I have evaluated most modern modular solutions and deep with Dell Kinetic Infrastructure MX7000 and Cisco UCS solutions. I have explored HPE synergy and Lenovo Flex but feel UCS X-Series and Dell MX7000 are the two most modern modular solutions, each with their pros and cons depending on the customers use case, workloads and desired end state.

We have had to maintain some existing platforms like OSAP since 2011. After eight years, in 2019, we moved to FlexPod, but the core functionality of the scope product remained the same. It was more about how we deploy the system. 

One benefit is easier investment. With FlexPod, you don't separate servers, storage, or network elements. It's all one package, streamlining the procurement process. Additionally, the centralized management offered by XCS allows our team members to access and share the same system view, eliminating discrepancies and confusion.

We have different partners. For example, Hitachi is one of our partners. Some customers prefer Hitachi and some prefer NetApp. Both solutions are integrated into Intersight, which is fine. We mainly use NetApp because of the broader control and establishment in this area, but the cost can be an issue. 

There are some other solutions, like HPE, but the full stack support and integration from FlexPod is much better.

I came from IBM and my customer had IBM in place before. So, we can't do FlexPod with an IBM. We can't do FlexPod with a Pure. Dell EMC is a probably the closest one that can do the whole converged environment. But, in this case, my customer would not choose to do this with Dell EMC. 

The synergy that Cisco and NetApp put together initially for FlexPod worked very well together from an availability standpoint, minimizing staff to manage the environment, keeping costs down overall, and just enabling the whole environment to work smoothly.

Dell, Vertex, Lenovo, and Nutanix were all under consideration. We chose FlexPod because that's what we kind of based our standard on. The redundancy and ease of upgrades not taking any downtime were also major factors.

We have a very strong Cisco partnership. All our networking stack and some of security stack is all Cisco.

VxBlock was also on our shortlist.

We chose FlexPod because we already had NetApp deployment onsite (on-prem).

The history of this product's innovations affects private hybrid cloud, mostly. We have a VMware cloud foundation running on FlexPod and want to take this to the next level, either VxRail or on HyperFlex. Those are the solutions that we are looking at right now. I think they are working on SEEBURGER as the next step, but maybe we might introduce NetApp HCI.

We are mostly a NetApp environment, so we did not consider another vendor. If there was an issue with NetApp, we would have left a long time ago.

We deploy cloud solutions. We constantly evaluate products.

Because I don't have experience with the Cloud integrations, that did end up affecting choices initially. For now, we are going to be staying with NetApp but we are also looking at other products like Pure Storage and Nimble.

We decided on NetApp mainly cost because of cost and the fact that we already have the in-house knowledge and expertise. Therefore, it just made sense to stay within the ecosystem we were in.

Usually, we have a look at other vendors, like Dell EMC and HPE. However, currently, it was based on the time cycle of the hardware refresh. It made sense to just go with what we already had.

We are looking at going down the next refresh with NVMe, and NetApp is the only one who offers that end-to-end solution.

We only looked at Cisco at the time.

We did a PoC with four different vendors to test out combinations of a hardware build. Storage was kind of a given as we have been a NetApp shop forever. We have gone through a couple other ones. We really like 3PAR, but that's a different story.

The short list was a essentially Dell EMC and NetApp. We chose NetApp because of this FlexPod support model.

This solution was implemented before I joined the company.

We work with multiple vendors being a channel partner. We work with all different types: HPE, Dell EMC, and Cisco. We love working with them. Their teams are awesome to work with, and it only makes sense since Cisco's partnered with Netapp. There's not a big stretch in an alliance thing. They have a great partnership together, so there are not competing in the same space, especially when it comes to converged infrastructure.

Our shortlist included a Dell EMC.

FlexPod was pretty much the way they wanted to go from the start.

We evaluated solutions from HP, Cisco, and IBM before choosing this solution.

We considered VMware, Citrix, going full cloud, sharing with a cloud, handing it off to a managed service provider, building it ourselves, rack and stack — pretty much everything was on the table. FlexPod is a good product. I think they just need to continue to keep up the pace with organization like Nutanix and those types of organizations to be able to compete.

You can't get in trouble going with Cisco and NetApp. If you get stuck or have an issue, support is there. The inner partnership, inner engineering, and cross-pollination is there. I'm still leery of some of the up-and-coming hyperconverged organizations out there trying to compete. They may be good, dynamic, fast, growing, everybody's getting on on it, but they're not backed by two large publicly-traded organizations that have a legacy foundation that's been tried and proven for what they do and do best. 

