FlexPod XCS Reviews

We primarily use FlexPod for tier-one applications. We leverage it for ONTAP systems, and sometimes for general-purpose systems as well. XMPPROL speaks around it for ECM, PPM, and CIM, and sequential notifications.

Normally, we use FlexPod internally. XCS comes from Cisco and NetApp, meaning they come together to build a system that satisfies the better-designed CVD.

We are in the finance and banking industry. 

Simplifying operations is more relevant to FlexPod because we transfer its benefits to subsidiaries as we are a group, enabling better collaboration and support.

FlexPod has helped reduce troubleshooting time for architectural configurations. It reduces troubleshooting time, and we don't worry about downtime. Moreover, it gives us more flexibility to control over our system. FlexPod and Cisco UCS offer advanced features that enable flexible configurations and movements compared to traditional systems.

For example, nine years ago, a compatibility issue took us nearly a month to solve. With FlexPod, it wouldn't be a good comparison, but at least for most troubleshooting, the community-controlled aspect helps. It's the upper layer of FlexPod, not FlexPod itself. Some issues like OS-based problems still need individual solutions, but for infrastructure-related matters, FlexPod helps significantly.

The GUI setup follows the right setup, meaning we have to follow the CVDi.e. Certified Validated Design. Everything is clear, because you can build CI yourself, but without rules, it can be messy. 

With FlexPod, there are rules to follow, making it more standardized. This helps with troubleshooting and compatibility assessments, simplifying troubleshooting significantly.

We also use FlexPod pre-validated architectures to validate the design. It is very, very important to us because we had a bad case in 2015 where separate items integrated poorly due to no version or firmware compatibility certification. Troubleshooting became a nightmare. So, standards are crucial for us, and everything entering production should be verified or at least documented for certification.

FlexPod should focus more on automation. Integrating an automation tool with FlexPod would enable customers to leverage automation capabilities.

More automation would be helpful. Currently, we contribute a lot of effort through some automation. But with good playbooks or similar tools, transforming infrastructure would be easier for any user.

We have been using it since 2019. So, it has been four years since we started using it. 

For me, it is stable. In the running time, there is no issue. There is no problem with firmware incompatibility. 

Sometimes, for example, RAM memory fails or something. It happens sometimes due to the physical, which can happen. And for the last two years, the ratio of RAM error has been a little bit higher. Just two years ago, a little bit high. 

For example, in two months, there were two RAM error cases, but not from XCS. No error anymore. It happens sometimes. And sometimes, for example, the controller installation can have errors. Sometimes, we have to do the replacement. It's physical, and it's the minus point.

We need to separate the stability into two lines. The first line is about the logical operation, and the second is about the physical operation. For physical operation, examples include RAM memory error, SIP error, controller solid error, or something else. So, I would rate the stability a seven out of ten. 

But for compatibility and logical stability a nine out of ten.  

The system is designed for easy scaling. Because we define everything clearly. So when we plug the system in, we apply the profile, and it scales easily. 

But it might require additional things beyond physical aspects. We have over 15,000 end users in our enterprise. 

In Vietnam, the remote support itself is okay, with no major issues. But, in my opinion, they need more local teams to support customers with case studies. That would definitely improve things.

Two things come to mind. First, they should have some spare parts stocked locally for faster replacements. 

Second, they need more technical expertise on-site. Sometimes, the current support isn't just about fixing the system but also understanding its nuances.  

Neutral

We used some IBM FlexSystems, but they're now retired and discontinued. We also used a non-FlexPod platform but didn't follow the CVD guidelines. 

After four or five years with that, we migrated to the certified FlexPod for better stability and standardization.

We switched to FlexPod for its certified design and better support.

I had the technical background for the basic deployment. 

Normally, we use the documentation. We follow that guide, except for the FlexPod integration guide, and follow it from end to end for our system as well. So, it means that we do it manually.

Deployment is not exactly easy, but a different team handles it, and the technical team seems experienced. So they can get the job done.

At least they have some clear visuals in the system. That makes design easier, and FlexPod documents are better. It's good, not great. 

Sometimes, they miss clinical terms, which isn't ideal for long-term system stability.

When investing in FlexPod, we compare it to the existing system, like a right-now system, where cost savings come from negotiation, not necessarily FlexPod itself. As developers, we have to consider various factors.

At least, we have standardized operations to follow. While we don't focus on price now, it hasn't shown to be more expensive compared to traditional non-CI systems. We analyze costs before investing in CI and FlexPod.

We haven't actually encountered situations where it directly freed up budgets for other projects. When we invest in a system like FlexPod, it's mainly to provide internal services.

Normally, when we decide to invest, say in FlexPod, we need to present evidence and justifications to the procurement team. We usually have annual financial plans for technology investments, so it's not like sudden budget shifts. However, at least we have that yearly plan in place.

We have another management index where we have another measurement. For example, that's just how we checklist-discuss the investment based on the revenue. Those from revenues, as an example, five percent or six percent, if you make the investment under those percentages, it's acceptable. 

We don't have a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for those. As long as it's below the investment budget the organization set at the beginning of the year, it's okay. And it doesn't affect the business's growth.

But if it affects your business role, then it's a problem.

