Lenovo today announced, at the EDUCAUSE annual conference here, two new performance-optimized rack servers, the ThinkServer RD540 and ThinkServer RD640. Armed with the latest Intel Xeon E5 processors, these highly efficient and flexible servers are designed for easy integration into existing IT infrastructures that handle demanding virtualization, cloud and compute-intensive workloads.

Lenovo's ThinkServer RD540 and RD640 are an ideal choice for educational institutions seeking affordable options that pack a punch. The RD540 and RD640 provide the performance, security and reliability needed to support large university workloads and operations. When optionally equipped with Stoneware's webNetwork software, school administrators, students and staff can access data, applications and services from a multitude of devices and platforms using just a browser. With low price points, built-in redundancy, high reliability components and sophisticated cooling technology, the RD540 and RD640 deliver outstanding value for higher education.

With high-performance hardware RAID for data protection, web-enabled remote management and a powerful, easy-to-use management tool suite all offered as standard equipment, the budget-friendly RD540 and RD640 provide uncompromising performance ideal for scale-out data analytics, virtualized business workloads, and compute intensive applications.

The ThinkServer RD540 and RD640 rack servers come equipped with up to 320GB memory and the latest Intel Xeon E5-2600 v2 processors, which offer impressive compute power-per-watt -- up to 24 cores -- delivering 27 percent faster performance than the previous generation award winning RD servers. Both of these servers feature balanced design, flexible configurations and expansive I/O to handle demanding deployments. Powerful new network adapter, storage controller and sophisticated RAID choices increase scalability, reliability and input/output (I/O) capacity to handle growing requirements for large and compute intensive scale-out applications. RAID options from LSI include the ThinkServer RAID 710 adapter with 1GB write-back cache and available LSI MegaRAID CacheCade Pro 2.0 and Fastpath for outstanding reliability and IOPs performance.

Available in either 1U (RD540) or 2U (RD640) configurations with included tool-less rail kits for easy installation, both of these new ThinkServers are based on open standards and management protocols and fit seamlessly into any hybrid network environment. Innovative Lenovo Smart Grid power management technology uses Intel Node Manager to scale power management to the data center level, simultaneously managing as many as 1,000 server nodes. Smart Grid can be used at each level of the data center hierarchy-rack, row, room or group-to provide IT policy-based, power management that increases server utilization while significantly lowering energy consumption and operating costs.

The Lenovo ThinkServer RD540 server supports flexible configurations including 16TB hard disk capacity and new I/O expansion choices to handle business analytics, web server or virtualized workloads. The RD540 delivers highly efficient performance with 80PLUS Gold power supplies and low volt memory choices.

ThinkServer RD640 features enormous I/O expansion with an additional PCIe slot and 32TB storage capacity for the most demanding cloud, compute or virtualization deployments. The RD640 is ideal for business process or decision support deployments that demand rich performance, flexible system configurations and an optimized mix of storage and memory.

vSphere-Optimized, Network-Ready

Lenovo's ThinkServer rack servers offer a complete virtualization management solution, using VMware vSphere Operations Management and proven LenovoEMC storage technology. Certified with vSphere 5 with Operations Management, ThinkServer rack servers offer a best-in-class virtualization management tool suite from VMware to simplify virtual machine set-up, optimize VM performance, right-size virtual servers, increase consolidation ratios and lower operational costs. ThinkServer rack servers also support the latest plug-in tools for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SCE, providing easy deployment, alerting, and systems management for managed networks.

Convenient and Flexible Enterprise Service Offerings

Lenovo has a suite of service offerings that help education customers accurately budget for the level of protection required to keep educational institutions up and running. Optional upgraded services are available to help maximize uptime and productivity. Priority Level Support provides access to advanced level technicians, priority call routing, escalation management and basic software support.

Quotes:

"The new ThinkServer RD540 and RD640 perfectly illustrate our enterprise product group strategy," said Roy Guillen, vice president and general manager, Enterprise Product Group, Lenovo. "They feature enterprise-class performance and features, leverage proven technology from our partners like LSI and VMware and are available in many new countries globally. These workhorse servers are a winning choice for customers who demand no-compromise performance and open standards-based architecture to fit easily in their hybrid networks."

"Lenovo's ThinkServer RD540 and RD640 servers benefit from LSI's industry-proven I/O acceleration technologies and are perfect for database administrators who need enterprise-class servers that are powerful, highly scalable and designed to handle demanding workloads," said Tom Swinford, senior vice president and general manager, Datacenter Solutions Group, LSI. "Used within Lenovo's next-generation servers, LSI's portfolio of proven storage solutions provides a compelling combination of cutting-edge performance and unmatched reliability."

Pricing and Availability
The ThinkServer RD540 and RD640 are will be available beginning in November 4th starting at $1,599.