FlexPod XCS Reviews

FlexPod can be used for all types of workloads. At my company we are using FlexPod for the SAP HANA product.

The application that is running on the FlexPod that we are working with runs better on FlexPod because of the technology itself. It saves on time to do backups and restores, protection, and of course deployment and roll out.

In addition, the support that you can get from all three vendors - VMware, Cisco, and NetApp - with one call, is a value-add.

We have also seen a large percentage improvement in the performance of some applications. We can back up and restore within minutes, whereas before, when the program was running on a different platform, that would take eight to 12 hours.

FlexPod comes as an engineered solution. We can use it for smaller, medium, or large solutions and we can scale it as we need. That's the reason that it's very useful.

I find it very resilient. I would trust FlexPod to the point that I would put a lot of different things on it.

It is stable as long as you do your due diligence. With all the updates and upgrades, there is always a chance of something going wrong. However, the built-in resiliency annuls those risks to some degree.

Scaling it was not difficult. The scale of the FlexPod for a company I worked with before was about eight nodes.

If you get the right numbers and give the right information you can get to the right support. Otherwise, it's a nightmare. Once you get to the right people, it's perfect.

What made us switch was the fact that we had limitation challenges with the old product. Everything was a little bit different every time. FlexPod helped us solve the problem so that we are deploying something that is the same all the time.

I did not really notice anything complex or anything you couldn't figure out for yourself or by picking up a phone or looking up the documents. They were able to produce the system within 24 hours from the time the boxes arrived at the data center.

We used an integrator. That experience was not as good as it could have been. There is room for improvement the second or the third time around.

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

Using FlexPod as one product, understand that you are putting yourself in the hands of three of the major technology leaders. You are not only getting a product, an appliance, but you are gaining experience. All these things work together to help you decide for today and tomorrow.

If you want something really fast to deploy, you are going to use a Validated Design; everybody's compliance and all that is taken care of. But you can make a FlexPod-like build and you can later go certify it as a FlexPod design.

Regarding private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments, every solution is here to answer a problem. So the question is: What are the challenges? Based on those you can then use the proper solution. NetApp people usually tell us that the hybrid vision is the best, and I tend to agree with them.

In terms of the solution being innovative for compute, it's very useful for the storage engineer. If there is a problem with the host, he can replace the base hardware and put the intelligence right back in the same box. In that way, every type has been kitted out, without anyone having to rebuild anything from scratch.

We use it to implement our core data center and server environment.

Due to the way the equipment is all together, with its resiliency, typically we have zero downtime. We run simulations for the military, and the lack of downtime is highly important, given the amount of money we run into it. We don't have to worry about downtime.

Having the capability to seamlessly move from different equipment, that's the way to go.

We have found FlexPod to be innovative, when it comes to compute, storage and networking because of the fact that NetApp and Cisco work so closely in streamlining, specifically with Validated Designs. The networking is there. I don't have a problem with transferring from physical to the virtual environment. It allows us to have that seamless storage. We lose hard drives and we don't even know about it because it's so good. The tools provided with the FlexPod allow us to be more efficient with the smaller team that we run.

The most valuable feature of FlexPod is all the vendors' synyergy together. I just have to log in and start working with it. Everything is there, and with the failover I don't even have to worry about the systems too much.

In addition, I live by the Validated Designs. I do exactly what those designs say and I haven't had a problem as a result. For example, they used to do the FCoE. They figured out there was a problem and they went over to the NFS. I moved over and I agreed with them. It worked better.

I would like them to integrate the NVIDIA GRID into the system, so we could easily deploy certain solutions with the FlexPod.

The solution is very resilient, to the point that sometimes we didn't even know it went down, because we don't actually look at our log at times. We find components that were down but it just moves and takes care of itself.

The solution is very stable. Typically, if something goes down, it's a fan or a hard drive. We haven't had any major issues and we've been running FlexPods now for about four years.