Everything was NetApp initially, but we were independently buying the equipment from Cisco through NetApp. This worked for us beautifully because it was the same vendor who we were dealing with and everything was certified in a box.

We looked at Dell EMC VCE very seriously, as it's a converged product. NetApp was a lot more flexible, it didn't require a forklift approach. We had a really great experience with NetApp specifically. We were already using Cisco, for both network as well as compute, and it just seemed like just a great play, to have that flexibility and to have the support model to help us. And it has proven to be great.

I did not evaluate other solutions. I was just told this is what we have built, accommodate it, given these requirements, and it worked.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing FlexPod.

We didn't have a lot of vendors on the short list. We work with Nutanix in the past, which was a complete and utter failure. 

Seeing as we're a Cisco and NetApp shop, it was natural to go with FlexPod.

I evaluated Dell EMC, HPE, and NetApp Cisco. I chose this solution because I knew it and there was no learning curve.

It is not so much that we need to invest in FlexPod. I work pretty closely with all of our vendors, and a lot of times, we look and we evaluate. We evaluate all the available solutions out there. It does not matter whether it is a FlexPod or if it is one of the illegal EMC counterparts. We evaluate them all. We look at everything from Nimble Suite and the big brands, like FlexPod. Every time we go out and we evaluate solutions with their flexibility. The flexibility of a FlexPod wins out every time.

Having an extremely cost effective solution which is a pain in the butt to manage, a pain in the butt to support, or overly complex does not really do us any good. It ends up just costing us, even though we do not track money. It ends up costing us time, which in turn, costs us money, and management does look at that. 

We look at performance. We look at the available options and how they unified a platform, especially when it comes to storage. Recently, we were comparing FAS units to a VNX from EMC. The big difference and big selling point for a FAS unit was the data filer with virtualized block put right on top of it. We do not have to maintain separate controllers. The VNX had to have a Solera and a clearing head in it in order to do block and file based storage. We had to separate discs at a point in time. This is a few years ago, so some of it has changed since then. However, when I talk about simplicity to manage, it also goes into cost. 

On the EMC side, I would have had to have dedicated disc per file and dedicated discs for block-based storage. On the FAS side, I could do whatever I wanted. I just had a big disk pool and I could divide it up however I wanted.

I'm only delving into this solution over the last six weeks or so. I don't have the same level of expertise with FlexPod as I do with other solutions. I'm getting there slowly; trial by fire.

I came from a much larger integrated reseller. I worked more with FlexPods competitors where they really want to have these connectors and bolt-ons in place to be able to deploy something to Azure. As easy as it is to do it to an on-prem infrastructure, that's really where it's going for a lot of the commercial space.

For my current organization, it's opened up a whole new door for us as a NetApp partner to be able to have a competitive product against Dell EMC, HPE, etc., and to what I think to a degree is a better product in most cases, to go after that business. We go after the different verticals as well because we are in both the public sector and commercial space. So, these are much different verticals. Thus, you need to be able to the scalable solution. You need a solution that can meet the needs of these customers. When you're dealing with a healthcare versus a hedge fund, it is very different. Certain other companies they didn't have the same, they weren't able to scale or fit in these verticals.

Put them side by side. Do your diligence. There are other vendors out there. There are three other big players in this field: Dell EMC, Nutanix, and HPE. Obviously, each customer is different. But, if you're really looking at a true solution for hybridity with the ability to deploy to the cloud, take a real good hard look at the FlexPod CI solution.

We sell other products, and there are times because of the customer's relationship with another vendor that we might go with a different solution. However, we certainly look at putting them side by side.

We only evaluated Cisco. I don't believe that we even looked at Dell or HCI. It's pure Cisco for us.

We are already using NetApp storage products, and we are using the competition, like VxBlock. In addition, we are using Cisco hardware and VMware. So, we have already done our internal research.

I was not involved in the decision-making process. Things have changed since Vblock was launched seven years ago. FlexPod and Vblock both have very similar architecture and I don't see any big pros and cons between them. I think it's just a comfort level with respective companies. If a company has more investment in Cisco and VMware, that's how the FlexPod architecture is designed. I have no comment on Vblock right now.

There were no other vendors at the time. I was going with NetApp only for non-FlexPod environments. That was when we started buying stuff, which was about six years back when there was no competition. However, everybody has their own FlexPod now. Nimble has something like their own stack. Pure has a Pure stack. Everybody's coming with their own converged infrastructure and we are looking around.

