in their respective product guides.

Lenovo Distributed Storage Solution for IBM Spectrum Scale (DSS-G) is a software-defined storage (SDS) solution for dense scalable file and object storage suitable for high-performance and data-intensive environments. Enterprises or organizations running HPC, Big Data or cloud workloads will benefit the most from the DSS-G implementation.

DSS-G combines the performance of the Lenovo ThinkSystem SR650 servers, Lenovo D1224 and D3284 storage enclosures, and industry leading IBM Spectrum Scale software to offer a high performance, scalable building block approach to modern storage needs.

For more information, see the DSS-G product guide.

These customers have already implemented LeSI solutions. Click the links to review the customer case studies.

• Barcelona Supercomputing Center

  Climate change. Energy security. Fighting disease. Air quality. To help scientists turn mountains of data into accurate models of our complex world, Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) has powered up a Lenovo supercomputer with Intel processors capable of performing trillions of computations per second.

• Mark III Systems

  The Artificial Intelligence AI revolution is here, and it has the power to transform everything from daily life to the production line. With support from the Lenovo AI Innovation Center and access to ThinkSystem servers, Mark III Systems is leading the way, helping its clients to harness the power of AI to improve manufacturing quality and efficiency.

• Umeå University

  Satisfying researchers’ appetite for bigger, better, faster computing resources is never easy. With its new Lenovo supercomputer, High Performance Computing Center North (HPC2N) at Umeå University can deliver on these demands – boosting performance fivefold to support innovative computational and data-intensive research.

• Leibniz Supercomputing Centre

  Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) wanted to remain a leading hub within the HPC community, which means providing compute resources that combine industry-leading performance and energy efficiency. The organization implemented its SuperMUC Phase 2 supercomputer based on 3,072 Lenovo NeXtScale nx360 M5 WCT compute nodes.

LeSI installation in the Barcelona Supercomputing Center

For more information, see these resources:

• LeSI product page:
  https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/data-center/servers/high-density/Lenovo-Scalable-Infrastructure/p/WMD00000276
• LeSI support page:
  https://datacentersupport.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht505184

• Lenovo DSS-G product page:
  https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/data-center/servers/high-density/Distributed-Storage-Solution-for-IBM-Spectrum-Scale/p/WMD00000275
• LiCO website:
  https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/data-center/software/Lenovo-Intelligent-Computing-Orchestration/p/WMD00000356
• Lenovo HPC website:
  https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/data-center/solutions/hpc/
• x-config configurator:
  https://lesc.lenovo.com/products/hardware/configurator/worldwide/bhui/asit/x-config.jnlp
• Best recipe index:
  https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/HT505184#5