Position at the market place and big challenges of operating a Premier Support desk relate to the current ThinkAgile product

1. Lenovo Data Centre Group (DCG)
Positionatthemarketplaceandthenextbigchallenges
PartI
Anatoliy Arkhipov
28 July 2020

2. You may know Lenovo as a
company that makes PCs. These
days, things are different. And we
believe that different is better.
The history view
Company have a proven
history of results with $43B
in revenue, hundreds of
millions of customers, and
four devices sold per
second.
Each of the founders was a member of the Institute of Computing
Technology attached to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The 200,000
yuan used as start-up capital was approved by Zēng Màocháo (曾 茂 朝).
Technology
lifecycle services
Software, virtualization,
cloud solutions
Servers, storage,
networking
Lenovo is the world's largest personal
computer vendor by unit sales as of March
2019. It also markets the ThinkPad and
ThinkBook business lines of notebook
computers; IdeaPad, Yoga, and Legion
consumer lines of notebook laptops; and the
IdeaCentre and ThinkCentre lines of desktops.
Lenovo story began more than three decades
ago with a team of eleven engineers in China.
Today, company is a diverse group of forward
thinkers and innovators in more than 180
markets, constantly reimagining technology to
make the world more interesting and to solve
tough global challenges.
Lenovo Group Limited, often shortened to
Lenovo, is a Hong Kong-based
multinational technology company
headquartered in Quarry Bay, and with
operational headquarters in Morrisville,
North Carolina and Beijing.
2

3. Center of excellence
Big data and analytics, cloud
computing and the internet of
things—major industry disruptions
are all happening in the data center.
With the number of connected
users rapidly multiplying, the
demands on data center
infrastructure are greater than ever
and the challenge of running an
efficient, responsive and flexible
data center is greater still.
Our complete server portfolio, able to deliver
ultimate performance and industry-leading
reliability today, is also flexible and adaptable
enough to meet your business objectives
tomorrow and beyond.
Rack and tower, mission critical, blade, dense,
converged or hyperscale—our ThinkSystem portfolio
covers every facet of data center foundation technology.
A history of building the future
With a25-year heritage of innovation in the data
center, Lenovo is committed to leadership in servers
and infrastructure.
1999 ► 1st 1U Tier 1rack server
2 0 0 5 ►
1st high availability
hot-swap memory
2010 ►
1st to decouple memory
from processor
2014 ►
1st integrated memory
channel flash storage
2015 ►
Lenovo XClarity reduces
deployment time by 75%
◄ 2 0 0 2
1st scalable
16-socket x86
◄ 1992
1st x86 servers enter the
marketplace
◄ 2 0 0 8
1st x86 server to break
1million tpmC
◄ 2012
1st warm water cooling
technology
◄ 2014
1st 45 °C
operating servers
◄ 2017
Launch of ThinkSystem
and ThinkAgile portfolios
In customer
satisfaction
# 1
x86
benchmark
world
records*
88
x86 server
reliability
# 1
3

4. Data is transforming the way we do
business the world over. Lenovo
believe that transformation in the
data center must do more than just
keep in step–it should be leading the
change.
That’s why we’re different in the
data center.
The recent enhancement of our data center
portfolio with the introduction of the
ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile brands delivers
customers the flexibility and agility required to
boldly embrace the future. .
Our focus is on working with customers,
offering trustworthy advice to help solve
their organization’s existing challenges
using innovative solutions crafted to
flex and adapt as requirements change.
Against the backdrop of afast-evolving
technology landscape, with acomplete
portfolio of hardware, software, solutions
and services, Lenovo offers choice
and flexibility like no other.
To achieve this, we’ve made strategic
partners of the world leaders in
virtualization, networking and the
software-defined data center. Lenovo’s
collaboration with partners yields
innovative solutions for our customers,
designed to help make managing your data
center simpler, faster and more efficient.
And even though we provide some of the
world’s leading data center technology, we have
no legacy business to protect, so we won’t lock
customers in to asingle technology or
solution. This means customers can always
benefit from best- of-breed solutions, both
traditional and disruptive, built on the
industry’s leading software and infrastructure.
The future-defined data center
StorageServers SolutionsNetworking
During Lenovo Transform 2.0,
Lenovo updated the strategy, way
of work, new products and
important new collaborations.
Lenovo already owns the PC and
tablet market; it’s pretty clear
that the server and data center
market should be next.
In April 2017 it was decided to set up the
Lenovo Datacenter Group, its own division
with its own management. A golden move.
Within two quarters, the division grew, and
profits rose sharply. In 2017, Lenovo DCG
achieved a turnover of $4.4 billion; in the
second quarter of 2018, the company
achieved a turnover of $1.9 billion. The
growth is clearly visible. According to
Lenovo, the current growth rate is 49
percent (year-on-year). Looking at the
growth in the Netherlands, Lenovo has
grown from a market share of 2.6 percent
to 12.9 percent, a growth of 552.8 percent.
4