When selecting a vendor, partnership plays an important role. A good partner will provide a kind of an independent review of the different vendors. When we select a vendor, we look at:

• Our means
• Our relationship with the vendor
• The standing of the vendor in the industry
• The vendor's new innovative technology
• How the vendor is competing in the market
• How competitive the vendor is in terms of price.

We look at other technologies because other technologies do provide similar kinds of things as NetApp at a cheaper price. That's how other vendors are rolling over each other in the market right now. They can provide the same thing for less money. These are important things, but the company stability and their goodwill in the industry are important factors as well.

Basically, EMC was the bigger other vendor. We did look very briefly at HP but EMC was the bigger vendor that we were looking at, at the time.

We eventually chose FlexPod mostly because of the FlexPod system’s ability to be split into two different data centers with, basically, one system. Price point was another one, but it just suited our needs almost to a T; it really met the requirements that we were looking for at the time. EMC could do the same thing but it was basically two separate systems and it was a much higher price point.

The most important criteria for my company when selecting a vendor to work with are the stability of the company, the quality of the product, customer service and support. That’s a big deal for our company. We want to make sure that the company that we're dealing with has a similar culture to our own, which is high customer service. We value that.

We were considering Dell EMC solutions and a mix of products, such as NetApp plus Dell EMC servers and Extreme Networks switches. 

The FlexClone played a big part of us going with FlexPod along with the migration of the profile onto Cisco.

We weren't considering anyone else because our customers were happy with Cisco's previous solutions.

We looked at Dell EMC and Brocade, but the knowledge was all there for NetApp and Cisco. VMware was always in-house.

We have been on FlexPod for a while now. It was the way the industry was going, so we followed.

Usually, I will find some type of "phoned-in designs". Something they want to call their "FlexPod." There are a lot of imitators out there. There are a lot of guys who will buy some NetApp and Cisco products, etc. Then, they will say, "Let us put this all together." However, FlexPod has something good here. That is why it caught my eye.

Like VCE, OpenStack was a determining factor because it was going to take us a lot of time to deploy it. Rather than spending three months to deploy OpenStack, it was going to take us a year to get the solution up and running. 

The other solution we looked was Hitachi VSP. At the time, VSP was new on the market and didn't have a validated design by Cisco, EMC, or any of the other vendors. It wasn't adopted widely in the market. I did not feel comfortable going with that. FlexPod was more adopted and in use.

We are a team of five members and we also work on our storage solutions. We are all here to learn about and understand new products and see what we can do to progress either with the same product or with different solutions. We are evaluating everything as long as it is appropriate.

We evaluated Pure Storage, Nimble, which is now HPE, and we also took a look at some larger EMC solutions.

We evaluated EMC and HPE. In the end, we chose FlexPod. The differences between solutions were the flexibility and performance aspects as well as the cost.

We worked with our integrators to look at the available solutions and follow the market trend based on our requirements, and this one checked most of the boxes. At the time, instead of NetApp, there was HP storage or HP servers with HP storage. Based on the previous experience and experience with the staff, integrator's feedback, and market popularity, the choice was Cisco/NetApp.

Prior to choosing this option, we looked at a smaller IBM solution, as well as solutions from EMC. The big winning factor for NetApp was cost. At the same time, since we've brought NetApp in, I've found that NetApp's storage efficiency is unparalleled.

I recently had a discussion with a business unit in one of our remote sites that needed some more performance out of their 2650 and they were telling my bosses that they could get an IBM SSD solution for $10,000 USD. Their cost of adding a NetApp shelf would be $26,000 USD. I have no idea where they got those numbers, but never in my entire career have I experienced IBM being cheaper than anybody else.

When we factored in storage efficiency and cost savings that we get from using Commvault IntelliSnap for backups, it makes absolutely no sense to use anything other than NetApp.

When we originally looked at bringing Commvault into our environment for backup, using Commvault streaming technology, we were looking at several million dollars for backup. When we went through this with the NetApp rep and actually looked at how much streaming backup we needed for Commvault, and how much could be done natively with IntelliSnap, that cost went from several mission dollars down to a quarter of a million dollars. That was huge.

Before this solution, the organization used some Synology products that were more appropriate for small businesses. The organization had many remote sites and it was not centralized. We also considered VMware vSAN as a solution.

FlexPod is multi-vendor, and it is mostly driven by customer demand.

We did look at the Dell EMC PowerEdge FX converged platform, VRTX. At the time, we were a major Dell EMC consumer. Since our switch to the UCS, we haven't bought a single Dell EMC product.

We went with FlexPod because the engineering was better, but support was the major factor: Cisco support and NetApp support. And they support the product even after end-of-sale. Dell EMC has a max term they will support a product: for compute it's seven years. So we had a situation where we could buy the exact same, older technology product just to get more support. We would have been buying old tech just to continue being supported.