The pricing is not cheaper, but stability is more important for us now. We focus on business gains, not static numbers. 

Following XCS rules ensures a stable environment, which is crucial. 

For me, Cisco is perfect. But NetApp is more reasonable. 

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.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. If FlexPod can improve support, maybe it can be a nine, but at least the spare parts and local support team are not perfect.  

It depends on the scale of the system. If your system requires a very high standard and you have thousands of VMs, like 5,000 to 6,000, you should consider FlexPod. Because at that scale, you would use less time for physical management. System stability is very important, so FlexPod is one of the best solutions.

Most of my customers have separate server, network and storage teams. Therefore, bringing UCS together with NetApp storage, which makes a FlexPod, speaks to my customers' use cases. We are able to carve it up for almost everything, whether it is for HyperVisor's such as VMware ESXi or bare-metal Linux / Windows servers. My customers love the option to carve it up as they like and use their existing storage investments treating the marriage of compute and storage as a "FlexPod", more a platform. Again, it covers off almost every use case my customers have.

The deployment really depends on what the customer is trying to achieve, in-house IT skillsets, budget and other variables will need to be considered. I have customers who are proponents of everything SaaS with a bit of cloud and customers with SaaS, Cloud and on-premises taking a balanced approach to realize an Hybrid "Multi-Cloud" environment. Others that are pairing SaaS with on-premises, and some, only SaaS with remote workers. I also have customers that remain all on-preemies because of the nature of their data. So, my stance is hybrid multi-cloud infrastructure in the end but I look at all the solutions out there, bring the right pieces together trying to achieve, with my customers a hybrid environment. Lots of stuff in-between and many pause at various places on this journey, whether it is to pivot to new technology previously unavailable, re-assess and or build budget for their "the next steps". Hybrid is where to land, where I think all companies are going to land. There will be many variations like a 70/30 or 80/20 split. We just don't know. It all depends on the customer, use case and workloads!

Most of my customers, if not all of them, have a VMware vSphere ecosystem. FlexPod integrates everything in so you can see it all, full visibility into the infrastructure. This is super important for our customers because they want to use fewer tools in the environment. IT admins, in storage and compute, even networking want to be able to use the same toolsets, reducing or consolidating the tools and even vendors. Then, the customer will achieve more streamlined operations and can more quickly see where problems exist within the environment; reducing the mean-time to resolution.

FlexPod, UCS offers a good GUI with easy management. With the management, you can see the inventory of both the storage and compute. There is good integration here and offers a close single pane of glass of management. Most of my customers go to the NetApp GUI, vCenter, and or Cisco UCSM. However, you can see it all under UCSM (Central / Intersight) or VMware vCenter to manage it all. FlexPod provides easy management with a close single pane of glass with good alerting to see the infrastructure as a whole!

VMware vSphere (Hypervisor's) lean heavily on memory. With Cisco UCS, on the compute side, we can get really dense memory hosts to support many virtual machines. With ESXi, we can easily support 50 VMs per host or more. With the FlexPod configuration, we see low latency and fast storage.

The validated designs (CVD's) are important for exploring technology that I haven't touched or seen in-depth. We use the CVD's to get a better understanding of the technology and use it as a roadmap to get customers to that "desired end state".

A lot of my customers don't take advantage of automation but with UCS, software defined templates, policies and pools are heavily used and save time. Generally, you make templates to help with the automation of provisioning of server, network and storage configurations. Cutting a server from a template, creating a server profile, pre-configures compute, network and NetApp storage. This is super important because it reduces the time to deploy a host and or virtual machines.

The traditional UCS Blades do not take much storage internally. You would be challenged to create an HCI (Hype converged Infrastructure) solution on FlexPod / UCS or any other solution that pools internal storage. Now, with UCS X-Series, you can carve off an HCI solution, software defined pooled solution if you want. This was one area of improvement that I wanted to see and can now realize with the refresh of the Cisco UCS infrastructure.

With modern modular infrastructure, RESTful API has been added, there are more integrations, ServiceNow and vCenter along with tighter plug-ins. There is cross-user interface launching, for example with Windows Admin Center. The solutions are using Ansible and Terraform for deploying infrastructure as code. All the improvements that I wanted from the last gen are here or coming. 

With modern workloads and GPU use on the rise, adding GPUs to modern modular infrastructure will have some pros and cons. Typically, you can add one or two GPU's to a blade with no or little trade off. With the UCS X-Series, if you are doing a GPU farm, then you may have to sacrifice compute blades in the front slots to put in a GPU tray / module. A chassis holds eight compute blades, but if you are adding a ton of GPUs, a single GPU tray or more will reduce your blade count by as many GPU trays you add. This is not just a Cisco UCS X-Series problem. It is an industry problem with modular infrastructure and one that I would like to see get solved! I am looking into one such solution, VMware BITFUSION where you can send CUDA requests over the network to a BITFUSION server with the results sent back to the requestor, early stages here and only scratched the surface thus far.

With Cisco UCS X-Series, I would like to see the fabric interconnects built into the chassis instead of being external. With the fabric interconnects, the real footprint of UCS X-Series is 9U, where some of the competing solutions are 7U and have collapsed the network fabric into the chassis. This is another thing that I would like to see from Cisco, though, not really on the NetApp side of the fence, NetApp is solid storage.