The only thing we have scaled are the blades within the UCS. The fact that they allow us to use the same chassis and just swap out the blades, that part was interesting for us. Same idea with the NetApp equipment in the FlexPod. We don't have to worry about the shelves. We can replace just the drives and go higher up on that side. It allows us to scale without doing a full-bore rack replacement.

Because of my environment, we have dedicated teams. We get instantaneous support. So it's not fair for me to answer this question.

We had a mixture of workstations, some rack servers, some floor servers. We knew that wasn't working. We were being pushed to try to virtualize what we could. That's what drove us to it. The fact that we were able to clean up all that, got rid of racks of equipment, it was just the way to go.

The initial setup was straightforward. We sat down with Cisco and NetApp, as well as World Wide, and said, "This is what we want to see." And they built the FlexPod based upon our requirements. After that initial work, everything came in quite easily.

We used a reseller, World Wide Technology. I love them.

I haven't had to put in a request for new rack space. Our footprint is down to two racks that run our entire core. We run multimillion-dollar exercises through it. But it's hard to quantify ROI because we had nothing previously. We weren't keeping track. And then we went to this system. I just know that in the last four years, other than buying some minor upgrades, we haven't spent any money.

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

Go with the FlexPod. It's a very easy solution. There are dedicated minds behind it. You will notice an improvement.

We save time and money with the solution but I don't know how to quantify them because we only have a few physical servers. Everything has been built into it so we haven't had to buy things. So we're not aware of what it would have cost us, by not going with it, because we went all-in on the FlexPod design. Similarly, regarding application performance improvements, I can't say because we went straight into the system.

Regarding thoughts on the solution vis-a-vis private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments, unfortunately, we can't move into a cloud other than private. We're starting to investigate how to do it. I don't know how much of a player it's going to be for us, due to our environment. If we deploy it out, it will be used for private cloud, but we don't do so currently.

Realistically, I would rate it a nine out of ten. There's always room for improvement. 

Our primary use case is virtualization. Most of our virtualized environment runs on FlexPod.

Once you set up the underlying infrastructure, it's very quick to add more capacity or add more compute or networking.

We have also definitely saved time for new service deployments, on the order of many weeks - two months, three months.

Ease of deployment. Once I deploy the chassis and I have the back-end storage, configuring more UCS servers is very quick. I can deploy a new UCS server within minutes.

I would like to see them reduce the complexity, that would be my number one request. Right now, doing simple things is pretty complex. You have so many options. It might be better if it was more wizard-driven, as opposed to going through five hundred dials. It's not very easy or intuitive.

It's stable. We haven't had any issues. We have it deployed for multiple customers and they have all been very stable.

We have found the solution to be resilient. We test it. Before we turned over the product to the customer we did a lot of testing. No single point of failure. VMware, UCS, NetApp, we pulled cables, we did failovers, everything was seamless. Very good.

We have a customer that has five chassis and it scales very well. It is very easy to scale up and wide.

I haven't had any issues, I've called Cisco, NetApp, VMware. It's been pretty good.

We switched to FlexPod because of cost. The cost of our previous solution was too high. I couldn't scale out as easily as I wanted to.

Setup is complex. They don't follow the norms. You expect certain things to be a certain way but once you start deploying you go, "Ah-ha." I found three or four "ah-ha" moments or "gotchas." It wasn't very straightforward. I had to do some digging to find out the right way to deploy it.

I'm not the one who would capture ROI figures, but I'm sure we have seen ROI.

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.

I would suggest doing a mini FlexPod PoC. That is probably the best way to kick the tires and find out what the product is all about.

I have seen an improvement in application performance but I can't attribute that to the UCS or the FlexPod environment because I'm running on an SSD. It doesn't matter if it's FlexPod or not, it'll still run fast.

I haven't really dealt with validated designs. I go to Cisco and grab the product line from there and just deploy according to that. I don't really deviate too much from the already-architected solutions.