We are looking at the Dell solution, and also we are looking at Cisco Flex. 

Right now, there is no immediate need to switch over.

We did look at Vblock for about ten seconds til we got the price, and frankly we knew they weren't going to work anyway. Not just the price, but it didn't fit us. But that was the only other integrated one

We did sort of look a little at the one that HPE just bought, Nimble. We looked into 3PAR; and I didn't even know what EMC "product of the week" we looked at, but we looked at those as well.

We evaluated IBM, Vblock, and Nutanix.

The factors that made us go with FlexPod were the components that were in FlexPod, NetApp being a big one of those, and Cisco being the other big name. When you think about storage, you think NetApp. There are a few others out there. When you think about routing switching, you typically think Cisco.

Cisco has done a great job coming into the server environment, and I believe in developing partnerships with companies and putting their weight behind it. These companies will continue to perform in in the future. Think about who you would invest in the stock market. Who are you going to put your money in?

We were just kind of sticking with it for now, because of the validated design; knowing that there are lots of other users that are using the same product; the tried and true results. Our environment requires having a very stable environment. Otherwise, our company loses a lot of money. We wanted to get into something that was well reviewed and know that lots of other people are working with it.

We fear high availability so we can't buy from different providers.

For FlexPod, the whole package itself, including the support and the different vendors who worked together is great (even though it costs more than the other solution we were looking at). There are other things in there that you have to consider, such as the support, devices, how long it has been out on the market, and how well it lasts. 

We went to other telecommunication providers and asked what they have and how well they were satisfied with it. We found some providers who were using FlexPod and some who were using other products. The ones who were using the FlexPod seemed to be a lot more satisfied with their product overall.

It was either FlexPod or build our own "FlexPod" ourselves. With FlexPod, and the automation, everything is the same all the time.

There were no other options. I've been with Cisco since 1995.

Nutanix, SimpliVity, and Vblock. We went with FlexPod because I think NetApp is a better product for the back-end storage. The other two are the same.

The strategy of the blueprint and the roadmap were done by the global company. They did the testing in the global company, then once they were happy with the results from the test lab, it was made the standard for the global company and each zone had to comply with it.

Right now the Cisco is there. This is a Cisco shop and an IBM shop too.

We looked at Nimble Storage as well as IBM, EMC, Dell, and HPE. We chose NetApp due to familiarity. We had the six years of the deployments and we're satisfied with performance and ease of transition to All Flash versus another vendor. When selecting a vendor, we look for performance of the end product as well as the benefits for users.

We are existing NetApp and Cisco customers. It just seemed like a natural fit. We didn't really consider many other options. We had the basic infrastructure there to begin with, so it was just a very natural, cheap move for us. We already had FC in place. We were already doing many of the things that FlexPod was going towards.
Cost was probably the biggest factor.

The flexibility, operational efficiency, and scalability of FlexPod are very good. We also use other products too, like FlashStack, and these solutions are equally good or similar in most ways. I have a very good opinion of FlexPod, and we've been using it for a long time.

We have historically been a really big Cisco partner. We started doing more with hosted client opportunities for data. When they came out with that line, it was something that we moved right into as a natural progression. Once we thought it worked and saw how easy it was to scale it out, we decided to go that way and save a little extra money while scaling out the usage of what we already had in place.

We also evaluated EMC VxBlock, which has a similar design. Both products have flexibility.

The difference is NetApp's response time of 0.5 milliseconds, which we felt was very good.

We evaluated IBM VersaStack and Dell EMC with their VxBlock.  

FlexPod has more time in the field with more street knowledge. Their support and professional services are better, because people have experience with it. There is not a lot of field knowledge on VersaStack yet. While VxBlock is solid, FlexPod has more experience in the field.

We probably looked at Dell EMC. We were on HPE SAN for quite awhile. I don't know if we looked at anybody else.

One of the deciders for us in looking at NetApp was, even years ago, they just seemed to be in a much better position in the marketplace. We were pretty confident that they would be around in five years, whereas, some of the other smaller vendors might not be, especially with consolidations going on.

We also looked at VxBlock from Dell EMC.

We had all of the options, but not as a FlexPod, rather as separate solutions. We were looking at VM, we were looking at HPE, and this solution brought it all together in a nice little package for us.

We evaluated EMC, Hitachi, IBM and Huawei. We chose NetApp because they have more capability with snapshots that the other environments and vendors do not have.
The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with are price, performance, scalability, and management.

