Australian IT infrastructure provider CMTG has upgraded its private cloud platform with Lenovo servers powered by AMD processors, as the company looks to improve virtual desktop performance and prepare its infrastructure for artificial intelligence workloads.
Perth-based CMTG deployed Lenovo ThinkSystem SR675 V3 servers equipped with AMD EPYC 9475F processors, replacing infrastructure that was approaching the end of its service life.
Founded in 1998, CMTG provides data storage, application hosting, private cloud systems and IT support to small and medium-sized businesses in Australia. Its managed private cloud supports virtual machines, backups and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).
The company’s existing environment was built on Lenovo servers with VMware and Citrix virtualization technologies. CMTG said competition from services such as Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop was among the factors behind its decision to refresh the platform.
“We want to make sure we’re ahead of the game and keep our tech up to date with the very latest and most powerful chips, to give our customers a secure, high-performing, and reliable landing space for their workloads for their efficiency and competitive advantage,” said Carl Filpo, managing director of CMTG.
CMTG said it evaluated several hardware and processor options before choosing the Lenovo ThinkSystem SR675 V3 and AMD EPYC 9475F combination, particularly for graphics-intensive workloads.
The company also deployed Lenovo XClarity Pro infrastructure management software to automate parts of the deployment and migration process. According to CMTG, the migration was completed overnight without disrupting customer operations.
“Lenovo helped us a lot during the entire process. They are the most responsive vendor we work with, and the XClarity management tools are useful, easy to deploy, and effective in providing crucial insight into our infrastructure,” said Stephen Doney, client and vendor relationship manager at CMTG.
CMTG said the upgraded infrastructure has allowed it to provide virtual desktops at a lower cost while improving performance.
For customers running computer-aided design applications through its VDI platform, the higher clock speeds of the AMD EPYC processors are intended to improve graphics-intensive workloads on devices that would not normally have the hardware required to run them locally.
In benchmarks using Citrix Windows 11 VDI, CMTG said the system reached 60 frames per second, the upper limit supported by the Citrix platform.
The company also reported faster application execution following the migration, including SQL Server reports that it said were running up to three times faster. CMTG said the additional computing capacity could also allow it to operate its cloud environment with fewer infrastructure resources.
“Moving to Lenovo ThinkSystem SR675 V3 servers powered by AMD EPYC processors is night and day as far as performance is concerned, both for us and our customers. The morning after we completed the switch over, we had customers calling us to ask: ‘what did you do? Our applications are so fast!’ with one customer saying that one particular report has gone from taking several minutes to a few seconds,” Filpo said.
CMTG acquired the infrastructure through a financing arrangement with Lenovo Global Financial Services rather than relying entirely on upfront capital expenditure.
The company said the infrastructure refresh will also serve as the foundation for future AI services. CMTG plans to use the new architecture to provide an Australia-based environment capable of hosting AI workloads that customers may prefer to keep within the country.
CMTG, a Lenovo Gold Partner, said it considered processors from multiple vendors before choosing AMD EPYC.
“The trigger point for moving to AMD EPYC processors was a reference from Citrix, who use AMD to run their own platform,” Filpo said. “They showed us that it would give us the performance to be at the forefront of the cloud space.”