5. Our commitment to
research and
development is not just
an internal
mantra, but extends to our
collaborations with
customers
and partners.
Big data, analytics
and insights
We have solutions to help manage data
volume, variety and velocity, turning raw data
into structured patterns to allow you to
assess trends, make comparisons to unlock
actionable data insights.
Visualization of data-driven decisions
enables business at the speed of now.
Optimized systems are validated to harness
the power of Apache™ Hadoop® and Apache™
Spark® with Cloudera®, Hortonworks®, IBM®
and MapR®.
Plus, as the #1SAP partner providing the
best solution for SAP HANA Lenovo
technology enables business and
transactional data to be analyzed and
modeled in real time, putting you ahead of
the trends in your industry.
Cloud solutions
We innovate at the systems level and
collaborate with best-in-class
technology partners including
Microsoft®, RedHat®, SUSE® and
VMware® Cloud to deliver turnkey cloud
solution infrastructure.
The result is end- to-end, secure,
high performance and reliable private
and hybrid cloud systems that
minimize the time taken to realize
value for your business or
organization.
Making the solutions that
make the difference
Lenovo enterprise solutions are different.
Our collaborative approach to innovation
leverages partnerships with global
technology leaders to transform our premium
technologies into solutions that quickly
deliver real value for customers. Whether
your competitive advantage will come from
virtualized infrastructure, workforce mobility,
high performance computing or big data
insights, our network of partners, scale,
reach and unrivalled capability to deliver
means our solutions lead the world.
High performance
computing ( H P C )
Already able to deliver ultra-dense
infrastructure for the largest workloads,
we’re driving new developments by
challenging existing paradigms. We are
collaborating with customers and
partners on HPC—investing in
innovation, research and development, so
we can help our customers capitalize on
emerging trends.
Virtualization
Producing incredible efficiencies in
enterprise environments, virtualization
can reduce capital expenditure and lower
total cost of ownership for vital
infrastructure. We work with the world’s
best in the field, including Citrix® and
VMware®, marrying best-in-class
architectures with our industry-leading
server technology.
D atabase
Data is increasing in both volume and
velocity. Our robust, powerful and
economical database solutions tackle
the rising cost of managing data, while
meeting the challenge of serving
reliable, responsive and rapid queries
for power users running Oracle® or
Microsoft®SQL.
Collaboration,
apps and workplace mobility
Lenovo solutions can enable your
workforce to collaborate, share
information and communicate from
any location, from any device with total
security. Virtual desktops and
business
apps solutions mean that core
operational capability can be seamlessly
delivered to employees around the globe
on arange of devices, even
accommodating
current trends in BYOD.
5

6. The total technology ecosystem
The same obsession with
innovation that drives
success in PCs extends
into passion for the future
defined data center.
NOW - Lenovo has evolved into one of the largest data center
technology vendors in the world.
Technology
lifecycle services
Software, virtualization,
cloud solutions
Servers, storage,
networking
Lenovo has evolved, with capability now
including servers, storage, networking and
software defined solutions. The combination of
this expertise, industry leading technology,
plus asuite of managed services covering the
full technology lifecycle, means Lenovo can
deliver a single-vendor total technology
ecosystem like no other.
One of the biggest differences is that Lenovo
has no legacy business or product set to
protect; which frees to bring to customers the
best solutions the industry has to offer
through the strategic partnerships it have
developed.
The march of progress means that
technology will never stop advancing and
connecting our lives and work in more
innovative ways. This is why Lenovo strive to
offer to customers innovative technology
solutions built to adapt and scale, designed to
evolve, capitalize on disruption and make the
most of tomorrow’s opportunities.
6

