FlexPod XCS Reviews

• Pretty much a single phone number to call when there is a problem.
• Ease of use
• Manageability for the storage system

It is valuable, because it is easy. Easy to use, so we don't spend a whole lot of time learning new products out there. That is a major plus.

It definitely made an impact to how we manage our data. We recently have a new data center, and we migrated our data from one of the older storage solutions out there to an all NetApp environment.

Tighter integration with CISCO.

Since 2013.

It's very stable. We haven't really had any major issues with the FlexPod solution in all four years.

I find it very easy to scale upwards and horizontally, as well. It's very easy for us to scale up by adding either additional controllers or additional storage shelves.

We have used tech support. They are very knowledgeable and very prompt in getting back to us.

We have engaged technical support to assist us on a lot of different things. Whenever we have a case open, and if we think it requires some escalation, we have a SAM and they make sure we get the resources that we need and get back to normal operations within a short period of time.

Before Flexpod, we had other Meta app systems going back to 2008.

We're a health system company, so we have a number of different storage solutions. However FlexPod, it has everything.

We still have a few solutions because some applications have their specific storage systems, and being in the health industry, those applications are usually approved by FDA, and it's not something which can be changed at will.

I was involved in the initial setup. It's pretty straightforward.

The most valuable feature is the converge nature of having compute storage on the network in one rack. We are able to use the virtual switching to add multiple networks, DMZs and sub-nets to be able to use the resource of the FlexPod itself. We are running the full gamut for minding business applications and web applications. We're also using the virtual switch pieces to run our Citrix environment that's also running on FlexPod.

It's greatly reduced the complexity of network storage and compute. It allows us to deliver services quicker. We can provision faster, we have great use of templates, so we can spin things up in minutes and provide services.

It probably already is in the product now, but at the time, we didn't have a really great SSD shelf that you can just plug and play in there. I know it is present today, but that was the only feature we were looking for at the time. There are probably some nuances in how the network and those types of things work. Maybe it could have more templates. Other than that, it's a great product.

We've been using for eight to ten years and we never had any downtime. It's been a great product for us.

In terms of stability, FlexPod has been great. I don't think we've ever had any downtime.

Scalability's been great. We've actually added shelves, we've got blades, and we've added storage. We even extended our presence inside the environment because of what we like inside the FlexPod itself.

In terms of technical support, it’s all been great. We have Phone Home support, which we haven't used very often at all. Any time we've needed any support at all, it's always been first rate.

I was involved in the initial discussions, evaluation, and purchase decision. My IT team was actually the hands-on team that did the setup of the FlexPod. Once we got it installed, got a little bit of knowledge transfer, they really enjoyed it. The solution brought everything together. It made it a lot easier to deliver services, because compute stores and networks weren't these discrete components they had to work on separately.

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.

Take a look at the product. If you go through your requirements and have to redo either your virtual environment or some of your SAN storage, look at putting your compute storage and network together.

I'm on the network side, so I don't have to deal with the NetApp side too much. However, I am on the network side and I really love the fact that I can just swap out blades as fast as I can. We have the M4s in our FlexPod. I personally love it. We are running VMware. We are running a standard data center with domain controllers, Exchange, and primarily Microsoft products.

The main improvement is speed. If you need to troubleshoot or if anything goes wrong, you can swap it out extremely fast. It will rebuild itself and you are up and running in hours at most.

I know that there's a lot of features that area already out. We are the DOD, and we are two steps behind. We know of a lot of features that we're excited to move to, but we can't yet. In terms of improvement, I would focus on cost. It can be a little bit expensive.

The features are great. We know of things that are in the newer releases, and they will be great once we get access to them. This includes solid state drives that will speed up our connectivity.

We've had very few stability problems with it. It's been a very great product for us. Maybe one of these days we can move over to the new and improved SF.

We had to grow and we've added blades. We upgraded our NetApp appliances in it. So we have grown as the organization required. It has been simple to scale up.

We have NetApp support that covers us for anything that we need. We do have a very talented engineer that runs it on our side, so he doesn't have too many challenges. On the Cisco side, the UCF side, which is my domain, we go directly to Cisco and they help us with any issues we ever have. They are knowledgeable and helpful.

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.

Give it a shot. Call your vendors and just get it. They'll demo it for you, so use that. It is important to demo everything first, because there is a lot of money on the line just for a "I guess this might work out for us.”

One of the most valuable features is that I have one vendor that I have to contact to go to all my vendors. I don’t have to call Cisco, NetApp, VMware. I just make one call to one of them, they bridge all of that for me; that's nice.