We were actually considering SolidFire but they eventually were bought by NetApp. Otherwise, we are even now considering Oracle engineered platforms such as PCA and Exadata.

We eventually chose NetApp because of the ease of administration and faster provisioning. It again depends on how NetApp would scale to fit into Oracle and Oracle virtualization platforms. That would be a decision point to continue with NetApp.

We ran through all the primary vendors, but it was all one-off; there weren’t any converged solutions at the time, six years ago, when FlexPod first came out. It was either work with HP, Dell, Hitachi, EMC, etc., or have only one place; it’s better to have everything in one place.

Our customers also look at Dell EMC. 

Cisco and NetApp were on our shortlist.

From a flexible deployment and scalability point of view, we got NetApp. From enterprise and beyond, they are doing above and beyond anything that anyone else is doing at the moment.

Cisco are the leaders in LAN technology. With their hardware for unified communication of the UCS bundle, it's so straightforward and easy to set up. It integrates with a lot of other major vendors, which makes our lives a lot easier.

We may consider another solution for the HCI. We have not decided yet.

There was Nutanix. We do have a few Nutanix in there. It's just not as well known.

We always speak to other vendors, whether EMC, Oracle for Exadata, those are the main ones.

We went with NetApp in the end because it's established in the environment already, and we just had to upgrade the hardware. It was something we knew worked and would do the job.

Dynamics was on our vendor shortlist. 

We chose FlexPod after consulting with the vendor and NetApp.

At the time we deployed FlexPod, there wasn't a whole lot else available other than Vblock.

It just came down to a strong relationship with the key vendors that make up the product, NetApp and Cisco.

We looked at other vendors: IBM and Dell EMC. IBM was our existing vendor at the time, and we found their support was poor. We trialed Dell EMC and FlexPod was the better solution. We were pleased with the way FlexPod went in and worked.

We evaluated HPE, LeftHand before HPE bought them out, and then they became HPE LeftHand.We've also looked at EMC. We've also recently considered HPE MSA technology, and their EEA technology, as well.

We looked HPE 3PAR, before they were HPE. We've looked at pretty much all the big storage vendors out there, such as Tintri and Nimble, but they are more bundled storage and compute.

We decided to stay with NetApp because I'm familiar with their systems. We're already a NetApp customer. So there's a certain investment in time and knowledge with NetApp that we have. We don't want to go back to reinventing the wheel every time we look at storage. We are happy with the product solution.

Our customers also evaluated Dell ECM VxBlock. They chose NetApp because it's cheaper and during a POC it always performs and gives them what they want.

I have experience with Dell EMC, HP, and NetApp. NetApp is a bit more complicated to set up than everything else. Once it gets going, it's so much easier to manage than all the others. The others on the flip side are very easy to set up but then troubleshooting can be a bit tedious and complex at times.

We looked at Dell EMC and NetApp but Dell EMC was expensive. 

FlexPod was the only vendor on our shortlist. We went with FlexPod based on our requirements. Also, we have a file-based, virtualized environment, so we thought NetApp would be the right choice for our file-based environment.

We looked at HP and then we also looked at Dell. I don't remember what the servers were, but it was similar technologies.

We decided to go with NetApp because of the FlexPod. There was a lot more documentation, "Hey, this is how you set it up; this is what we're trying to do."
We already ran Cisco, and we already ran NetApp. Bringing the Cisco UCS chassis in just made sense; having a product that was supportable by all the different vendors. It was more consistent across the board.

We’ve looked at a lot of different things. At the time, we were looking at what EMC and some other vendors could do. We were definitely looking at HP, around some of their server stuff and some of their server integrated storage server solutions. But, FlexPod is where we ended up.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with is reliability. We're in banking, so we are looking for something that's going to be stable and secure.

I looked at Pure Storage and Nimble; we did go back to EMC because we had been an EMC shop. As far as the ease of being able to install it quickly, without having to do a complete redesign of our SAN environment, was very appealing, as well as price point. The price point was quite good compared to the others we looked at.

We have a relationship with NetApp and EMC, and it was kind of a pure play to go with NetApp. We have a Cisco relationship, also, and we have some in-house Citrix talent or skill sets, so it was easy to make that choice.

As far as some of the important criteria I look for in a vendor, we've got a relationship with our NetApp vendor. I can only really address the storage side because my interaction is only from the storage side. I usually don't deal with the UCS server side, the VMware side, or the Citrix side. I really can't comment on those but we've got a really good relationship with NetApp itself. They help to drive the purchase and make it easy for us in purchasing.

