Lenovo revamps storage for AI

Hardware giant Lenovo said its latest storage refresh is the largest in its history with 21 artificial intelligence-optimised ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile models introduced.

They span what Lenovo claims is the industry-first liquid-cooled hyper converged infrastructire, AI starter kits, full-stack turnkey software-defined infrastructure, enhanced security and management via XClarity, and sustainability-focused designs delivering significant energy savings and performance gains.

Lenovo’s aims to transform legacy operations for AI workloads at scale.

Leading the lineup is the ThinkAgile V4 series industry-first liquid-cooled hyperconverged infrastructure appliance.

This leverages Lenovo Neptune liquid cooling to deliver up to 25 per cent energy savings compared to previous generations.

“The opportunity is for enterprises to deploy AI to accelerate their innovation and to show a solid ROI for that investment in AI,” Stuart McRae, Lenovo general manager of data storage said.

For organisations embarking on AI, Lenovo’s new AI Starter Kits for its Hybrid AI Platform offer pre-configured infrastructures validated for retrieval-augmented generation and scale-out deployments.

The ThinkAgile SDI V4 Series delivers full-stack turnkey solutions for large language model inferencing workloads, simplifying deployment and accelerating time to value.

Converged ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile hybrid-cloud solutions now allow independent scaling of compute and storage, reducing software licensing costs by up to 40 per cent.

Lenovo has bolstered cyber resilience with AI-powered autonomous ransomware protection on its ThinkSystem DG and DM arrays, using machine learning to detect and mitigate attacks proactively.

All new solutions integrate Lenovo XClarity systems management software, unifying security, encryption, compliance and operations across the refreshed portfolio.

Among the ThinkSystem Storage Arrays, Lenovo claims up to three-times faster performance with lower power draw, enabled by high-performance SSD flash and architecture optimisations.

By emphasising efficiency in design and cooling, the refresh aligns with enterprise sustainability goals while lowering total cost of ownership.

In the Australia-New Zealand region, AI spending is expected to quadruple in 2025, making solutions that deliver efficiency and performance critical, according to Sumir Bhatia, president of Asia Pacific Infrastructure Solutions Group said.

Despite that, Lenovo's CIO Playbook suggests that return on investment concerns remains a key barrier to adoption of the technology.