Lenovo joins Nehalem club with new servers

published 2 July 2009

Lenovo has announced a new line of servers, which it's aiming at small and mid-sized businesses.

The ThinkServer TD200 and TD200x are tower servers, while the RD210 and RD220 are rack-mounted units.

All are based on Intel's Xeon 5500 series, the Nehalem' processors, which have been used in IT PRO award-winning servers from the likes of Dell.

The company said in a statement that the new systems have vastly increased memory and storage capabilities, and are up to three times faster than its previous systems, ensuring that they are suitable for use as virtualisation tools.

Lenovo also pushed the green angle, stating that the servers were its most energy efficient yet, with options for low-wattage processors, memory and hard drives.

It also said that certain models in the series are compliant with the new Energy Star for Servers 1.0 standard, which was ratified only in May this year delivering a 30 per cent reduction is energy usage over non-compliant machines.

This could help the company improve its environmental credentials, as a report today from Greenpeace saw Lenovo languishing in 16th place in a list of green computer companies.

Technical highlights include a connector for an embedded hypervisor and an Integrated Management Module (IMM), providing "always-on," out-of-band server management capabilities via a web browser. Up to 128GB of DDR3 memory is supported and up to 12 hard disks can be placed in the rack models 16 in the tower models.

If you want to get your hands on an RD210 or RD220, they are available immediately at prices for the RD610 starting from 1,620, and 2,290 for the RD220. In addition to the standard warranty, Lenovo is offering a 90-day trial of its ThinkPlus Priority Support. Pricing for the TD200x has yet to be announced.

Benny Har-Even is a twenty-year stalwart of technology journalism who is passionate about all areas of the industry, but telecoms and mobile and home entertainment are among his chief interests. He has written for many of the leading tech publications in the UK, such as PC Pro and Wired, and previously held the position of technology editor at ITPro before regularly contributing as a freelancer.

Known affectionately as a ‘geek’ to his friends, his passion has seen him land opportunities to speak about technology on BBC television broadcasts, as well as a number of speaking engagements at industry events.