In terms of private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments, right now we're only doing private. Private is pretty much doing business as usual, nothing different about it. I haven't really looked into how we can take it to the cloud yet. We don't use FlexPod to manage private cloud.

As for the solution being innovative when it comes to compute, storage, and networking, when UCS came on first, that technology was innovative. I haven't seen much innovation from them recently.

I rate FlexPod at eight out of ten. They still have some room for improvement. As I said, the complexity is still pretty high. If they can get a handle on the complexity part I would give it a nine or ten.

We had a lot of disparate technologies which were spread around to different sites. It was the ability to converge a lot of different data and platforms into a single common platform that we could then scale horizontally and vertically.

I do not have a lot to comment on here.

The next evolution of what we are doing is going to be disaster recovery and business continuity between the US and Canada. In six months, I could give you a different answer.

It is stable. With the partnership that we have with NetApp, and also to a certain extent with VMware, whenever we have a problem, they have been super responsive. From the SnapMirror technology to the NSX platform that sits on top of FlexPod, they have been almost as good, if not better, than the integrator that we originally worked with.

Scale for us was really important. We were taking multiple data centers across the US and Canada and consolidating them into two regional data centers. We did not want all of the out-of-pocket expenses upfront. We knew with the FlexPod that we could scale out as we consumed more of those smaller data centers.

The time to be able to answer our call to the time to get to a technician who understands what we are telling them, and even though they may not be able to help us resolve the problem, they are knowledgeable enough to tell us what to do to prepare to talk with a Tier 2 or 3 type person. Then, from there, there is the ownership to the resolution, then the followup by our account executive.

We were early adopters, and there was some complexity involved. That is why a good integrator partner is important. We are a little bit ahead of the curve, and the market has matured since then. 

After the first FlexPod, the second and third got easier and easier for us to deploy. We are now self-sustaining in the configuration portion of managing it, and also in the ongoing operations.

We are in the process of finalizing our ROI. 

We looked at VxRail, FlexPod, and going to different managed service providers, including going to AWS directly. The FlexPod gave us a quicker time to get up and running. The actual cost and negotiation was on par, if not better, than the other things that we were looking at. The labor to operate it is about 30 percent less than we anticipated.

I would have to rate it a nine, because 10 would be nirvana, where I would just press Next> Next> Next, then it is done. I know life is not that easy, but maybe someday it will be. As far as the technology that I am looking for, it is still at least two or three points above the next competitor.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: My relationship with NetApp goes back about six or seven years, maybe longer. My account executive was on point to make sure that what we were buying would not just sit on the shelf, and what we were buying was actually being used relevant to best practices. He came in on a quarterly basis with a scorecard and report card that would say, "Are we on point? Are we doing the right things that we should be doing? Are we paying attention to the right things?" That brought up a different sense and perception of what I think an account executive should be. The technical engineer who is supporting them as well facilitated a very successful relationship between NetApp and us. It became a very strategic relationship, almost like a partnership. I value that, and I never relied much on technical support because they were always on point before I needed to make a call outside to them.

We have sold to more than 500 clients on FlexPod. It becomes an architecture, so in some cases, they understand the architecture. Then, they say, "Okay, I have another data center, and they can go and recreate it." We have had clients who have bought dozens. Others, we give them the assurance that the application is going to run. Therefore, there are a tremendous amount of attributes to it.

FlexPod is an architecture that a lot of our major customers are running with their most mission critical stuff. The big value proposition is it has been well thought out and well put together. So, it is getting them to get their applications to market more quickly, and it has taken the risk out of their business, because there is less for them to try to figure out.

It is always improving. We went from the first FlexPods, then to All Flash. We are actually sitting here with Cisco at Cisco Live talking about some of the new features in UCS that are coming out and be integrated. So, there is exciting stuff that we probably can't even talk about. Better ways to make it simpler to operate. If it is easy for you to set up, it doesn't matter if the customer doesn't have to do it, and they are enabling us to provide those seamless services, cloud-like services and cloud-like experiences. A lot of stuff is still happening, even though it is an eight year-old product.