7. Products of DCG
Explore our full range of offerings including servers, storage, networking, and software
software-defined systems
Software-Defined Infrastructure
Next Generation IT
for software-defined infrastructure
Server, Storage, & Networking Solutions
for the future-defined data center
7

8. Lenovo ThinkAgile Alliances
Agility
• Agility of public cloud on most
reliable infrastructure
• Scale from single cluster
to multiple racks
• 80% faster Time to Value vs.
traditional setup
Simplicity
• Planning via Automation tools
• Deployed by industry experts
• Manage via intuitive management
tools
Transformative Experience
• Arrives pre integrated - connect to
network and power
• Onsite deployment and training
• ThinkAgile Advantage - Single
point of support for entire stack
By collaborating with proven industry partners, Lenovo provides solutions
using the best infrastructure and applications to address your workload needs.
8

9. 2
DATA CENTER GROUP
An experienced & innovative global team
100Servers sold
per hour
20M+Servers shipped –
#4Provider of servers
worldwide per
Gartner*
#1
Hyperconverged
revenue growth**
48.6%
Growth rate
Fastest growing
server vendor *
10,000
Service professionals
#1
On TOP500
supercomputing &
fastest growing HPC
company ***
6
Owned/controlled
manufacturing sites
9

10. Lenovo Data Centre Group (DCG)
challengesofoperatingaPremierSupportdesk
relatetothecurrentThinkAgileproduct
Part II
Anatoliy Arkhipov
28 July 2020

11. SOFTWARE-DEFINED DATA CENTRE
Explore our full range of ThinkAgile offerings including servers, storage,
networking, software-defined systems, and software
Designed For Future Defined Datacenter
11

12. ThinkAgile Portfolio
Nutanix-based HCI with
multi-hypervisor support
Market leader for HCI
 Positioned for clients
who have a mixed
hypervisor environment
ThinkAgile HX Series
Simplified, consistent hybrid
cloud with on premiseAzure
Stack cloud services
Extension of Azure to On-
Premise
 Positioned for clientswho
have implemented Azure
and want to extend to On
Prem Hybrid Cloud
 MX for clients who look for
WSSD certifed S2D as
TurnKey solution
ThinkAgile SX for
Microsoft Azure Stack
ThinkAgile MX
vSAN-based HCI tightly
integrated with vSphere
and vCenter
vSAN fastest growing
HCI Vendor
 Positioned for clients
who have preference
for vSphere hypervisor
and vCenter
management tools
ThinkAgile VX Series
12

13. 1
S O F T WAR E -DE FINE D
DATA C E N T R E
Engineered to simplify the user experience,
software-defined infrastructure is designed to
adapt to changing IT needs while reducing
complexity and cost created by silos in traditional IT.
Pre-integrated, pre-built and pre-tested offerings
accelerate application deployment and add robust
capabilities to your data centre faster.
S O F T WA R E - D E F I N E D I N F R A ST R U C T U R E
ThinkAgile C P Series
ThinkAgile CP Series is apremium, composable private cloud experience in your data centre. Growing
numbers of devices, applications andcustomers are testing the limits of traditional infrastructures.
ThinkAgile CP Series gives you greater scalability, responsiveness and cost- efficiency, in an automated
self-service cloud. Unlike hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), you canscale, compute andstore
resources independently. ThinkAgile CP Series is aturnkey private cloud system that’s easy to deploy,
manage and scale – with an application marketplace that puts the enterprise software you need at your
fingertips.
• Fully integrated, all-in-one turnkey cloud with curated integrated marketplace.
• End-users control their own virtual data centre and are empowered to consume their allocated
resources on-demand.
• Delivers the capabilities of apublic cloud at alower andpredictable cost.
• Central IT retains infrastructure resources while empowering users to innovate without
sacrificing security and compliance.
CP Series
13