Also, with the documented architecture, it's not something that we're testing right off the bat; it's been proven and it works.

It allowed us to streamline support tickets that come in. We don't have to call three different vendors. I just call one and they take care of all of that for us. It's been very helpful.

Each individual solution has its own cost benefit. It really fit within our organization. We had a lot of the existing technology there. We were just missing a couple pieces of it. So, once we got those pieces, we were able to certify it with FlexPod. We didn't need to buy too many new pieces. It fit into our original architecture.

We have cut down on the management team running FlexPod compared to our previous system. We've reallocated one FTE so far because of it. We can do more things with fewer people on the team.

I know there's some new Cisco stuff coming down the road that we might be looking at. UCS Minis: I know that they're going to be supported right off the bat.

Nothing's perfect. There's always room to increase: more hyper-conversions; smaller form factor is always on our mind; better ways to align disk up for us; how can we split off our disk correctly for each HA pair that we have, from a cluster standpoint.

There was a little mixup with, at least NetApp, coming to the market with flash. They've slowly gained ground in that marketplace; I’m waiting to see how that plays out. I know Mars was trying to be a big hit for them and then when they dissolved, that kind of set me back a little bit from a time standpoint. Mars was their all-flash platform; something separate from WAFL that we're doing with ONTAP. That had me looking at that infrastructure. That's the only reason why they lost a few points in my rating.

I have been using it for about three-and-a-half years.

It is a stable infrastructure. We've haven't had any major outages in the past three-and-a-half years since implementing it. There's been no downtime from a hardware standpoint that we weren't able to address quickly.

It is very easy to scale out the infrastructure, add more pieces to it as we needed; just kind of plug and go. That’s very easy.

That depends on when I call. Cisco is a little bit more difficult than some of the other ones, but calling it up has been great. They've bridged that gap a couple times at VMware as well.

We were using a mixture of Dell and HP solutions. We were using Dell 910s for a lot of our ESX environment. We were using old Cisco MDS switchers for fiber channel. We were able to consolidate all that infrastructure down and use one standard platform coming off the Nexus.

My engineers worked with one of our strategic partners to help implement the solution. It has been, from a design standpoint, much easier to get set up and running, and much faster than doing it outside of FlexPod.

We haven’t had any technical issues with getting it set up or with running it; none at all. I'm very happy.

It's a little more expensive to go down the FlexPod route, but I think the ease of management in having all the vendors aligned really helps us in the long run. There is more upfront cost, but less down the road that we have to pay; maintenance and support, man-hours, actually managing the system.

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.

Make sure you get all your requirements up front. Make sure that the protocols that you want to use are supported by your vendor. There are a lot of niche players out there that will say they will do something. When you get them onsite, they don't or they don't perform as well. We were looking at a couple of other flash providers, including Nutanix and Tintri.

Bringing them onsite for a demo works great, but when you start talking to people who actually use the solution... We found that in the demos, they couldn't live up to the promises they were making, or it didn't make sense to add more infrastructure in. I can't get rid of my core NetApp infrastructure, so it didn’t really make any sense to add another storage vendor in, and increase the complexity. Using FlexPod has been simpler than adding in another vendor.

NetApp might be a little more expensive but in the long run, it pays off for itself.
I’ve been very happy with their technical ability, their technical delivery, and the usability; it’s very easy.

I would say that the interoperability matrix tool (IMT) is the most valuable feature as it helps us define versions and components we use in our configurations.

This allows us to know what versions everything needs to be at, and we have one pane of glass to view that at.

I think a little bit about some of the other models, especially in the hyper-converged space where you add storage and compute at the same time, but on the converged side of things you add each as needed and not both.

Mixed – we’ve had a couple different issues with upgrading. Upgrading one vendor without the other has been difficult, e.g. to upgrade Cisco you need to upgrade NetApp etc.

I would say medium – it’s hard to move between one FlexPod to another, you fill one up its hard to move off of it.

Historically it’s been bad, but recently it got better. Previously, opening a FlexPod case was difficult you had to go from one vendor to another, now its better and they are using FlexPod back channels more, but it was difficult.

I would say setup was complex – most of the people who set up the first FlexPod have left and the upgrades have been modular and there are independent teams with that and that issue goes back to the scalability because were adding storage and compute at different times.

I think it depends on how you are organized. If you have hardware and storage in the same leadership chain its great. I think one of the reasons that we have pain, is that it doesn’t fit our business organization very well because we have two separate managers and therefore, there is stepping on toes.

The features that are the most valuable to me are the simplified setup and administration, and the scalability of the system.