It has been in the market for probably eight years now. This might seem old for technology, but it is continually improving in simplicity, performance, and reliability. It is absolutely stable. It is very well tested. There are probably 100 CVDs, so this shows you how much testing they do. We do additional testing, management, and monitoring. Because it is an integrated system, it is a lot easier to monitor, manage, and operate.

FlexPod is primarily built to scale up with your most important applications, but you can scale it out to some degree. There are a lot of different architectures: cloud, hyperconverged, etc., which have different attributes to them. However, when you have your most mission critical stuff and you need it to scale up providing consistent performance, that is really what it was built for.

We put a layer over support. We support the entire FlexPod environment plus applications,  cloud, etc., which is something that you will see with us in delivery. 

NetApp and Cisco have been working together very closely. If we run into a problem where we need support from NetApp or Cisco to support our client, it goes very quickly because they are working together in labs: designing, managing, and supporting these environments.

The FlexPod initial setup is straightforward if you know what you are doing in the data centers. There are simpler things. For FlexPod, you still need IT staff to set it up (that is what we do). We help build it out for the client. It is not a one button thing, and there are some things like that. It is more of an enterprise architecture. It is absolutely straightforward for us to set it up, certify it, and validate it, but there is a lot more to getting applications on it and tying them into the operations.

There are a lot of different ways to measure it, but the ROI is compared to the old way. The old way was quite frankly trying to figure out plumbing:

• What do I do with networking?
• What do I do with storage?
• What do I do with compute?
• How do I make it work together?
• How do I test it?

There are a lot of papers on ROI (8:1, 10:1, and so on). It is pretty easy to understand that I am not doing all this busy work, plumbing, etc. It is coming to me pretty much as an integrated system, and I am delivering an application. There are a lot of different ways to measure it, from business outcomes to what it costs me to do it.

It is a 10 out of 10 for us. We will go in and talk to a client about all things that they are trying to do, from cloud on. A significant percentage come to the conclusion that they want to run their most important stuff on FlexPod architecture.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: At first, businesses did not select a vendor. They thought, "Why wouldn't I just buy all this stuff myself and figure it out." 

Initially, five to six years ago, a lot of companies were organized differently. They had a networking team, a server team, and a storage team, which didn't even agree. We had to help them understand the value of coming together. As people start going in and start thinking, "Okay, I need service-like delivery. I need to compete with cloud, if I'm going to deliver an application in my company. How are other people are doing it?"

So, they had to start figuring out how to consolidate. FlexPod is a converged infrastructure, and they had to use it. There are a few companies that are still a little disorganized, but most of them, even large companies, have come back and said, "I get it, this is why I need to do this."

We sell FlexPod and enable our customers to leverage it to run their data centers.

Based on the fact that our clients can use code to program the system, they are able to deploy solutions that are a lot more reliable. That enables them to focus more on their business, rather than solving technology problems.

• Flexibility
• Programmability 
• Scalability
  

I think they are working on it, but I would like to be able to log into a portal and see the end-to-end solution and understand where it stands, from a supportability perspective. Something like that has been there, in one form or another over the years, but I believe that they're working to make it something that's more well-supported going forward.

It's very stable.

It scales very well, absolutely.

Technical support is knowledgeable, we reach the right person when we contact them. We, ourselves, also provide first-call support for FlexPod.

Setup is very straightforward. We understand the customer requirements. We take those and translate them into the configuration scripts. We can set it up very quickly and reliably and get them into production a lot faster than most traditional solutions.

Our most important criteria when working with or selecting a vendor include their maturity in the market, their customer satisfaction, their NPS score, and their ability to be flexible as a partner to us

I rate FlexPod highly because it was the first converged solution that was supported by all of the vendors at the same time, which is as flexible as it is, from a scalability and supportability perspective.