Cisco UCS came out in 2009 and I have been on the scene since. FlexPod came next enhancing the UCS offering with a marriage of UCS and NetApp storage.

I have built over 15+ datacenters on UCS / "FlexPod", and every solution has been solid. I have done multi-domains within some of my customers datacenters too. More of the problems are "people-generated" / "user error, understanding" than they are technology-based. The stability with this infrastructure is rock-solid.

Scalability is the best that you can get. You can carve it up any way you want, e.g., add storage or compute. With the new UCS X-Series, some of the shortcomings in the traditional UCS have been resolved. Now, it is even more scalable and granular, if you want it to be, but it doesn't have to be.

The flexibility, operational efficiency, and scalability of FlexPod is really high. You can add compute and storage independently with ease. There are no real concerning limitations other than having 20 chassis in a UCS domain and then you need to start another one, which is okay, you can then connect all the domains you have to Intersight for that single pane of glass of management. Most customers don't get past 10 chassis at a single site.

I support my customers but we have called Cisco TAC who has been very responsive. Because it is a FlexPod design and marked as FlexPod, we don't have to call multiple vendors for support. We are calling one number and generally getting responses back within four hours, which has been very acceptable. I know we have called support a dozen times over the last couple of years, and everything, for the most part has been resolved within a few days.

Even though TAC responses, in my experience have been within four hours acknowledging the problem, there is always room for improvement. We have had a case or two with some customers where troubleshooting took a week or longer and I have been asked to come in to help. I help the customer by bridging the gap, which is fine. That is what CDW does, take care of our customers, bringing all parties together when needed. This has only happened a couple of times that I can remember in probably the last five years.

I would rate the technical support as nine out of ten.

Positive

A lot of my customers use three-tier infrastructure, like HPE, Dell, and Cisco Rack servers in addition to all sorts of different storage (DAS, NAS, SAN). A lot of my customers also have all of the the vendors and equipment in the mix, e.g., where they had storage from EMC, from NetApp, and from Pure with the same on the compute side with generally, all Cisco networking.

With the FlexPod solution, you are standardizing on a platform and streamlining operations. You are utilizing Cisco compute and NetApp storage, reducing the vendors, less sprawl, fewer admin tools and easier management.

The initial deployment is straightforward. Looking at the validated designs (CVD), you can create detailed implementation plans from.

Depending on the customer, a lot of the time, the customer wants the compute environment build out first and then attach the NetApp storage and flag the environment "FlexPod" after the fact. For SAP HANA, another example, I would look for the CVD and TDI (Tailed Datacenter Integration) so the customer and I understand what the requirements will be, can build an estimate out, architect the solution, put an accurate order together and build it according to the CVD.

I find the CVD's very important and helpful as they provide good reference for the technology that is being used or considered. If a customer has it in hand ahead of time, they get a better understanding of what it takes to build the solution out. Whether we follow the CVD through, at the end of the day, that depends on the customer.

I have actually done end-to-end deployments with my customers along with guiding them. I find it very straightforward. After I go through a few sessions with my customers, they are on board, get up to speed very fast and become very knowledgeable.

For ROI, I would have to account for all the time savings and streamlined operations. I haven't done an official ROI yet with the customers. However, when we compare cloud-spend, we are seeing for three years in cloud, we could have purchase FlexPod on-premises for less. Many customers on-premises are achieving the hybrid solution, they are adding cloud to it when and where it makes sense. As a whole, customers are still liking and buying FlexPod as it is today. On-premises spend has increased on the server and storage front with increased cloud spend.

The templates, visibility, and ease of management in my opinion reduce deployment and troubleshooting from a couple of hours or more down to a fraction of that, thinking of an incident, you will also have fewer people on the calls. You are not getting everybody from every aspect of the business, networking, storage, compute, managers, and PMs onto a conference call just to figure out what is going on. You are getting onto a call with specific people knowing what is going on from a single pane of management and alerting perspective.

Other ROI, the FlexPod solution greatly reduces the cabling in the datacenter returning back some savings by way of physical gear purchase and physical IT management time. We are seeing reduced time to troubleshoot, reduced time to inventory the infrastructure, and reduced time to deploy systems with templates. In my experience, the solution is saving easily 10 hours a week in an enterprise environment.

When customers are standardized on this technology it becomes consistent infrastructure and easier to expand when needed. The customers will also have consistent pricing and know what to budget for expansion and or builds in other datacenters. It means that the customer does not have to go out and re-architect for new solutions to fit a workload with new pricing, infrastructure, components, and then slap it all together, again. There has definitely been savings in standardization of this solution by not having to go through the whole process involving more people and adding infrastructure sprawl that needs to be managed differently with more tools, more vendors, managing many service and support contracts.

Licensing can be interesting with the UCS refresh because of Intersight integration (IMM) and SaaS, connected virtual machine or private virtual machine. I have seen some of the different licensing models, but with the new purchasing, all customers are going to have to buy some sort of Intersight licensing with the new UCS X-Series, "FlexPod". I will explore the licensing, setup costs and options with my customers as we discover, assess, architect and get some estimates going!