14. 1
S O F T WAR E -DE FINE D
DATA C E N T R E
Any workload, any scale, all the time
Designed for easy deployment and manageability in
scale-out clusters, the Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series
combines Nutanix software with Lenovo’s highly
reliable and scalable servers. These appliances ship
fully integrated, tested, and configured so that you
can dramatically accelerate your time to value and
reduce your infrastructure maintenance.
S O F T WA R E - D E F I N E D I N F R A ST R U C T U R E
ThinkAgile H X Series
Blazing-fast workloads
Now enhanced with new second-generation Intel® processors for even faster performance, the
ThinkAgile HX portfolio is optimized for a broad set of virtualized workloads, including Remote
Office Branch Office; file, print, and email applications; analytics; and in-memory databases.
Lenovo platforms hold the highest number of performance world records and have ranked #1 in
reliability for six consecutive years. Leverage Lenovo’s best recipe, validated HX workload
Reference Architectures to accelerate your applications, at any scale, all the time.
• Simplify your IT
• IT infrastructures are complex, costly, and difficult to manage. Multiple generations and
varieties of servers and storage devices require IT departments to focus on maintenance
instead of new projects. Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series helps break down IT silos to
dramatically reduce server, storage, and virtualization complexity in data centers of all
sizes. Gain up to 2.8x storage TCO savings. Leverage one-click firmware updates,
planning, and insights, plus unique Lenovo/Nutanix Prism integration for simplified
management and operations
HX Series The reliable, scalable ThinkAgile HX building blocks ship from
Lenovo factories to enable up to 85% faster deployment. Rack
options, plus any combination of Lenovo servers, storage, and
networking devices, are available for maximum deployment
flexibility. Choose from a broad, versatile portfolio with flexible
processor, drive, and GPU options, optimized for your
workloads. Leverage Lenovo ThinkAgile Advantage for a
seamless end-to-end experience. Gain the freedom to focus on
your core business.
Increase your freedom
14

15. S O F T WAR E -DE FINE D DATA C E N T R E
T h i n k A g i l e H X S e r i e s
15

16. Features
Accelerate your business with the explosion of
data storage needs, Hyper-converged
Infrastructure (HCI) has seen tremendous growth.
Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), a feature of Windows
Server 2019 Datacenter Edition, provides HCI
capabilities through Azure Stack HCI. Lenovo
ThinkAgile MX Certified Nodes are HCI building
blocks with certified hardware and include
software and support via ThinkAgile advantage
support, allowing businesses to deploy solutions
quickly and easily. Lenovo makes lifecycle
management easy and complete system support is
covered by a single phone call. 16

17. Fully integrated hybrid
cloud solution
With a hyper-converged hybrid cloud solution
engineered and integrated by Lenovo and Microsoft,
you’re free to focus on cloud services—instead of
your infrastructure. Lenovo ThinkAgile SX for
Microsoft Azure Stack Hub is a turnkey, rack scale
solution optimized with a resilient, high-performing,
and secure software-defined infrastructure.
It’s the perfect platform to:
•Deliver Azure cloud services from the security of your
own data center
•Enable rapid development and iteration of applications
with on-premises deployment tools to help transform
your organization
•Unify application development across your entire hybrid
cloud environment
•Easily move applications and data across private and
public clouds
17