I also have experience with Vblock.

We evaluated other solutions like HP and EMC, but we already had a lot of Cisco equipment and our engineers were trained on Cisco, so this solution made more sense.

We have been using NetApp products since 2002. We have not found any serious competition.

I have a partnership with Fujitsu New Zealand, and their consultants there actually sat down with me and talked over what I needed, and came up with this solution.

I did look at the Hitachi Data Systems Hyperconverged Infrastructure, but it used virtualization for storage that I wasn't prepared to use simply because we already do a nested virtualized environment, so I didn't want virtualization on top of virtualization.

I run a very odd system in terms of what we teach our students. We virtualize the hypervisor, then they put virtual machines inside the hypervisor, and we use the NetApp Vsim for them to provision their own storage. We do some of the NetApp curriculum on that as well as and we do the VMware install/configure/manage course on top of it as well. So, I didn't want virtualization on top of virtualization for storage. That's what it amounts to.

We went through a process recently and we probably looked at six or seven vendors and this solution kept coming back to us. We are a smaller shop, and the flexibility of the FlexPod system, in particular the FAS2650 for us, and all the different protocols that we're running on an all-in-one system, was a no-brainer for us.

When it came back to it, we just stuck with NetApp because it was really the best solution for us. We looked at Pure Storage, Nimble, and Tintri. They all have great feature sets and things like that. However, the assortment of protocols for us was a huge feature set, and not being locked into just doing the block level protocol. We really wanted to keep our systems in place. It's really nice to have just that one pane of glass for our storage system. So, NetApp was really a no-brainer to stick with.

We did a bake-off between the VCE and the FlexPod. We did look at the Dell solution back then, it did come down to VCE and FlexPod.

FlexPod won out for two reasons.

• Pricing
• The resource that manages my data center was historically a NetApp guy. He liked that app and was comfortable with it, and that's what I think the deciding factor was.

To summarize, the comfort level with NetApp and the price.

We evaluated HP, Dell, IBM and Cisco. 

We looked at Red Hat, VMware, HP, Cisco. We chose FlexPod because of the consolidation and reduced footprint.

Other options were considered. That included IBM and HP solutions.

We didn't evaluate others. We decided to go with NetApp and that drove the decision every place else. We went with the Cisco UCS chassis because that fit our solution.

We looked at a lot of different vendors. We were just happy with the vendors that were in the original FlexPod.

The support was there and it actually serviced us perfectly. We looked at Dell. Dell's always has a solution there. They always want to try to get where we are.

The biggest competitor, looking at their solution, is the EMC solution set.

We decided to stay with NetApp because, of the disc. We like how it tracks the disc and we can move the disc around.

We have to pull out our discs regularly for accountability of our drives. NetApp allows us to do that a little easier for maintenance cycles.

We can actually put it back in with very negligible downtime. We like the service that we get and the name recognition. We're just used to NetApp.

We've just been adding upon this solution year after year. We started looking at some of the hyper-converged stuff, such as Nutanix and Cisco HyperFlex. Then, I started looking at the SolidFire stuff as well. We decided to stay with NetApp because we've already been using it. It's been successful, so it takes a lot to want to move to something else.

We evaluated HPE, Dell, and FlexPods all at the same time. We went with the FlexPods. We thought that the price and converged infrastructure offering was more powerful than those offerings from HPE and Dell.

I don't remember what the HPE one was, but the Dell was like an EqualLogic SAN. The Dell just wasn't impressive in terms of features and management more than performance. We were a NetApp shop historically. This enabled us to get the converged infrastructure with NetApp as the back end. This was probably the most compelling reason for us.

The only other one we looked at was EMC. We weren't really thrilled with what they had to offer.

In general, when I’m looking for a vendor, pre- and post-sale support is important: the actual tech support that they provide; the ONTAP support guys, from once it's installed; implementation resource support from the vendor. When it comes to the pre-sales and the design and then the concepts, we've always found that NetApp’s engineers and SCs are always there. They walk us through everything. They validate it all. We get a lot of support out of them and that's a big requirement for us.

We've been using HP for a long time.

For storage, we were using EMC before. We had been using their platform for a number of years. We were in for a forklift upgrade. The next upgrade would've been a complete forklift upgrade. We evaluated Hitachi, NetApp, and EMC. We talked with Dell as well, but we really narrowed it down to Hitachi, EMC, or NetApp. With EMC, because it was a forklift upgrade, we were really upset that it wasn't something that we could just add on to what we had or change out the parts. We had a major conversion, so that put them at a disadvantage right away. In talking with NetApp, the big thing for us was getting rid of the forklift upgrade; going to a system where we could evolve from year to year to year. We're three or four years in on this now; so far that's been the case. We have done controller replacements and upgrades and everything else, without serious service interruptions, so that's been a big deal for us.

