FlexPod XCS Reviews

We primarily use it to provide compute resources for customers. It is basically a data center in a box, and it performs very well for us.

The biggest benefit for us, as a partner, is the ease of implementing it. Because the configuration tends to be relatively consistent, we have a series of configuration templates that we can just pretty much stamp out on demand. I can do an entire data to center deployment in under a day now.

It scales well. It allows us to have very flexible architecture but to have the same level of simplicity that we'd normally expect in hyper-converged environments.

I'd like to see a little bit simpler management pane. Using UCS Director to front everything is good and UCS Director is a good product and it's priced well for what it does, but for a lot of that upper mid-market, it's probably a little bit of overkill for what they need. They just want a nice, simply portal to go through and see what's going on. So if there was something that was middle of the road, it would be well received.

The stability has been awesome.

Technical support is very good. We've been very happy with the response we've received. I feel they guide us through the entire process. I don't necessarily get the right person the first time when calling, but I don't think you ever get that with a Support Desk.

We were just building stacks by hand. We were strongly encouraged by Cisco - we partner with them - and when the platform began to get some traction, we looked into it and got on board.

For me, the most important thing when working with a vendor is the flexibility. We have great partner relationships with Cisco and NetApp, but it's the flexibility of the platform and the product, the way we can sell and implement it, that makes it really easy for us.

The setup is not complex but there are a lot of moving pieces. There are a lot of components to go through and touch and configure the very first time, but once you get a couple under your belt it's very easy to go through and stamp it out from there. If you follow the standardized templates and the design guides, it takes a lot of the work out of it.

My advice is to read the design guides, that is the most important thing. Also, work with an integrator wherever possible.

I rate FlexPod an eight out of 10. If there was a simpler management pane, maybe a little bit more flexibility in terms of multiple hypervisors in a single deployment, I would rate it higher. But aside from those issues, we're very happy.

I am working on a FlexPod environment, though it is not the exact FlexPod box from NetApp. Our environment is custom made, resembling FlexPod with UCS chassis, NetApp storage, and Cisco MDS. We have five HA pairs and a MetroCluster, along with Cisco MDS in front and Brocade as back-end switches (for MetroCluster).

It is a very well-thought-out solution with great virtualization. A good option we have is mapping a storage LUN onto an ESX cluster. That way, in case a particular ESX is down, it can migrate (using vMotion) to another host in the cluster, resulting in high-availability.

The ability to create vDisks on NFS exports is an added advantage. This is very helpful when we reach RDM limit.

Currently, the only issue we have is with our backup solution. We have SnapProtect from NetApp as our backup tool. While taking VM backups, SnapProtect’s requirements say that all VMDKs should be on the same datastore, but from the VMware perspective, all VMDKs should be spread out. This is an ambiguity that we have in our environment.

The solution is really good but with 7-Mode I would rate it at seven out of 10. With NetApp  Cluster Mode the rating is higher.

• Ease of use
• Easy expandability
• They're quick to respond.

We haven't had a single problem with it yet.

It has improved the way our organization functions tenfold. We can deploy servers, storage, and everything else quickly. When we need to expand, we can do that quickly as well. It's just easier all around.

It has helped us grow. As our casinos grow, it has helped us expand and add the storage and everything which we need. It has given us the performance and stability that we need for applications, and it has allowed us to expand our Disaster Recovery (DR) and backup strategies.

I would like to see a little bit more monitoring. OnCommand Unified Manager is great. It just kind of gives you a really good high-level overview. So, I would like to see a little more detail.

We have had it for six years.

Extremely stable. We haven't had a single problem. It has never gone down. Our upgrades are within an hour, so our uptime is incredible.

Scalability is also extremely easy. In fact, right now, we're looking at HCI for its scalability as well. I don't see another product out there that's as scalable as NetApp.

We've just started adding additional heads for clusters. We went to cluster mode last year. So, we've added in some cluster switches, and we've started scaling out.

We have used them, but very rarely. When we do use them, they have always been really quick to respond. Getting knowledgeable people on the phone pretty quickly. It doesn't seem like you ever have to go through so many hoops just to trying to diagnose a problem. It's been extremely valuable.

We didn't have any centralized storage at all. When we purchased it originally, it was all to expand and growth, and everything else. NetApp was our vendor of choice.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was pretty straightforward. Since then, we've swapped our controllers, and all that has been pretty straightforward. We have not had any problems with it being too complex.

The price point is pretty competitive. I'm pretty happy with where the price is right now, but it can always be cheaper!

I think the valuable features of FlexPod are the integration with several products, especially when it comes to the support model.

If I have any issues, whether it is with be VMware, NetApp, or Cisco, I can call one place and I can get support. It doesn't matter which one I call. I think it's one of the most valuable pieces of it.

Its architecture has been proven, it works together, and it is trusted.

We are using a Citrix VDI implementation. We are about 99% virtualized, so pretty much everything that we do, from the desktop to the servers, is virtualized.

I like how everything just kind of works together. It's been one of those things that have been proven. There are White Papers, a trusted design, and support models. Those are the kinds of things that companies look for. We know there is going to be backing and help when something goes wrong.