FlexPods are very easy to setup and maintain, and they are scalable. That brings a high level of value to companies because the system can be upgraded and utilized for many years.

A unified interface for all the components would be a great start. Since FlexPods are a mixture of three different technologies, each component must be separately administered.

I have been using and installing FlexPods for the past three years. I have installed FlexPods in multiple environments as well as with multiple models of hardware.

Each deployment is different for every client. The use of the FlexPod architecture is different nearly every time in some fashion. Any issues that arise come more from a design aspect than the actual FlexPod itself. Clients tend to design around their needs, and the FlexPod is flexible enough to accommodate, if installed correctly.

FlexPods are wonderful for tech support and customer service. Because it is a mixture of three different technologies, Cisco and NetApp and VMware have worked out a deal that you can call any of their support numbers and they’ll get the other vendors on the line as needed to troubleshoot your problems. This is a great way to handle things, instead of you having to call each vendor separately and being given the run-around.

Many companies have used different solutions in the past. Blade server and bare metal servers have been around for a long time, but Cisco got it right with UCS. The UCS computing platform is the key to making a FlexPod what it is, and the primary reason for clients to choose it for their computing needs.

The initial setup of each component is very simple, and usually taking only a few minutes for each. Once each part is setup, it then becomes more complex to integrate them together. Typically, a good FlexPod setup, following the validated designs, can take four to five days to build, then another couple days to verify.

I am the vendor, so I do the delivery of the FlexPod and installation and configuration. My advice for implementation is to have a qualified, knowledgable vendor either do the installation, or assist. I am not saying this from a business standpoint, but from personal knowledge of the product. It is something that can be done by anyone, but it would take less time and be setup with best practices in mind if you get someone who knows what they are doing.

ROI is very difficult to truly quantify, but as far as pricing goes, it totally depends on the size of the system and what components you desire. Because the FlexPod is really just an architecture based on standards, pricing can range all over the place. For small businesses, you might want a FlexPod mini. For larger corporations, you might want multiple FlexPod installations.

Licensing is also an interesting topic since you will need to license UCS for the number of chassis as well as rack servers. NetApp needs to be licensed by the features you intend to use. Nexus licensing is based on the number of ports in the switch if I remember correctly. Then it comes down to what kind of installation you’re doing for any additional licensing. If you’re installing VMware, you need licensing for that product. If you chose to install Hyper-V, then licensing is different. If you choose Oracle Linux, or Windows, or something else, licensing changes again. What I suggest if to get a vendor in to help discuss and design the FlexPod around the needs of the company.

FlexPod is is not really a product, but more of an architecture based on Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS), Cisco Nexus Switches, and NetApp Storage. It is one of the best unified computing architectures out there, and is highly scalable.

FlexPods are perfect for nearly any environment, can be scaled out to fit the needs of the company, have longevity, and can be managed globally. Get a vendor who knows what they are doing and they can help you be successful.

Our primary use case for the solution is running critical infrastructure, and we deploy it on-premises

The storage efficiency and performance are valuable.

The solution could be improved by including automation for user updates.

We have been using the solution for nine years.

The solution is scalable. I rate it a nine out of ten.

The solution is scalable. I rate it a nine out of ten.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support, but it takes a while for them to attend to critical issues. I rate them a six out of ten.

Neutral

I rate the initial setup an eight out of ten.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use it for virtualizing infrastructure and also for the virtual cloud system.

It gives us pretty solid support from either Cisco or NetApp as well as an all-in-one infrastructure. We don't need a storage expert to manage everything for us.

• Easy management
• High performance 
• A single point of support

It's pretty stable. There is a small issue with the NetApp and another small issue with Cisco UCS plates, there is a failed disk, but we got a replacement right away so it's pretty solid.

It's very easy to extend it, add more chassis, more storage capacity.

We use both NetApp and Cisco for support. I would rate the support at eight out of 10.

Before FlexPod we were using IBM. We switched because it's all about unifying the systems, converging the systems. We felt we should have a solution from network to storage to the server, and computing power, from the same vendor, all in one solution; not take pieces from different vendors and put them together.

When choosing a vendor the most important criteria are the vendor's reputation and tech support.

We bought a few chassis because we have different locations, different data centers. For the first location, we got help from NetApp and Cisco. For the next few locations, we mostly did it by ourselves.

We initially spoke with Cisco and they recommended this solution.

I would advise doing a proof of concept, see it first.

Overall, I would rate FlexPod an eight out of 10. It's fast, solid, and it keeps improving, adding new features. The support is very good. There have even been times we didn't realize there was an issue and we have automatically received a replacement; all through "call home."