At the time, there weren’t any other vendors on our short list. I guess we were looking at EMC in the early days but I don't remember what the reasoning was. We eventually decided on FlexPod.

When I choose a vendor, cost and ROI are the most important criteria that I look for.

We had other vendors, but we had NetApp in the house as part of our storage, we also had Cisco in the house. It made sense to combine those two and go with FlexPod.

We're a law firm. I think this product is valuable for pretty much anybody who has a large amount of data that they need to manage. I don't think that this product is uniquely valuable for a law firm.

We had looked at the EMC VNX series. I wasn't too involved in that, I only got pulled in when it came in to interfacing with the network.

We chose Flexpod over EMC because FlexPod had the Cisco commonality to it. That was one of the major reasons we went with the FlexPod. I had some experience at a previous job with the VNX, and that was a very good solution as well. But, for our environment we were trying to standardize on Cisco, and that was a big selling point.

There wasn't that much hyper-converged at the time we went into FlexPod. It really was the game changer at the time.

We were looking at a new VM farm to start with, so we were looking at Blade Server solutions from HPE/IBM. What really did it was that FlexPod had all the components in one rack that we could basically turn on and forget.

We continue to evaluate solution on the market. We enjoy the UCS environment and that's the way we increase the blade. We like the way it integrates with the NetApp, so the FlexPod just really brought it all home.

We evaluated EMC, Pure Storage, Tintri, and Nimble. We decided to go with NetApp over the competitors because we did an executive briefing with them in San Jose.

We were really impressed with their road map and their direction. We developed more than just a vendor-customer relationship. It was more of a partnership. We felt we had a good relationship and that we could trust NetApp, and that the solution would work. It was really, in the end, the technology, the price, and the people.

We had looked at the EMC VNX series at the time. And that point, I wasn't too involved. I only got pulled in when it came to interfacing it with the network. They chose FlexPod over EMC, due to the Cisco commonality to it. That was one of the major reasons why we went with the FlexPod. We knew Cisco, and we worked with Cisco already. I had some experience at a previous job with the VNX, and that was a very good solution as well. But, for our environment, we were trying to standardize on Cisco, and that was a big selling point.

We looked at other vendors. We keep our eyes open all the time.

The replication was why we chose NetApp, SnapVault. Not a lot of storage vendors do block-based replication with being able to maintain a different set of snapshots on the secondary and the primary. Everybody does SnapMirror, or does a mirror of some type, but SnapMirror XDP or SnapVault is something that NetApp has that most storage vendors don't have.

In general, global- and enterprise-level support is the most important criteria when I’m looking to work with a vendor.

We considered EMC storage solutions but when it comes to usability, scalability, and the storage capacity we need, they couldn't supply what we were looking for.

There are a lot of hyper-converged solutions out on the market these days, a couple of our customers have tried those and they felt a little constrained within those environments. The FlexPod is nice because it is still made up of separate components but it is centrally managed. 

I actually used to manage the FlexPod at one company I was with. It was great there because it was all Cisco UCS. We leveraged Cisco UCS director to provision and add capacity when we needed to. Another company I was at used a Blade infrastructure along with fabric switches so that was the same sort of model. It is just easier when compared to other solutions. Fewer points of entry make it more manageable.

We looked at Cisco and HP when we were researching this solution.

We also looked at HyperFlex. HyperFlex is also compatible but I think NetApp SolidFire is more robust.

We were looking at EMC as well. At the time, Cisco was partnered with both, but we went for the data deduplication from NetApp. EMC wasn't quite the same.

I have been a happy NetApp/FlexPod customer for years.

We evaluated one other vendor.

We chose FlexPod because we were previous customers and know their support structure.

We evaluated EMC and HPE for new storage. We decided to stay with NetApp over HPE and EMC because of our experience with it. We didn't have any bad experiences with it, so we didn't want to change it to go down a new learning path. We knew it, it worked, and we had no issues.

We evaluated IBM, they had a blade solution. We evaluated Dell and looked at the FX2s and their VRTX for some of our smaller sites. We decided to go with NetApp over Dell, because it all worked together so easily. Dell had a pretty good product and there is no denying that. However, FlexPod is just all-in-one. It has got a best-practice design built around it so there's no "Hey, does this NIC work in this scenario?" You don't have to worry about that with FlexPod.

