The Lenovo Operating System Interoperability Guide (OSIG) is the comprehensive source of information about operating system compatibility with Lenovo servers.
Table of contents:
- Systems and operating systems covered
- Support definitions
- How to use the OSIG
- Using the search field
- Columns in the search results
- Details popup window
- Export button
- Formatted URLs
- Subscribe and feedback
- Change history
- Author
Systems and operating systems covered
Server families covered in this document are:
- ThinkSystem servers
- ThinkEdge servers
- ThinkServer systems for customers in China
- ThinkAgile appliances
- System x M5, M4 and M3 servers
- System x X6 and X5 servers
- ThinkServer Generation 5, 4 and 3 servers
- NeXtScale System M5 and M4 servers
- iDataPlex M4 servers
- Flex System compute nodes
- BladeCenter servers back to HS22 and HS12
- Converged HX Series Nutanix Appliances
The following operating systems are included:
- Microsoft Windows Server
- Microsoft Windows 10 and Windows 11
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
- VMware ESXi (vSphere)
- Oracle Linux
- Oracle Solaris
- Citrix XenServer / Citrix Hypervisor
- Canonical Ubuntu
- AlmaLinux
- Rocky Linux
For Windows Server support, starting with Windows Server 2012, support also includes:
- Windows Storage Server
- Windows Multipoint Server
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Support definitions
Definitions used in the OSIG are as follows:
- Supported
Lenovo provides hardware / OS interoperability support on Lenovo servers. Lenovo validates selected products for compatibility with Lenovo servers and works with third-party vendors to test their equipment with ours. Additional benefits include: integration with all Lenovo management tools, extensive lifecycle maintenance support, driver integration, installation guides, selected customized installation media and manufacturing preloads.
- Partial Support
Lenovo provides partial hardware / OS interoperability support on Lenovo servers. Lenovo validates selected products for compatibility with Lenovo servers and works with third-party vendors to test their equipment with ours. Additional benefits include: integration with Lenovo OneCLI and Lenovo XClarity Administrator (LXCA) management tools, lifecycle maintenance for long-term support (LTS) releases, driver integration on selected options as defined on ServerProven, and installation guides.
- Vendor Certified
The server has met the OS Partner Certified/Logo program requirements, however, hardware device driver updates may not be available beyond the inbox OS device drivers. As a result support is limited and customers should strongly consider this when determining which OS version to install. The OS vendor provides OS support with inbox drivers only. Lenovo only provides hardware level support, and will work with hardware partners and OS vendors in a best-effort capacity to close any compatibility issues customers may experience with their installation. Lenovo will work with the OS provider to submit hardware compatibility (HCL) test suite results so that the supported solution can be posted to the respective OS providers HCL site.
- Tested
Either the OS or hypervisor was successfully installed on the server. Lenovo acknowledges the community based OSs, and Lenovo will provide hardware level support only, and will not make any statement regarding the support of the OS, including interactions with Lenovo tools or device drivers, or special software provided by Lenovo.
None means the combination of server and operating system is not Supported, Certified, or Tested.
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How to use the OSIG
There are three ways you can find OS support information:
- Use the dropdown menus to select the servers and operating systems you're looking for
- Use the search facility and enter keywords to filter on
- Use a combination of the menus and the search
Dropdown menus can be used in any order. You can start with the Family dropdown for example or with OS Families or Form Factors.
To select an item from a dropdown menu, click the menu area then click the item you want to select:
To remove an item after you've added it, click the X inside the blue area of the selection.
The dropdown menus also allow you to select more than one item. Simply click an open area in the dropdown menu and select another item. Here we are selecting ThinkServer in addition to System x. The resulting data shows results that are either System x or ThinkServer (logical OR).
You can also type in the field to find items in the menu then use the arrow keys and Enter key to select items. Here we are typing "think" and then pressing Enter to add ThinkServer to the selection.
The pull-down menus are as follows:
- Families: These are the different server families available from Lenovo
- Servers: These are the individual servers. When a server supports multiple generations of processors, it is split out so that you can select one particular combination of server and processor familly (tip: to search on the processor family, use the Search field)
- OS Families: These are the high level operating system names such as Microsoft Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- OS Versions: These are the top-level versions of each OS, such as Windows Server 2016 and RHEL 7 (tip: if you want to search for a specific version of an operation system, use search; if the version number includes a period, enclose the version number in quotes, for example, rhel "7.2" will return all entries of RHEL 7.2.)
- Form Factors: The choices here are a combination of the physical shapes our servers come in as well as the number of processor sockets in the server - useful if you are not familiar with our product families and server names. For example "Rack 1S" means a rack server with 1 processor socket. Choices are:
- Blade 1S - servers in a blade form factor (and are installed in a chassis with common power, cooling, and networking) with 1 processor socket
- Blade 2S - blade form factor with 2 processor sockets but cannot be upgraded to more than 2 processors
- Blade 4S - blade form factor with 4 processor sockets
- Blade Scalable 2S - blade form factor with 2 processor sockets but can be expanded to more processor sockets by attaching additional blade servers of the same type.