We can reduce our team and it has saved us money because it works quickly. In the past, we've gone with other third-party vendors and other products. We ended up having to pay more money in the long run. Going with the FlexPod solution means that we have all the pieces. Having a proven solution and knowing that it works gives us peace of mind and ease of management.

It could always be better.

We have been using this solution for three years.

It is a stable solution. I can't remember the last time we had any kind of major outage.

Up to the point where we needed to replace our controllers on our storage, it had been pretty scalable. I think there is a time when we have to refresh some of the products.

When we needed to, we used the technical support. They were very helpful. It was easy to contact somebody. If one team didn't know the answers, they would be in touch with the other team. That's nice about having a FlexPod team that knows each other's products a little bit, so they can help you resolve your issues.

We worked with CDW consulting to do the setup and the configuration. It went pretty smoothly.

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.

Do your research. They all have their own niches. Don't go cheap. That's one thing we've learned: Just because you might see another vendor who offers something a little cheaper, it is not necessarily the best. It might not have the White Papers or the proven technology that works together. That's what is nice about FlexPod, that you do have those elements. This has been working together for many years. They had this relationship with these other companies and you know you'll have the support behind it.

Obviously, the most valuable feature is the fact that it's one SKU. Basically, if we have an issue with any one of our features – whether it's VMware, Cisco or the NetApp – they pull everybody together and they work together to solve the issue. It's a one-stop shop. Any issue we have, it's not a matter of that vendor, this vendor or the other vendor. We make one call, they all pull together and they fix it.

FlexPod has just simplified it, really. As I’ve mentioned, they all work together. We’ve had it verified that it works together. We know we don't have any sort of device issues, driver issues and so on. We know that if we upgrade the NetApp, the UCC is supported, the Cisco switches are supported. If we upgrade the Cisco switches, we know that they've verified that the version we're going to is going to work and we're not going to have any issues. It makes upgrading much simpler, more secure, safer for us.

My one little pet peeve with all of them is that it's still multiple interfaces. I went to a UCC seminar and they said something like, "Use UCC to run everything." You go to VMware and I know VMware's going to run everything. You go to NetApp and they say something like, “No, no, no. NetApp's going to run on everything.” It would be nice if someone could create a pane that does it all.

It’s not because we purchased each component on our own and had it verified. We've actually bought two FlexPods recently for our voice mail implementation, switching over from Avaya, I think, to Cisco. We bought mini FlexPods for that. There still isn’t a single pane.

When I went to the Cisco UCC seminar a couple of years ago, they said something like, "We can run PowerShell scripts against it, so you can build your structure.” If someone in UCC wants to provision storage, they can do it from that pane. With VMware, you have the SMVI interface. I've gone to the NetApp Insight conference for three years now. The first year, I went to an SMVI session where the guy said something like, "No, no, no; SMVI's going to do everything for you, from VMware." There's still that disconnect. That could be improved.

If I go to NetApp System Manager, it would be great if there was a tie-in to UCC, a tie-in to VMware, versus having to go to three distinct apps. Right now, if I provision the storage for VMware, I provision the storage, then I have to pass it off to the VMware guys. They have to go mount it, and then I have to go back to it to set up my SMVI jobs. That part gets a little annoying.

We don't have any stability issues. No problems there. It's just solid.

We didn't buy the actual FlexPod as a unit. We got it verified as a FlexPod. We actually kind of built it piecemeal. We bought the individual components and then had it verified for FlexPod. We've actually had no issues expanding that, growing any portion of it, whatsoever. We actually added 20 UCC blades; no issues. Since I've been there, in two years, we've gone from 1.5 PB to 3 PB; again, no issues, no worries.

We use technical support all the time. They're very good. I've not had to deal with the whole TAC issue, with all of them pulling together. We actually did just have an issue with one of our UCC upgrades on one system. We made one phone call. NetApp got pulled in, VMware got pulled in, and Cisco got pulled in. They figured out the issue and they solved it. In that respect, the support's fantastic.

We actually have an account manager that's dedicated to us. Any time we don't get an answer right away, we can get to her and she escalates it. We get our answers pretty quickly.

I've actually been working with NetApps for 15 years now, way before FlexPods; the 800 series, way back when; had a StoreVault for a little while and then the 2200 series. Working with Icon is my first leap from the small business to a global enterprise.

Go with it. Seriously. There are a lot of solutions out there. Converged infrastructure's trying to push its way in. We've looked at it. Maybe for a small company starting out, it might be okay but it won't scale to the level that the FlexPod can scale to, have the same performance, and guarantee that you're going to have it all work together.