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.

Again, FlexPod can be thought of as a platform with easier management and granularity to carve it up for almost any use case, a mega block of modern modular infrastructure and would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The primary use case is within our commercial infrastructure, where it integrates with FSCs and factories. This integration allows us to manage and utilize a mix of storage resources efficiently. It's especially valuable for handling heavy SAN workloads, as our site doesn't have a significant amount of NAS storage.

By utilizing a ten-gig converged infrastructure instead of separate components, we've reduced our rack space requirements, eliminating the need for deploying additional switches in separate gear configurations. 

Our FlexPod configuration was custom-built, as we purchased UCS components separately and assembled them into its setup. This approach has resulted in significant cost savings, primarily due to reduced power consumption. We've also achieved impressive performance, with ten-gig line rates, eliminating the need for fiber channels. 

The primary benefits we've seen include reduced rack space requirements, decreased power consumption, and effective consolidation which allowed us to repurpose the reclaimed space to add more NetApp filers. 

It enabled us to scale without the need to expand our cabinet or cage, particularly when adding clusters. It's a bit challenging to provide an exact figure, but I'd estimate that we achieved a cost reduction of approximately ten to fifteen percent.

One of the most valuable aspects is its integrated convergence infrastructure, particularly the LAN and SAN cloud features that offer a unified fabric. The integration brings a lot of flexibility, significantly reduces setup time, and requires fewer configurations. 

Additionally, when you purchase it, it often comes preconfigured, making it a breeze to set up. You can simply plug it in without the need for extensive configurations. It offers versatility that can cater to various sectors depending on workload and resource demands. It's adaptable to different needs and the flexibility extends to the mix of disk capacities; you can combine fast and Flash Elite, allowing you to optimize costs by not relying solely on flash storage.

There could be room for improvement in terms of offering more flexibility in CBD options. Many organizations, especially nonprofits like ours, face budget constraints, and having a range of mid-level switch options alongside high-end ones would allow for more cost optimization.

I have been using it for over six years.

The system has been exceptionally robust, maintaining reliability even in high-demand scenarios and during outages. Our ability to bring up the UCS quickly has been impressive, and we've encountered minimal issues related to firmware glitches or advisories for the firmware in use.

Our experience with its support has been exceptionally positive. They have been highly responsive and proactive in addressing any technical support issues. We've rarely encountered any problems, and there has been no need to push or chase after them. Every time we've reached out to their support team, they've promptly responded, and we've received resolutions in a timely manner. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Positive

While we previously used Nexus switches, we've now transitioned to the Nexus Nine series, which offers enhanced capabilities. We're currently in the process of upgrading our UCS chassis and V200-M5 blades to stay up-to-date with the latest versions. Despite these upgrades, we haven't encountered significant challenges, as FlexPod has proven to be a reliable solution over time. In the past, we followed a traditional approach where we used Dell for computing and relied on NetApp for storage. Additionally, we had some HP equipment in our infrastructure. When the time came for hardware lifecycle management and replacing our aging systems, we explored our options. It was during this evaluation that we considered FlexPod. We realized that being a Cisco-centric environment, FlexPod would be a perfect fit for us. 

Over time, as we've continued to work with FlexPod, it has become evident that Cisco's UCS architecture, particularly when paired with NetApp, offers a more comprehensive and flexible solution. While other vendors like Dell may excel in computing, they tend to lack the depth of integration and support for FC/FCoE that Cisco's FlexPod architecture provides. 

Cisco's approach allows for a broader range of configuration options, provided they align with validated designs. This versatility has not only streamlined our operations but has also allowed us to explore more creative and efficient solutions, ultimately improving our infrastructure.

The initial setup was straightforward and simple.

Regarding maintenance, our fabric interconnects have been running smoothly, with minimal issues. Occasionally, we face challenges during firmware upgrades for the B200-M5 blades due to the older hardware, but overall, the deployment has been stable and effective.

I find the licensing and pricing structure to be favorable.

Expanding the choices in switches could enhance the cost-effectiveness of FlexPod implementations. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

We use it for different use cases. We have projects that are specialized for the healthcare sector. This is because of the certifications that NetApp has in this sector, both for VDI and standard VMware.

Most of our customers and projects are about hybrid cloud integration. So, having something still on-premises that integrates with hyperscalers is why we are often using NetApp, who has a versatile data platform.

Key benefits, which our customers like, are the solution's customer service, storage, and ability to do operations.

FlexPod's native integration with hyperscalers is very important since every customer is thinking about cloud at some stage. They need to keep in mind that some workloads sometimes go into the cloud, so this flexibility needs to be there. That is why the possibility to choose one of the three hyperscalers is very important.

FlexPod’s prevalidated architectures are very important because our technicians can refer to standardized setups. This helps us know how the SAN should be integrated in the perfect way. We totally count on this. I also love the partnership between Cisco and NetApp on this. We have seen at least a 20% increase in operational efforts due to these prevalidated designs.

The evolution of the solution with Intersight has been very important for reducing operational costs as well as creating customer trust with validated solutions.