- Dense - servers that are consume less rack space that 1U and are installed in an enclosure with common power and cooling
- Rack 1S - 1-socket servers that are installed in a rack
- Rack 2S - 2-socket servers that are installed in a rack
- Rack 4S or more - 4-socket and 8-socket servers that are installed in a rack
- Tower 1S - tower servers with 1 processor
- Tower 2S - tower servers with 2 processors
- Availability: The choice here are Available (meaning that the server is currently available for sale from Lenovo) or Withdrawn (meaning that the server is withdrawn from marketing and is no longer available for sale from Lenovo, although our partners may still have stock)
- Support: Select from All, Supported & Certified, Supported only, Certified only, Tested, or None. The default is All which effectively means "not None" or as a logic expression "Supported & Certified OR Supported OR Certified OR Tested". The definitions of Supported, Certified and Tested are listed in the Support definitions section above.
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Using the search field
You can use the search field either as the primary search mechanism or use it in conjunction with the dropdown menus to further filter down results. The search field searches all text in the database for matches.
For example you might use the search field by itself to search for specific entries. Results shown include all words in the search (logical AND).
An example using search in conjunction with the dropdown menus is if you are displaying all VMware ESXi 6.0 entries but wanted to filter further down by only showing Update 1 (U1) entries. The menus and search field are as follows:
For complex searches, the follow syntax is supported:
To use compound search terms, use logical operators OR and AND. The operators are not case sensitive. For example, the following returns results that contain either Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2012:
2008 or 2012- To add additional search terms along with the AND/OR logical operators, use parenthesis. For example, the following returns results that include the words x240 and M5 as well as either 2008 or 2012:
x240 m5 (2008 or 2012)
Another example is the following search which shows Windows Server 2008 R2 support of both the x3550 M5 (8869) and x3650 M5 (8871):
(8869 or 8871) 2008 R2 - To ensure words are adjacent, use double quotes to form a phrase. For example:
"x240 m5" (2008 or 2012)
You would use double quotes if you wanted to search on text that includes a period such as a version number. For example:
rhel "7.2" - To exclude a term, precede it with a dash. For example to exclude any Xen entries from a search of SLES support on the RD650:
rd650 sles -xen - Use ? and * as wildcards. ? represents any single character and * represents any multiple characters. For example, the following returns Windows Server 2016 support statements for the RD350, RD450, RD550 or RD650 (maybe others too):
rd?50 2016 - To specify a range of values, use square brackets.
[rd350 to rd650] 2016
For even more, consult the Zend Lucene query framework page.
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Columns in the search results
Results are displayed as soon as you make the first selection or enter a search term and press the Search button.
You can change the sort order of these results by simply clicking the column headings. Click once to sort alphabetically, click a second time to reverse the sort.
The entries in the Support Statement column are clickable for anything except "None". See the red arrow above to see an example. Clicking the link opens a Details window, described in the next section.
Some support links include an asterisk (*) as shown with the blue arrow. The * indicates that additional support restrictions or notes apply to this support statement, and these notes are listed in the Details popup window.
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Details popup window
The Details popup window appears when you click one of the links in the Support Statement column in the results table.
The Details popup windows contains the following information:
- A summary of the server selected, including the processor family used in this server
- A summary of the operating system selected
- Definitions of the terms “Supported” and “Certified”.
- A list of relevant links that are specific to the server and OS selected:
- A link to the certification page for the OS vendor. In the above screenshot, it is the VMware cert page for the x3650 M5.
- A link to the Lenovo Press product guide to learn more about the server
- A link to the drivers page on the Lenovo support site for the server
- For ESXi search results, a link to the VMware page where you can download the Lenovo custom image for this version of ESXi
- A link to the ServerProven page that lists options for the server.
- A list of support restrictions and notes if the support statement had a * next to it.
Click the X in the top right corner to close the Details window or just click away in the grey area to close it.
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Export button
The export button enables you to share the OSIG results.
The functions available here are as follows:
- Export to Excel: Gives you an XLS file with the results you have displayed. Useful if you want to insert as a table into a document.
- Export to PDF: Gives you a fully formatted PDF of your search results.
- Export to XML: If you manage a web site with content about Lenovo servers, the use of XML file generated here enable you to use the OSIG API to generate real-time OS data and display it on your web site. Great for business partners!
- Download Master File: If you need to work offline or perform more complex filtering on the complete OSIG dataset, then you can download a 11,000+ row spreadsheet file.
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Formatted URLs
As you make selections from the dropdown menus and enter search terms, the URL displayed changes automatically. The URL includes parameters that specify all of these selections. Using these URLs will allow you to easily share OSIG searches with others.
For example, consider the following selections:
- Families = System x
- Servers = x3650 M5 (8871, E5 v4)
- OS Families = Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- OS Versions = RHEL 7
The URL generated with these selections is as follows:
https://lenovopress.com/osig#server_families=system-x&servers=x3650-m5-8871-e5-v4&os_families=red-hat-enterprise-linux&os_versions=rhel-7
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Subscribe and feedback
At the top of the page is a grey information box that includes the following links:
- Subscribe to updates: Enter your email address and you will receive an automated email whenever we update the OSIG database. Emails are sent out daily at 8:00AM EST.
- Rate & Provide Feedback: Send us feedback about your experiences with OSIG. You can provide a star rating or send in a comment, or both.
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Change history
The change history link in the grey information box at the top of the page opens a window that shows all the changes that have been made to the OSIG data since inception.
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Author
The OS Interoperability Guide is maintained by David Watts.
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