18. 1
TH INKAG ILE V X S E R I ES
The Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, powered by
VMware and built on Lenovo ThinkSystem
hardware, is ahyperconverged solution,
optimised to provide the simplest way
to bring anew VMware hyperconverged
environment online.
ThinkAgile VX Series comes in pre-validated
models targeting different workload scenarios
and offers full configure-to-order (CTO)
flexibility to meet any use-case. All systems
are available in either all-flash or hybrid
configurations.
ThinkAgile V X Appliance
The appliance comes preconfigured and
pretested, ready to deploy with ease and
speed. Versatile in its positioning, the VX
appliance can be used as infrastructure for
remote office/branch office (ROBO) and retail
stores as well as virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) and enterprise
applications.
Lenovo Models ThinkAgile VX2320
Target Workloads Small and medium-sized business
Form Factor 1U
Processor Up to 2 x Intel® Xeon® Platinum processors, up to165W
Memory
(TruDDR4 2666MHz)
Up to 3 T B in 24x slots, using128GB DIMMs
GPU None
Drive Bays 4 x 2.5”
Cache Drive Options 1or 2x 400GB, 800GB, 1600GB,1.92TB
Number of Disk Groups 1
HDD Options 3 x 8 T B , 10TB, 12T B
Hypervisor Supported VMware ESXi, vSAN pre-loaded
Systems Management
Lenovo XClarity (hardware)
Lenovo XClarity Integrator for VMware Center (software)
License Options
VMware vSphere 6 Standard, Enterprise or Enterprise Plus with Operations Management; VMware vSAN Standard,
Advanced, Enterprise; HCI Kit Advanced, HCI Kit Enterprise; 3- or 5-year support subscription
Warranty
3-year or 5-year customer replaceable unit and onsite service, next business day 9x5; optional service upgrades
Support ThinkAgile Advantage*
*Check for availability in your country
VX3320
Intel® Xeon®processor Scalable family
Tested, qualified, proven.
Typically installing a new hyper-converged infrastructure is very
much a do-it-yourself project. Customers must configure, test,
debug, optimize, validate, etc., on their own. However, the
ThinkAgile VX Series eliminates time and effort by completing those
steps before it leaves the factory. The VX series arrives at your
doorstep with everything you need to get started and with Lenovo
professional services to do the installation and configuration for
you.
ThinkAgile VX certified nodes
Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Certified Nodes eliminate basic issues that your
IT team should never have had to worry about in the first place. With
VX Certified Nodes you are guaranteed that all components of your
hyper-converged solution are certified right down to the firmware on
the drives and HBAs and you know that any firmware upgrades are not
going break compliance. VX Certified Nodes include fully validated and
integrated Lenovo hardware and firmware, certified with VMware
vSAN. vSAN SW licenses can be obtained separately.
18

19. Top Data Center Issues
Energy Efficiency
Data centers are
increasingly under
attack for their energy
consumption and
costly operations.
Monitoring
No doubt, day-to-day system
failures have underscored the
need for proactive response
to potential data center
uptime threats.
Capacity Planning
It’s no secret that many
data center managers
lack the systems visibility
to determine if their
facilities are truly running
at peak capacity.
Performance Management
One of the greatest
challenges facing data
center operators is
ensuring that power and
cooling is operating at its
highest energy efficiency.
Real-Time Reporting
Without a real-time reporting system, operators may find it a
challenge to make informed decisions.
Simply put: Manual readings taken weeks ago on a static report
are no longer valid for today’s complex data center operations -
where workloads, power consumption and temperatures vary
widely throughout the day, and from day to day.
19

20. The challenges of operating a Premier Support desk
Challenges or complex tasks that the support desk faces can be identify for next groups
Troubleshooting or
technical fault
Administrative difficulties The human factors
Depending on the specific situation, we use the
typical Troubleshooting solutions described at
the Lenovo support portal.
Ask customer ID (individual number), getting
from him a full description of the problem,
including tech service files, event logs, and
inventory numbers. Then we diagnose the
problem and make recommendations. If there is
no standard solution, we are going to contact
with the team and developers to fix it.
At the end, incident analyze how the issue was
solved, making it easier to handle a similar case
in future.
What to DO for resolve
Help to eliminate gaps in the training of
client’s specialists. Provide information
about new technologies, guides, short
webinars and online training courses.
Need to recommend using a Lenovo
knowledge-base data for the development
of client’s specialists to be ensure the
normal work of information systems and
data centers in the future.
Take a leaf from Disney’s book. Adopt the HEARD Technique.
HEARD means for team Hear, Empathize, Apologize, Resolve, and Diagnose. This
technique calms customers and helps provide the right solution.
• Having to serve multiple customers at the
same time
• Be limited in time to give a response to the
customer
• Some time having no solution to the
customer’s problem
• Customer service representative does not
have the right tools to help the customer
20
Services

21. Hardware Installation
Asset Recovery
Assessment Workshop
Services
Customers Who Obtained These
Services Also Considered…
Plan
Support
Optimize Health Checks
EO
L
Deploy
Fulfil
l
Lenovo’s Premier Support service is part of a comprehensive
portfolio of Lenovo Services that supports the entire suite of
enterprise products.
Premier Support
Take the complexity out of
supporting today’s demanding
data center environments
As your organization adopts increasingly complex technologies for
business-critical systems, it’s become more important—and more
challenging—to maintain smooth data center operations. But you
don’t have to facethese challenges alone.
Lenovo Premier Support delivers an exceptional service
experience with direct access to skilled technicians who are with
you every step of the way. Our industry-leading expertise helps
improve the stability of your data center, freeing you to focus on
business priorities.
21

