(Image: Broadcom Inc.)

By Jens Söldner and David Marshall

At Broadcom's "VMware Explore US 2024" event, server manufacturer Lenovo introduced a server series optimized for VMware's flagship product line, "VMware Cloud Foundation" (VCF). The Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series with VMware Cloud Foundation is a co-engineered solution designed to simplify deployment of private cloud environments.

In the development of the newly introduced "Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series with VMware Cloud Foundation," both companies collaborated in a co-engineering process, optimizing the servers in multiple ways for the easy setup of an on-premises VMware Cloud. Customers who use the offer based on the "ThinkAgile VX650" server series receive the servers pre-configured for VMware VCF directly from the factory, enabling fast and easy setup of VMware-based private clouds. Lenovo Professional Services provides both onsite and remote deployment options to accelerate implementation and time-to-value. And Lenovo's Professional Service and Premier Support serve as the central contact point for all support inquiries.

The solution features streamlined lifecycle management through integrations between VMware tools like vSphere Lifecycle Manager and Lenovo's XClarity management software.

The ThinkAgile VX Series leverages the latest Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC processors to deliver high performance. It supports new DDR5 memory (DDR5 5600 MHz) for increased bandwidth, PCIe Gen 5 interfaces for faster connectivity, and allows integration of GPUs and Data Processing Units (DPUs) to accelerate specialized workloads.

On the storage side, VMware's storage service vSAN is already included in VCF, and the servers support VMware's new "vSAN Express Storage Architecture" (ESA) as well as vSAN's original operating mode "Original Storage Architecture" in all-flash and hybrid combinations (flash and spinning disks). Depending on the configuration, customers can use the vSAN functions, such as deduplication, compression, and encryption for their storage services, which are already licensed through VCF.

A key innovation in the new ThinkAgile VX Series is Lenovo's introduction of dual DPU support, an industry first developed in close collaboration with VMware. The ThinkAgile VX650 V3 model can be configured with two NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPUs, providing either doubled network throughput or redundancy for failover. This helps accelerate VMware NSX network functions by offloading firewall processing and other security services to the DPUs.

If customers wish to use the DPUs supported since version 8 of VMware's hypervisor vSphere, this is possible with certain server types from Lenovo's ThinkAgile VX650 V3 series. The use of DPUs introduces an architectural innovation in on-premises data centers that public cloud providers like AWS (AWS Nitro) have been using for some time. Here, the operating system core of the hypervisor is offloaded to the ARM-based CPUs in the DPUs (originating from NVIDIA's acquisition of Mellanox), which not only relieves the Intel/AMD-based CPUs of the host but also enhances security.

Additionally, firewall functions (VMware NSX, VMware vDefend) can be processed directly in the DPU. However, early experiences with the operation of vSphere/VCF with DPUs show that installation and operational tasks such as performing firmware updates or reinstalling servers or moving them to other clusters become significantly more complex once DPUs are involved, as multiple ESXi instances run simultaneously on a DPU-accelerated server. Due to the novelty of the feature and the slightly increased complexity, initial administrative issues had to be managed.

To address this frequently encountered issue in practice, Lenovo has come up with a solution and, as a world first, introduced dual DPU operation in their ThinkAgile VX series servers, developed in collaboration with VMware's Cloud Foundation team. This allows for the deployment of two NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPUs in the servers. Customers with demanding application workloads can benefit from either doubled network throughput or, perhaps more importantly, redundancy in the event of a failover, should one of the DPUs fail, since the DPUs are also used for network traffic and represent a critical resource. For this purpose, dual-DPU systems can be configured with an active-standby setup, where the standby DPU takes over in case of a failure.

In an interview with VMblog, Neeraj Kuppam, General Manager of the Software Defined Infrastructure Business Unit at Lenovo, emphasized: "Companies are currently heavily investing in hybrid AI architectures to run generative AI and large language models. To do this, they need to solve technical challenges related to network acceleration and security functions while also considering the often conflicting requirements of scalability in the compute and network fields. Lenovo helps customers accelerate their VMware NSX-based network stack by offloading firewall processing to the dual NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPUs, which can now be better managed in Lenovo ThinkAgile VX series servers."

The dual DPU capability provides several key benefits:

• Improved performance: Offloading network and security processing to dedicated DPUs frees up CPU resources for applications and VMs.
• Enhanced security: DPUs can act as a hardware root of trust and enable confidential computing capabilities.
• Greater flexibility: Administrators can choose between maximum throughput or high availability configurations.
• Future-proofing: The DPU architecture allows for easier upgrades as network and security requirements evolve.

Lenovo has optimized the solution for a wide range of use cases beyond just AI/ML workloads. The ThinkAgile VX Series is well-suited for:

• Private cloud deployments
• Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)
• Database and analytics workloads
• DevOps and container environments
• Edge computing scenarios

Target industries include financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and others requiring high-performance, flexible infrastructure to support digital transformation initiatives.

The solution also helps address key IT challenges many organizations face today:

• Simplifying hybrid cloud deployments
• Improving infrastructure agility and scalability
• Enhancing security and compliance capabilities
• Optimizing application performance
• Reducing overall IT complexity and costs

The ThinkAgile VX Series with VMware Cloud Foundation provides customers with a powerful on-premises cloud platform optimized for modern applications. And the joint engineering efforts between VMware and Lenovo have resulted in unique capabilities like dual DPU support that will help mutual customers accelerate their digital transformation journeys.

By providing an integrated, turnkey solution optimized for VMware environments, Lenovo aims to simplify hybrid cloud deployments and accelerate customers' digital transformation initiatives. The dual DPU capability in particular provides a unique differentiator to support next-generation AI, analytics and other data-intensive workloads.

The ThinkAgile VX Series with VMware Cloud Foundation is available now through Lenovo sales representatives and channel partners. Customers can choose from a range of pre-configured models or work with Lenovo to design custom configurations tailored to their specific requirements.

As organizations continue to grapple with digital transformation, data growth, and the need for greater agility, solutions like the ThinkAgile VX Series will play an increasingly critical role in modernizing IT infrastructure. With its innovative dual DPU support and deep VMware integration, Lenovo has positioned itself as a leader in next-generation data center solutions optimized for the AI era.