The flexibility, operational efficiency, and scalability of FlexPod has been a huge factor for us because our customers have workloads that need to run on classical HTTPs, flash storage, or possibly in the cloud. This flexibility and enhanced ability of the solution is very important for this. We trust in it.

The enhanced ability of the solution is the feature where we can add capacity to the compute, if necessary. So, it is good that it is flexible.

The integration between both companies, Cisco and NetApp, is very good but it still needs to be enhanced in terms of visibility and observability. However, I trust these partners that this will be done in the future.

We are a system integrator who does multiple projects as well as supporting our customers. We have been doing this for about four to five years.

It is a very stable solution. I would rate it as five out of five.

The scalability simply works. I would rate it as five out of five.

Our latest project was a stretch solution with two data centers, around 400 terabytes of storage capacity, and 20 servers from UCS. There were about 400 users in a health company accessing different services, like virtual desktops and classical virtual machines.

I would rate the technical support as four out of five.

Positive

There is a cookbook related to the design, so all our projects run smoothly. 

We are an integrator. We can do the deployment on our own.

During the pre-sale phase, I was involved. The engineering was done by my partners.

FlexPod has helped reduce troubleshooting time by 10% on architecture configs. 

Pricing is always tough. We need to get to a point where the customer's happy. Then, as partners, we are also happy.

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.

We always prefer the converged solutions because of scalability and flexibility. These are key factors.

I would rate the product overall as nine out of 10.

We use FlexPod for onsite virtualized and leveraged hardware, so we work with many VMs and generic workloads. There is no specific single-purpose workload. It would be like the VMware solution.

We have three primary production environments and a legacy environment. Right now, the entire workload of the organization is roughly split into thirds across those various generations: Gen one, Gen two, Gen three, and legacy. Legacy can't move off of old hardware, or it's in the process of being moved to modern platforms. 

Gen one was FlexPod, Gen two was a different Dell solution, and Gen three was yet another Dell solution because somebody up the chain loves Dell these days. They're building a fourth generation of primarily containerized stuff based on Red Hat Kubernetes for new workloads or Red Hat OpenShift. The compute workloads in FlexPod are slowly being moved out. There's no plan to replace that or to continue using that as a FlexPod. However, the storage driving the current compute and network shares will be transitioned into the strategic platform for file-sharing platforms across the enterprise. 

It highlights the flexibility that comes with the product set. They're still using VMware everywhere. They're not going to be using the compute environment. They're still using Cisco network switches everywhere and will continue to use NetApp storage everywhere. Interestingly, this new containerized OpenShift environment they have in place today gets its storage back from the NetApp through NetApp automation and integration tools in their cloud set. It highlights the flexibility of what you can do with the entire platform when you need to do something.

In terms of administration, we have five or six people on the storage side that are primarily doing storage. There's a rather large team in charge of server administration, but they're doing server administration across the entire enterprise as a team. There are around 25 or 30 Windows and Linux system administrators. The house's Windows side also manages the necessary VMware work, but they're not dedicated to FlexPod. They're across the entire enterprise, but any of them could come in and do most of the work.

In addition, there are about 10 people on the engineering side. They're the ones who are primarily responsible for designing and driving operational standards. The same people are in charge of infrastructure across the entire enterprise and aren't limited to FlexPod. There's also a good smattering of network folk. 

The pre-validated architectures are attractive. My organization is in the Fintech industry, where standards are critical, so validations and compliance are essential. There are vendor-designed and vendor-validated design starting points. You can build up for scale or if you need more compute from those starting points. If you need more storage, you put out more storage. For performance and things like that, you can put the components you need to meet your specific needs as long as you stay within those validated designs.  

Even if you start with one and diverge from it, it's still a FlexPod, and you get support from the three primary organizations: Cisco, VMware, and NetApp. Even if you don't use a Cisco-validated or NetApp-validated design, you can still qualify as a FlexPod if you're out of those standard deployments. Executives like having those models as a starting point.

FlexPod has saved us some time, but I must add a caveat. The challenge was getting the operations side of the house aligned with what FlexPod was. Even today, the operational side remains heavily siloed. There are teams for networking, storage, Windows, etc. That separation of concerns continues to be the standard model for operational support today. It took a lot to break down that model a small amount because everybody in FlexPod has to know and work together because of the integration. 

You can't just do the network piece because there's so much that the network touches. You can't just do the compute piece because there's so much the compute touches, especially with VMware. You can't just do the storage piece. You have to understand how that relates to virtualization and the compute. It took them a while to get some people in place that could cross these silos to make troubleshooting more effective. Has it become more effective? Yes. But it took a long time to get there for external reasons.

It hasn't impacted our TCO because everybody who came in still runs everything else they used to run. When they decided to do the next major expansion, and somebody wanted to go with Dell, and they went with Dell hardware, all the same people had to learn that as well. So we don't have a TCO advantage on FlexPod versus anything else.

The pre-validated architectures also haven't affected our productivity if you look at application performance. The application performance is what it is. It also hasn't increased our productivity regarding our ability to operate the system because many outside factors affect our operations, and nothing about the FlexPod design helps us overcome them.

The most significant benefit is storage flexibility. FlexPod is a reference design to build on and add the appropriate resources you need for your workloads. That's what differentiates it from something like HCI, where you have to buy certain size pieces when you want to expand.