My advice is to make sure you understand the business requirements and size it appropriately.

It is used as a data storage infrastructure. We also use it for ERP applications, a combination of SYSPRO and SAP. 

Performance-wise, it is actually doing quite well. The end users are very happy with it.

It has improve my organization through cost savings. I belong to a cost center. I need to try and find ways to optimize solutions by actually reducing costs as opposed to running up the bill.

• TS Series storage functionality
• Scalability
• Flexibility
• Rich features

It is fairly stable. I have not heard about any issues since it was deployed.

It is definitely scalable.

I have not used it personally.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

Storage is very expensive. To buy MIC cards and additional storage either on-prem or in the cloud, the IT department does not have money for it, so you need a more niche product or a more flexible way to store your data. That is the benefit that you get from this product.

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.

It is always best to test it, whether in a DevOps environment or do a demo, before actually going fully live. You need to make sure it behaves right in a new environment, because there is no environment that is exactly same as another. It might work on my environment, then you try it on yours and it does not work, then you will blame the product. However, the issue might not be with the product, it might be something else. So, it is very important to make sure that you test it, you do a POC on your environment, and watch its behavior.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

It is a partnership, more than a transactional relationship. You often find if you work for a massive, FMCG company, like AB InBev, that you will not find all the feature sets that you require as off the table products. 

What I want to see:

1. When you engage your customer and say, "This is what you are trying to go through. This is the direction we are trying to go through."
2. Often our customers want required feature sets, which will help our business going forward as well as keeping the vendor fulling aligned.

The use case is that it is running with multiple applications with VMware, and this a two data-center model, Flexpod, along with NetApp storage. It's quite useful.

Prior to FlexPod, we only had a physical environment. At that time we decided that we had to go to a 100 percent virtualized environment. From a physical environment, we were able to work into the FlexPod where we leverage all the virtualizations.

It provides us with a lot of agility, on-demand or through orchestrations. We deliver hundreds of servers. It has created a lot of agility in this environment.

First of all, it's a converter. It's not dependent on, it's not coming with specific storage. I can leverage its multiple storage abilities. We have various kinds of storage in our environment, like IBM or NetApp. We can mix those types of storage with the FlexPod environment.

The biggest problem we have seen is, we were using the vStorage which comes with the NetApp environment, a kind of fiber connect. We were missing fibre channel connectivity and we got lots of I/O errors. This is the one big problem we have faced with FlexPod.

I would like to see more orchestration tools in FlexPod because we virtually end up with integrating the v-orchestration tool within FlexPod. I would like to see something like that included within FlexPod.

We don't see the much DR capability within the FlexPod so for that, we have to maintain our own DR capability with DSRM.

FlexPod is pretty stable. It has worked in this environment for more than five, six years and still, for the next four to five years, there will be some piece of the FlexPod here. It's pretty stable.

There is a scalability issue with the FlexPod in terms of scale out. We always have to go and procure this piece in the data center. We always have to order a new piece of equipment for the FlexPod. That increases the cost.

We have professional support. They are pretty responsive and they support us.

We switched because of the virtualization. We were a completely physical environment and we wanted to go to a virtual environment. That is the reason we went with FlexPod.

Regarding our most important criteria when selecting a vendor, this is a very big organization and there are multiple vendors. So it's all about the partnership. In this organization, we choose the vendor at the very beginning for three years or five years and go with the long term.

Although I was not involved in the initial setup, I saw when we were moving from physical to virtual that it was pretty smooth. The initial challenge was the configuration within the data center. But I don't think it was a technical challenge.

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

I would rate FlexPod as a seven out of 10 because it has gone through a long journey in our organization and we have had pretty good support. The FlexPod environment still exists and, according to the roadmap, it will go to 2020.

In terms of advice, this is all about converged and hyper-converged. If you are looking to convert your environment, then I would definitely suggest going with the FlexPod.