We already had NetApp in-house. It was very easy for us to use at least that as a storage platform, so it was just finalizing on the Cisco UCS part. We needed to come up with a hardware platform that we could use and UCS was the hardware platform.
HP’s BL series blade was the other one we were looking at from a blade standpoint.

We decided to go with FlexPod instead of HP because we were already a leveraged Cisco partner, a Cisco shop, with all of our route switch and all of our data center core switching. It was very easy for us, then, to assimilate the UCS chassis within our existing infrastructure without any other type of complexity.

We looked at other solutions besides NetApp, everything that came in at the right price point.

We moved away from EMC to start with. Obviously, they were right up there at the start, but they just couldn't come to the party with our requirements.

I find the support with NetApp, moving forward with it, being so much better.

When I’m looking at a vendor in general, once their business is able to meet our requirements, I look for having someone who can actually explain how they're going to meet those requirements and how we're going to get there on the journey.

I did not really evaluate other options before choosing Flexpod because it is a leading product in the market for converged use cases.

The private cloud environment is one of the major selling points for it.

Usually, people move to a different solution when it comes to getting a hybrid cloud solution, e.g., a CA solution or HyperFlex. This is where I have seen it get a bit distorted.

We evaluated HPE, Cisco, and NetApp for storage. We chose NetApp because of its storage efficiencies and integration.

We looked at HPE and that was four years ago. We've worked with CDW. They brought in a number of other vendors with other storage systems. The one we chose fit in with what we wanted to do. We previously used a smaller vendor's storage solution. It didn't quite work with what we wanted to do. We weren't able to fit it in with our model.

We initially spoke with Cisco and they recommended this solution.

The major competitors are probably EMC with Vblock, and Nutanix is bringing up competition pretty quickly, and their solution is less expensive to get in on entry-wise, so that's a real competition point.

The advantage of FlexPod, specifically against Nutanix, is that we we can expand any single component of the solution without having to expand the entire solution. So if we want to add disk or add blades, compute nodes, we don't have to add everything at once. Incremental expansion is less costly. Additionally, NetApp is a more mature company in general - as are Cisco and VMware - than Nutanix is, so their future is fairly well set, where Nutanix's future is still relatively uncertain. That's not due to product reliability issues, but just due to market acceptance and maturity as a company.

Over EMC, EMC's products are generally more complicated to use and less robust overall. With their ever-changing landscape of ownership and acquisitions and leadership challenges, it's tough to say where their products are going to land the next few years.

Really in a converged stack, not a hyper-converged, because NetApp doesn't have hyper-converged, now with SolidFire. From a converged stack on a FlexPod, we do work with VCE on the Vblock aspect. We work with HPE on their platform as well. Those are usually the three that we have been competing against. The advantages of NetApp over competitors is honestly the price. There are aspects of VCE and Vblock that have a better overall management stack, than what we have on the FlexPod side. But from the perspective of cost, we always win with NetApp on pricing.

We looked at HP and we looked at Dell, but we ended up going with Cisco and I'm really happy with it.

We considered HPE.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

We evaluated EMC. We were already invested in NetApp very heavily, so that swayed our decision in that direction.

When selecting a vendor, I want to know that they are tech-savvy. I want them to know our environment, our system, and how it functions on the back-end. I want them to help us out if we have any problems.

I think we compared three different vendors at the time.

We chose NetApp because of our familiarity with it, for one; two, the price was right.
As far as bringing in vendors for storage, it is important that they have experience with whatever storage that we are looking at; what level their engineers are at. The partner that we went with, we knew that they had experience with NetApp in the past, and so we trusted bringing them in to help get the FlexPod set up.

We selected FlexPod because, as we're building our new data center, we were looking for something that would be able to scale easily with the business, without locking us into having to do huge forklift upgrades. We just had the opportunity to have a full greenfield build. We looked at other solutions such as Vblock. FlexPod was able to meet all our needs without too many problems.

We did not look at any other vendors; we are a Cisco/NetApp/Microsoft shop. It was clear-cut for us.

In general, when we do look for a vendor, the important criteria are reputation, stability and price, obviously. Also, how easily can I talk to them? We've had vendors come in and they've completely bombed on their initial interviews. It's like, "Sorry, guys. You had that one shot to make that first impression and you did it poorly."

We looked at other solutions like EMC, but NetApp was the most cost-effective solution.

We are always researching other options. We develop solutions in-house when needed.

No other options were looked at.

We looked at a lot of vendors, but we selected this because it seems to be a strong business going forward.

We’ve worked with Wedlock and third-party integrations.

We went out to tender.