Lenovo Debuts Servers for Cost-Conscious Businesses

Lenovo's updated line of ThinkServers offers cost-conscious businesses expanded memory and are equipped for virtualization. Lenovo also is touting the line's power-saving features.

Computer maker Lenovo announced its latest line of servers, the ThinkServer TD200 and TD200x tower servers as well as the RD210 and RD220 rack servers, all aimed at small to medium-size businesses. The new servers come with several choices of Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors and expanded memory and storage. The ThinkServers are also equipped for virtualization and several power-saving features the company said would help SMBs cut their energy usage.

Equipped with the latest Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors, the upgraded ThinkServers are up to three times faster than Lenovo's predecessors. High-speed DDR3 memory (up to 128GB) and scalable, the ThinkServers' dual processor servers offer increased storage capacity with up to 12 hard drive bays in the rack models and up to 16 in the tower models.

The latest ThinkServers also come with an onboard connector for an embedded hypervisor (a control program enabling two operating systems to share common computing) and Lenovo supports a variety of virtualization solutions from Microsoft, Novell, VMware and Red Hat. The company said with the servers' expanded memory and storage capacity, small businesses could consolidate several legacy servers onto a single new ThinkServer, improving efficiency while saving on hardware costs and energy usage.

The RD210 and RD220 are available immediately, and TD200 and TD200x will be available starting July 2009. The RD210, RD220 and TD200x are available worldwide through business partners and Lenovo sales representatives. The TD200 is available through Lenovo sales representatives for special bid. Pricing for the RD210 starts at approximately $1,699 and $2,199 for the RD220. The TD200x starts around $2,699.

Zane Adam, Microsoft's senior director of virtualization and management, server and tools business, said Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Center management suite running on Lenovo ThinkServers offers customers a solution that can help them be more efficient, lower operational costs and optimize power consumption. "This combination empowers our customers to optimize their IT operations with tools that are familiar and easier to use," he said.

Lenovo also is touting the servers' energy-saving features. The ThinkServer TD200, TD200x, RD210 and RD220 feature low wattage processor and memory options, and small form factor hard drives. Select models are compliant with Energy Star for Servers 1.0, finalized in May 2009, which the company said provides a 30 percent reduction in power usage compared with other x86 servers. 

The new ThinkServers come with the Integrated Management Module (IMM), which provides "always-on," out-of-band server management capabilities via a Web interface. IMM, allows users to remotely access and manage their servers from anywhere even in the event of a server crash. Select models come with IMM Premium, giving users full control of the ThinkServer (including the mouse, keyboard and video) from remote locations, as well as the ability to connect local drives remotely to the ThinkServer through virtual media.

"Our second generation of ThinkServers makes giant leaps in both performance and usability for small and mid-sized businesses, while offering new virtualization and energy efficient features leading to a substantially lower cost of ownership," said Lenovo's executive director of enterprise systems, software and peripherals Tom Tobul. "Lenovo ThinkServers are designed as turnkey solutions to help our customers smoothly scale up and easily manage their server environment."