Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) has seen rapid market adoption in recent years, as organisations seek to accelerate digital transformation and leverage technology with high availability, flexibility and scalability. Paragon Micro UK works in partnership with Lenovo and Microsoft to help businesses take advantage of the opportunities HCI offers, and deliver certified turnkey solutions that are unbeatable on cost and performance.

HCI converges the 3 tiers of traditional infrastructure (compute, storage, and networking) into a single virtualised pool of resources with centralised management providing high performance, stability and availability. Each node in the system is a building block that is simple to scale – just add another node as your workload or storage requirements grow. Azure Stack HCI, a host operating system from Microsoft, is Microsoft’s HCI solution for customers who wish to run workloads on-premises and extend easily to Microsoft Azure for hybrid capabilities such as back-up, site recovery, storage, cloud-based monitoring and more.

If you want to get more out of your IT budget, we offer the most cost-effective HCI deployments on the market. The combination of Lenovo’s reliable hardware, the latest Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors, and Microsoft Azure Stack HCI gives organisations of all sizes access to the benefits of HCI.

Your business needs to deliver IT computing power, services, and resources that are flexible, scalable and cost effective, all at the same time. The implementation of such an environment usually requires high capital investments while also facing difficulties of seamlessly migrating workloads between the on-premises environment and the cloud. Lenovo TruScale Hybrid Cloud with Microsoft Azure Stack HCI is designed and engineered to overcome these challenges, enabling your business to adopt hybrid cloud computing and meet technical requirements with the flexibility of a scalable pay-as-you-go model.

Lenovo TruScale Hybrid Cloud with Microsoft Azure Stack HCI is a hyperconverged infrastructure cluster solution that hosts virtualised workloads and their storage in a hybrid environment that combines the security of on-premises infrastructure with cloud services, providing you with:

• The ability to scale out on-premises or in public cloud as your business requirements change.
• A familiar Hyper-V standardised architecture leveraging legacy environments and allowing your team to utilise existing virtualisation and storage skills.
• 24/7 support and managed services for virtualisation and infrastructure management, enabling a seamless customer experience.
• A fully integrated approach to give organisations of all sizes lower costs and greater efficiency.

If you are looking to increase the agility of your IT infrastructure and avoid large CapEx outlays, Lenovo TruScale Hybrid Cloud with Microsoft Azure Stack HCI is a flexible and fully managed solution that delivers a cloud experience with on-prem control, compliance, and security.

Lenovo ThinkAgile MX are turnkey, Microsoft-certified HCI solutions that integrate ThinkSystem servers with Windows Server 2019 Datacenter Edition licenses. These solutions are designed to help your organisation reduce costs and simplify IT management, modernise ageing hardware and outdated operating systems, and run SQL workloads in a more effective way. With only one software license required, various support options, and validated configurations to meet a range of needs, ThinkAgile MX takes the cost efficiency of HCI to the next level.

Deploy highly available, highly scalable HCI using software-defined Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) on the versatile Lenovo ThinkSystem SR650 platform. Fully integrated with Azure Stack HCI, the SR650-based MX Certified Node is a 2U enclosure with vast storage and memory capacity plus the versatility to handle the full spectrum of mid-range workloads.

• Pay-as-you-grow storage: scale non-disruptively from 2 to 16 nodes, and up to 3PB raw capacity, with S2D distributed architecture.
• Superior performance: with up to two 2nd-generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors and up to 3TB memory with Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory.
• Workload versatility: ThinkSystem SR650 is designed to handle database, virtualisation, cloud computing, virtual desktop (VDI), enterprise applications, big data, analytics and more.

• Remote/branch office and Edge computing
• Virtual desktop infrastructure for remote working
• Virtualise Microsoft SQL Server for high performance and scalability
• Scale-out storage with Storage Spaces Direct
• Containerised applications with automated deployment, scaling and management
• Enterprise-class virtualisation with shielded VMs for maximum security

Meet the challenges of Edge and Remote Office computing - constrained space, heightened security risks and harsh environments - with a new class of Edge servers that deliver all the features of Azure Stack HCI. ThinkAgile MX1021 meets the need for HCI everywhere - even hot, dusty and vibration-prone factory floors and site trailers. With highly cost-effective 8 core Windows Server Datacenter Edition licensing, it’s ideal for small businesses and enterprises.

• Edge, remote office or SMB: Fits any space, any budget, and countless use cases.
• One license: Software-defined storage and networking, Microsoft Hyper-V and Windows Admin Centre are included in Windows Server Datacenter edition - no additional licenses needed.
• Perfect combination: Lenovo reliability in small, inhospitable spaces with 0-55°C. Co-engineered with Microsoft and certified for Azure Stack HCI.
• Compact form factor: Deploy the half-width, short-depth, 1U server on a shelf, hung on a shelf, or in a rack.
• High performance: Powered by Intel® Xeon® D series processors with 8 to 16 cores, up to 256GB of RAM and 16TB solid-state storage with NVMe SSDs.
• Designed for Edge: Supports the NVIDIA® Tesla T4 for workloads such as Edge inferencing and AI.

If you want to improve cash flow, simplify IT operations, and modernise your infrastructure with hybrid cloud and HCI, discover the benefits of Lenovo ThinkAgile MX as a Service (MXaaS).

• Cloud-like economics on premises – Pay one affordable monthly bill for a turnkey data centre and edge computing solution.
• Familiar hybrid cloud HCI – Deploy and run Windows and Linux VMs in the data centre or at the edge, and extend to the cloud with Microsoft Azure services.
• A single point of premium support – Significantly reduce your IT management burden.
• Software license savings – Windows Server Datacentre Edition, which provides unlimited Windows Server containers, is included.
• End-to-end sustainability – Lenovo Asset Recovery Services help customers meet environmental goals with certified processing for end-of-life hardware.

With the leading features of Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, the top-rated reliability of Lenovo servers, and the agility of MXaaS, you can meet a wide range of needs in one solution.