It does what it says it's going to do. It makes life much easier all around. It's not a solution where you have to sit there and say, "Is this switch going to work with this system?" The systems are more complicated, they’re more complex, the bandwidth is faster. Anytime you have an issue or a mismatch in config, hardware, drivers, and so on, you're going to have a big issue down the line. Being able to be in a FlexPod, where they're sitting there saying, "No, if you buy this piece, you buy this piece and you buy this piece, we guarantee it's going to work," that's a huge, huge plus.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with are responsiveness and ease of use; those two are the biggest. The technology's pretty similar across the board. They all do what they say they're going to do. I haven't worked with EMC. I hear that, for each level, you need to know different commands, different stuff. With NetApp, being able to go from a 2200 series to an 8040 series with the same commands is fantastic. I like that, and they are very responsive. Ease of use, responsiveness and performance, of course, but, as I’ve mentioned, they all do what they say they're going to do, pretty much.

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."

• It's a validated architecture, so it's fairly simple to implement.
• The support is unified, so troubleshooting becomes less complicated. 
• It's very easy to expand the solution for performance and capacity growth.

Turnkey. When we put the solution in place, they're able to use the platform within a day of us being complete. It's very quick to implement.

From its prime competitor, seeing some sort of an architecture around cloud built into the solution would be great, whether that's UCS Director or vRealize Automation, something that's got a validated architecture that's ready to go for that solution would be useful.

Because it's all based off of mature hardware with UCS and NetApp and Cisco across the board, it's a very stable platform, it's very quick. There are always little things that we can improve here and there, and configuration changes depending on what the customer is doing. But for the most part, it's a very fast solution and simple to work with.

There are configuration maximums of each platform. I've yet to see an environment that we've hit those numbers on yet, but with the technologies that NetApp is releasing with All Flash, and the new blades from Cisco, we keep getting ahead of any kind of limits with technology advances.

Most technical support issues that we have with the solution as a whole are usually around specific components, a failed drive or a bad blade; generally equipment that hasn't been burned in yet so it's dead-on-arrival, and we don't know it until we get it set up. Generally, we've had pretty good luck with such equipment getting turned around pretty quickly, so we can leave the site with everything fully functional.

I'm involved in most processes from scoping the solution and design through implementation and sometimes support.

Setup for Flexpod is pretty much cut and dry. Our methodology leverages the configuration worksheets that Cisco and NetApp have put together. We have those pre-filled and vetted by the client before we arrive on site. When we get on site it's a very procedural-based implementation. The unknowns are generally limited to a handful of items and we can work through those pretty quickly. The setup is very simple, and very scripted.

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.

Don't just buy the solution that your sales guy is trying to sell you. Understand what your needs are, understand what your I/O requirements and capacity requirements are, and leverage the sales team's engineers to truly devise the solution that you're going to actually take advantage of. 

Don't get caught up in price, initially. The sales teams can always work on price. Focus on what the solution is going to do for you, and is it actually going to meet your needs. Then deal with price after that.

I'd say the ease of how we can manage it. That is something I personally like. It means I have to do less work. I manage storage, so with the ease with which we can understand, and then share it to the VMware. We create datastores and we share and all that is easy. Not very difficult.

Sharing over internet. We don't need too many FC connections for that. We just need ethernet connections and we can export it to the virtual machines and to the ESX actually.

We have both the solutions actually. The part where we are right now, yes, it is better. And we are looking forward to going for the hyper-converged one as well.

We're not exactly with FlexPod, but we have NFS shares and all. Somehow, if we can dig into the end user who is using that share, and who is populating how much data into that. I don't know, maybe it's already there, but to all the people I've talked with, I haven't heard about it.

So if that can be included, that would be good. We have some tools like OCI's and all. So if we can find from there, who is the end person who's using the share - and sometimes they over utilize it - and if you can find out who, to that level, if we can dig down, that'll be good for the administration point of view.

The performance could be improved. Because it's over network, I don't know if they have to improve something on the NetApp end, because over the network it slows down when it's compared to the fiber channel network. If they can, that would be wonderful.

In our environment FlexPod has been used for, I think, more than three years now.

It's stable. We don't face a lot of issues often, but sometimes we do face them, performance wise. If the load is increased, sometimes that way. We do get issues, but we are able to resolve them and they are manageable.

Yes, we can scale. We are actually now scaling our environment, including FlexPod on our roadmap, and it does scalability.

For the cases we have, sometimes the issues which we get, we do raise NetApp cases with the team. We use it.

They're good. They're helpful. They're spot on time, that's one good thing. We like it. NetApp is way, way better than some others that we've had really bad times with.

I'm new to my new project, so probably yes, there would have been something, which they have replaced with FlexPod. But I don't know what was replaced, to be honest.

They switched because they wanted better performance and we are especially using FlexPod for datastores over the network. It's more feasible, I'd say. Performance wouldn't be as good as SAN. But still, it is a better solution.

I wasn't involved. I just joined, like a year back. So I wasn't involved when this was procured and all.

I am involved in an upgrade right now. The process is not very complex. Actually, NetApp is helping us, so I wouldn't say they're very complex. They're non-disruptive. That's something which matters to our customer. No down-time so that's what we like about it.

I think I could, maybe, do the upgrade without NetApp's help.

Our industry is management services, Tarragon Consultancy, one of the biggest groups for management services. I think across the industry, FlexPod is a good one, to get convergence of everything in one place; we can get the computer storage and then we can export everything. It's good.