I can do just about anything storage-related with it. In a FlexPod environment, we can provide whatever you want from a data storage perspective. Replication, backup, disaster recovery, etc., are all there right out of the box. I can set up fiber channel LAN, channel-over-ethernet LAN, etc. Storage is highly flexible in this environment. I don't have to buy two or three products and don't have to do some sort of software virtualization of the storage, which takes away your performance.

For hyperscalers, you have insights on the Cisco side that you can use to look at tons of stuff. From the storage side, you could put a range of NetApp tools in the cloud. You could put VMware in the cloud and talk back to the native on-prem Cisco compute environment. 

Their network environment extends into the cloud. There are no limits in terms of integration. NetApp is the most integrated hyper-scale for storage and moving data into the cloud for long-term backup storage. VMware is fully available, so you could run VMware or Kubernetes on VMware in the cloud and tie it to your local storage through NetApp integration.

It's an excellent match because your compute could easily DR to the cloud and be ready to go with all your storage without any modifications necessary because of the native integrations. It integrates well with the hyperscalers. 

Support could be more integrated. For example, you might call NetApp, and they'll determine that VMware is the issue. It would be helpful if they could automatically engage VMware and bring them onto the same call to transfer ticket information and work together. 

Ideally, you can call any vendor potentially causing the problem—Cisco, VMware, or NetApp. They should automatically bring in the other teams as necessary if it isn't. That doesn't happen as smoothly as it should.

I have been using FlexPod for six years. I'm in my seventh year now. 

FlexPod is highly stable at this point. However, there were some growing pains. For instance, when I came on board, they had a bad experience with an ONTAP upgrade that created some unexpected downtime. They have had some challenges with how they wanted to use the entire system.

For instance, the primary use case is virtualized workload. The secondary use case used a fiber channel over ethernet with physical servers. That presented some challenges during certain operations. You'd expect it to be automatic because it wasn't set up correctly. You don't discover the issue until you do routine patching or maintenance work and suddenly lose all your connections to a server. We had some of those growing pains early on, but it has become highly stable after six years. 

We've scaled FlexPod as much as we needed in any direction. We haven't even scratched the surface of what it could do. There are no practical limits on scalability as a design standard.

I rate FlexPod support seven out of 10. It depends on which person you get when you call. Unfortunately, I think that's true of most vendors' technical support. If you don't get the right person at the right level to start with, you're in for a potentially bad experience.

I joined the company after the initial setup. However, it seems complex from what I've seen. The team who deployed it had a reseller set it up for them, but they changed it afterward. They had a different idea of how they wanted it to operate. They tried to make it work in their model instead of adapting to what FlexPod was designed to be. I think they complicated things.

They only use one cloud provider, and FlexPod is minimally connected. Their newer environments are more connected, but backup to the cloud is the only use case they're using for primary functionality, and it's somewhat limited. There was no challenge in doing it, but the overall use case for that is still somewhat limited.

I rate FlexPod nine out of 10. FlexPod allows you to build what you need when you need it. "Flex" is in the name. If you need more compute, you add it and don't need to worry about it. If you don't want to use it in the FlexPod at some point, the compute can be repurposed for something else. The same is true for the network switches. When you need more network capacity, you replace the switch and interfaces or maybe increase the speeds on your network interfaces. Replace the network components with what you want, the capacity you need, etc. The same goes for the storage on the NetApp side.

My advice is to start with what you think you need. As your needs change, put new hardware and performance capabilities in place. You add it as required in the same environment space, so you don't have to change your product line. Your disaster recovery or secondary sites all stay the same. The Cisco and VMware stuff inter-operates. VMware is all over the place, and NetApp ONTAP is ONTAP. It's all the same platform, no matter where you put it in the cloud. 

In Nutanix's environment, they've got two or three. You can have external storage because maybe their internal storage isn't good enough. That external storage platform is something outside of the converged environment. You've got to manage it separately. You've got two hypervisor capabilities here. You could put VMware on it, or you could put Nutanix on it. They're not interchangeable. Once you pick one, you are stuck with that one forever. And if it's not good enough, you have to tear down the whole thing to start over. You're not tied into anything.

We use FlexPod XCS in our data center to provide IT services like hosting. We also use it to store in-house applications. 

The tool provides a single point for storing applications and it increases the availability of them. It also has improved the way we handle applications within VMware. 

I like the way we change the primary and secondary services in operation. 

The tool is obsolete and we are migrating to HPE. It should improve the pricing. 

I have been working with the product for 11 years. 

I would rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten. 

I would rate FlexPod XCS' scalability an eight out of ten. My company has 6000 users for the product. We use it every day but usage will decrease due to migration. 

FlexPod XCS' setup is complex and I would rate it a six out of ten. The product's deployment took six months to complete. A partner company helps us with the tool's maintenance. 

The consultant helped us with the deployment. They first delivered the equipment and a specialist did the connections and equipment assembly. 

The solution's ROI is good. I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

The product's pricing is high and I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

I would rate FlexPod XCS a nine out of ten. Our experience with the solution is good and we use it well. 