22. Premier Support Coverage
Lenovo’s worldwide Premier Support service includes
24x7 support for select countries and languages, together with onsite support maintenance.
Premier Support service for the data center includes:
•A remote Premier Support consultant, who
will:
•Serve as a single point of contact for
comprehensive hardware and
software troubleshooting
•Own end-to-end case management and
problem resolution
•Manage Premier call escalation to address
high-severity issues or systemic problems
•Online case management, providing a web-
enabled form to submit a detailed technical
incident report directly to the Premier
Support team
•Collaborative third-party software support,
furnishing technology partners with diagnostic
information to speed problem resolution
On-demand remote system analysis,
*providing a report that analyzes the configuration of your current Lenovo data center product along with
recommendations for optimizing your product’s supported configuration
22
Services

23. Lenovo Knowledge-base and Knowledge Library
https://thinkagile.lenovofiles.com/help/index.jsp?topic=%2Fthinkagile_cp%2Fthinkagile_cp_introduction.html 23

24. Lenovo XClarity Administrator is acentralised resource management solution that is aimed at reducing complexity,
speeding response and enhancing the availability of Lenovo server systems and solutions.
Lenovo XClarity Administrator provides agent-free hardware management for our servers, storage, network switches and HX
Series
appliances.
Lenovo XClarity Administrator delivers Lenovo resources faster. With a simplified administration dashboard, the following
functions canbe easily achieved:
• Discovery of existing or new Lenovo System x rack servers and Flex System infrastructure.
• Inventory of the discovered endpoints is gathered, so the managed hardware inventory and its status canbe viewed-at-a-
glance.
• Monitoringalerts and events are visible via the XClarity Administrator Dashboard, the status bar, and the alerts and events
detail for the specific systems.
• Firmware updates canbe applied and activated for all managed endpoints.
• Firmware compliance canbe started to flag managed endpoints that do not comply with the defined firmware rules.
• Configuration management uses pattern-based configurations to quickly provision and re-provision asingle server or
multiple servers and compute nodes, all with asingle set of configuration settings.
• Deployment of operating systems and hypervisors to bare metal servers. VMwareESXi, Windows Server, SUSE
Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and Red Hat Linux images canbe imported and held in arepository for images. Up to
28 OS images canbe deployed concurrently.
Lenovo XClarity canbe integrated into external, higher level management, automation, and orchestration platforms through
open R EST application programming interfaces (APIs) with Lenovo XClarity Integrators.
L E N O V O X C L A R I T Y ADMINISTRATOR
24

25. Our commitment is to achieving our customers’
ambitions, not our own.
Deep strategic thinking and a collaborative,
consultative approach throughout the process
empowers us to help customers to build out
the capabilities that will enable them not only
to reach their goals, but also to consider
entirely new possibilities.
The past is there to inform the future, not
to define it. The truth is that the only
future is an agile one, and that’s afuture
we’re excited about.
That’s why we built our ThinkSystem and
ThinkAgile portfolios on change. Designed
to adapt, crafted to be flexible, they offer not
just better answers to today’s data center
challenges, but more
interesting questions about how they can
enable the data centers of the future.
This future demands systems that are
springboards to innovation, technology
that enables and invigorates fresh
thinking and solutions that scale to
deliver high performance without the
corresponding cost factors.
This future will ask alot of us. It will need
our commitment, not to stay the course, but
to break new ground. Not to step forward, but
to take leaps of faith into the
unknown. This future is thinking about
tomorrow and reinventing itself today
and so are we.
Because the future will be different. And we
will work tirelessly to ensure that different
truly is better.
Customers say different is #1
World class data centers are built on leading edge
technology, but relationships are built on trust. Lenovo is different
No legacy. That will be our legacy.
Machines in warranty
and maintenance
2.4
million
IT support
specialists
10k
In customer
satisfaction
# 1
Countries with Lenovo
Support teams
165
Lenovo has both the team
and the technology you can trust.
Intelligent, focused
change is what
attains true
advancement in the
relentless pursuit
of abetter way.
Contact centers
worldwide
51
25

26. THANKS
Questions & Answers
Different is better