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Lenovo and Nimble partner for data center management

Lenovo and Nimble Storage have announced a partnership that will allow Lenovo and its authorized partners to sell Nimble’s all-flash array and predictive analytics storage capabilities.

The first offering to come from this partnership is a converged infrastructure (CI) solution called ThinkAgile CX Series made up of Lenovo compute and networking resources, and Nimble storage. It will be available starting October 28. The ThinkAgile CX Series, like similar CI solutions, is pre-validated and pre-tested and installed with pre-configured server, storage, and network capabilities.

Nimble Storage, a hybrid storage array vendor, brings two key factors to the table: the first being its foray into flash array storage, and the second being its predictive analytics. “What we’ve found is that while flash and faster performance can address some of the issues that customers encounter in their infrastructure, that is only half the problem, and that is where our predictive analytics comes in,” said Matt Miller, director of solutions marketing at Nimble, over the phone with CDN.

Predictive analytics allows Nimble vision into what’s happening across the infrastructure, and be able to predict and prevent issues that happen before the customer even knows it is happening. Having a predictive infrastructure stack can diagnose issues up and down the compute networking and storage layers, as well as the virtualization layer, which is something Nimble brings to the table with our InfoSight predictive analytics platform. That will be heavily featured and leveraged in the new ThinkAgile CX Series,” Miller said.

Additionally, Lenovo will integrate its XClarity infrastructure management software with Nimble InfoSight to help automate support by using predictive analytics.

While unable to provide a comment to CDN, David Lincoln, executive director and general manager of server, storage, and solutions business unit at Lenovo’s data center business group said in a statement, “This strategic relationship with Nimble enables us to deliver a state of the art all flash offering, further extending the industry’s best customer experience by leveraging the predictive analytics platform, InfoSight, all while providing a lower TCO. Through this new alliance, we are able to deliver a continuous integration of hardware, software, and analytics support, establishing the means to develop the next generation all flash data center and drive strategic value for our customers.”