The way FlexPod has set up our servers has helped our organization. Their OS is on Netapp.

We’ve seen an improvement in application performance. I don't know the percentage off the top of my head, however, after migrating a lot of data from physical servers to virtual servers and putting them on there, it's just amazing.

It increased staff productivity. I was running most of the locations alone. With this solution, I was able to help take care of other problems instead. We ran it and didn't have any problems.

The solution streamlines our IT admin. For the most part, once I get the system set up and put in, adding the VLAN is very easy. Then, users are just adding in VMs. It goes smoothly. I just had to set the solution up and let it run.

Regarding the solution's private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments, it works well if the communication stays up. The solution’s infrastructure enables us to run demanding and mission-critical workloads.

The solution's ability to manage from edge to core, to cloud, and support their data and computer requirements is pretty good.

The solution is innovative when it comes to computing, storage, and networking. Once it comes together, it's pretty easy to manage. The only action I’ve got to really do is manage everything from my cores or from my distributed switches.

The solution's granular scalability and broad application support helps us meet the needs of diverse workloads. For instance, two years ago, I had a client that was in a building. They had seventeen floors, and I was able to diverse each one of the floors, which were different companies inside FlexPod, and manage it using VCF or VMware. They had their own clusters and it was easy to manage.

This solution is very resilient. For the most part, since about 2018, my servers have had no problems. I still have servers that have been up for years without any issues.

The solution reduces the time required to deploy a new application in some ways. UCS itself is just a hardware platform. VMware is actually where that question is more tied to. 

The solution reduced data center costs. At one of my locations, we had about twenty-four racks full of physical servers. I ended up migrating everything to virtual platforms and putting it inside. It was a decrease of 68% in the total cost of energy. That included the A/C units always running and the power being used for the servers themselves. 

The solution has saved us money. I wouldn't even know how much precisely. I would say $100,000, however, that's likely really low.

I have seventy-six B200 servers. If a server goes down, I have a lot of problems. I’ve also been having random DIMM errors. 

Their DIMMs have been terrible recently. This is a new product that I got about a year ago. My DIMMs are dying left and right and server blades are not being able to function. However, with that being said, when those go down, I have a set of spares that I can put in, and everything works without a hitch, with no problem.

I've had problems with the remote data centers going down due to the connection dropping, and they were not aware that the communication is down. When a link went down previously, the systems didn't know. It then fixed itself. As long as the connections stay up, it works. If the connection fails, it won't.

In my experience with the validated designs, I've always had to go inside and adjust them. I understand that some of them are a base, however, some customers believe that they are 100% proof, and they try to implement it. Then I get called in to correct the errors and correct some of the layouts to include some of the newer features.

Since 2018 or 2019, maybe due to COVID and the chipsets, my DIMMs are dying left and right. That's the only problem I have. My boards are fine. The servers are working fine. 

A feature I would like to have in the next release is an application desktop that talks to it, so I don't have to go to the web GUI as much. Besides that,  it's pretty bulletproof. I use UCS over HP and Dell, nine times out of ten.

I'd like to see a little bit more versatility with the C220s and the C240s, to see the expansion ports on those servers grow. Besides that, everything has been pretty amazing.

I've been using the solution since 2012.

In the past, stability was 100%. Recently, it's been terrible due to the DIMMs.

It's greatly scalable. It just relies on what FIs you have for your interconnects.

In terms of support, I call in when there's a bug. I’ve had problems with the memory as well. I had a server that was DOA, and it came down to the fact that we didn't even know what the problem was. That took almost a year to resolve. Then, with the DIMMs, it's taken me about two months due to the testing they want to do. That said, in 2018 it was phenomenal.

Technical support needs a little bit of work when it comes to hardware. In terms of software, they're not too bad.

Neutral

I used HP and Dell. I was having a lot of problems with HP and Dell was getting expensive. I had a little extra cash to buy the UCS when it first came out. There was a little bit of a learning curve, however, once I got that down, it worked well. I'm a big supporter of Cisco.

Currently, we're using the 4.2.1 with M5 servers, B200 M5s. This is my third one, as far as the firmware updates, and driver push-outs.

The initial requirements for getting it up and running are very complex. There's a lot of note keying, and all of that had to come into play. We had to have a good foundation of server networking. It's not something anyone can just throw a user into and say, "Here's a gear," and set it up.

We have seen an ROI.

In terms of the cost, the last bill I saw was about $3.5 million from the latest contract. That might have been for a five-year contract. That was with the licensing for the ports for the FIs, along with the tax support and the software assurance with Cisco tech.

We have not used the solution to integrate advanced cloud services. I’m working on a VCF project currently. I have not used Intersight, Active IQ, or CSA yet. That's actually on my to-do list for my current project.

At this point in time, we do not use this solution to power any AI machine learning applications.

UCS is more network-driven than it is server-driven, which is what Dell and HP, drive on. Once we set up the basic server parts, the rest of it is network base. It is a mind changer. When I handed it off to server admins, they were worried about a lot of issues that they used to deal with on a Dell, HP, or even IBM. They don't have to worry about that with the UCS.

I'd advise new users to understand where they’re putting their ports and know which ones are going to be fiber channel ports, FIs, and make sure they have a distributed switch and are not connected directly to the core switches, the 7Ks or 9Ks. I've seen people take down their whole environment when somebody added a VLAN or added a network for the UCS network that was already on the core. It took the whole thing down.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. If the DIMM problems were removed, by far the solution deserves a perfect ten.

The solution suits converged infrastructures, where the customer gets a complete system with Cisco servers, NetApp Storage, and Cisco switches.

FlexPod XCS needs to improve its pricing. 

I have been working with the product since September. 

The tool's pricing is fair. 

The tool is recommended for companies with an employee count between 50-500. Bigger companies look for individualized solutions. You must look for a different solution if you have a complicated or bigger infrastructure. I rate the product a seven out of ten. 

We're using it for general purpose virtualization or converged, as well as in specific cases like electronic medical records. That is the big one.

In the partner space, it gives us a validated solution that we can deploy and it's very repeatable for us. It helps our customers in that they can have confidence that it's going to work exactly as it's supposed to.

It has also helped reduce troubleshooting time—easily hours per week—on architecture configs.

FlexPod’s prevalidated architectures are very important to our organization. It has to do with predictability for applications that are always up and that sometimes are life-safety or life-critical applications. Especially in healthcare, it is absolutely critical that we have a validated performance platform. It has to work every time.

A lot of small things could be improved. I'd like to see better integrations with some of the third-party tools, like Terraform. That would be good. We use Ansible to deploy and that's good, but it's slower than it needs to be.

I've been using FlexPod for more than five years.

The stability is a 10 out of 10.

We haven't done much scaling yet on this most recent one, but in general, the scalability is very good. It's a 10 out of 10. It's very easy to grow very big.

The technical support is good. It's not perfect, things never are, but we've had very few issues. It's also relatively new. We'll see in a year. Maybe my opinion of it will go down, but it's been good so far.

Positive

I have experience with Vblock, Vxblock, and FlashStack.

With FlexPod, we have a lot of validation around performance. Especially in the medical world, it's a very well-known entity, so we don't have to struggle a lot with finger-pointing. Those are all good reasons why we picked it.

It is a complex deployment, but we have done it a lot of times so it's not that hard. We have it all scripted. We have a ton of automation in the deployment process.

For healthcare, it is almost always on private cloud. That is still very much the standard. It's mostly Azure and some AWS, a little bit of GCP, and some others. One of the big EMR providers has its own hybrid cloud that is purpose-built.

The most recent one I did was a big EMR. It's a moderately sized NetApp AF series and a bunch of Cisco UCS with NDS storage. It is a reference flash tag straight out of the CBD with 150 nodes.

Our customers definitely see ROI. We generally model the TCO for them over time and we're generally pretty accurate. They usually get their payback on the product-based converged solution in two years or less. They usually avoid having to add headcount.

The solution's flexible consumption has definitely reduced our customers' TCO. It allows them to do more without their having to add staff to support it. The flexible consumption is a good option for some customers and not for others. We have some who love it and some that don't.

They're going to spend the money on the solution one way or the other, and flexible consumption lets them spread it out over time and pay as they grow. That's great for some, while others just want to do the CapEx because of tax reasons or the like. Neither one is better. They're just different and they're both fine.

Overall, the solution works pretty well. The biggest complaint I have from customers is the cost.

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.

In terms of comparing converged infrastructure solutions and picking the most cost-effective one, you have to pick what works for you. Think about who's going to support it. If you're hiring a vendor, like me, you want to make sure that you trust me and that I'm going to be around. If you're doing it in-house, make sure that you're picking the one that your people can run.

In general, we use it for our storage and computing work loads.

We had challenges finding the right partner regarding performance, flexibility, and support from the vendor. FlexPod is an all-inclusive solution, so we found the right one.

We have about 1,000 end users and 2,500 endpoints.

It provides a good, stable base for all our workloads.

FlexPod’s prevalidated architectures are quite important to our organization because it guarantees that things work together as expected.

FlexPod has helped reduce troubleshooting time by 30% on architecture configs.

The most valuable features are performance and compatibility between devices.

The native integration between different platforms is quite important because it is secure and works together without any interfering issues.

The flexibility, operational efficiency, and scalability of FlexPod are quite high. 

I would like to see increased performance.

I have been using it for about 10 years altogether. Since we have been using NetApp and Cisco devices for several years. Since FlexPod has been available, we have been using it.

I would rate the stability as nine out of 10.

I would rate the scalability as eight out of 10.

When we need the support, their reaction time is quite good. I would rate it as eight out of 10.

Positive

We previously had several components for different workloads, using HPE and other storage providers. After that, we switched to NetApp and Cisco devices. In the end, we switched over to FlexPod's integrated and support solution.

I mainly did the network part of the deployment. My inclusion tests were quite straightforward.

We used NTS in Austria.

We have seen a reduction in support needs.

FlexPod has reduced our overall TCO and simplified our operations. 

The pricing and licensing are quite expensive. However, compared to other solutions, it is okay.

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.

It is quite important to have a converged solution. Then, you can have all the components responsible for stability and performance together in one place.

In general, the solution is quite good. I expect improvements in every area over time.

I would rate the product as eight out of 10.