FlexPod XCS Reviews

Our solution is an All Flash FlexPod, in conjunction with Cisco UCS. We appreciate the inter-operability and the ease of use of that setup. Basically it was just a Cisco design so we had high value in that. We are currently running a few SQL servers, mostly active directory and Windows servers.

Primarily our storage requirements were basically Windows documents and all the other miscellaneous documents for file storage. The All Flash FlexPod allowed exponential speed increase, so we can get our work done faster

I would like to see a better price point. Otherwise, we are pretty much set with the product and the features.

The All Flash FlexPod was deployed two years ago. We've been using that app with UCS for approximately six years. There was no down time for the All Flash. Maybe there was one day of down time for configuration or transition, but that's about it.

We've had zero stability issues since deployment, so the stability is very good.

In terms of scalability, we haven't really scaled much, as far as our most recent deployment.

Technical support is very good and very responsive. We were sent to the right person, and we found them to be knowledgeable. Once we get an engineer assigned, he resolves our issues very quickly.

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

Engage the partner and see what their suggestions would be as to tailor-make or tailor-fit the application and the solution. This app was a good fit for us because we're already the data customer.

We like that the FlexPod is dense; it offers a lot of power in a small package. Specifically, with the Cisco UCS, we like that the hardware and end software is disjointed, so we can apply service profiles and our VMware environment is a little more dynamic that way.

It's brought management into a manageable situation. We came from a data center full of Dell servers and it was getting out of hand. Cisco UCS and NetApp together in one package makes it much easier to manage. Also, as we roll out new sites, it's a very simple build that we know exactly what we need every time.

I'd like to see more modularization with NetApp's management and performance monitoring. I know NetApp has a product called OnCommand Insight that covers everything but we don't necessarily need all those features. That’s made it hard for us to justify the purchase there. So, I’d like to see more modularization of the management and monitoring tools.

For instance, if we could have Insight run management and monitoring for the UCS and NetApp at the same time, that would be great. At the same time, we might not need all of its features; maybe, a broader scope of products with more modularization of features and use cases. What I’m thinking is being able to pick and choose the features, or have a watered-down version of it. I'm reaching for that. It's already pretty good.

We've had no stability problems with FlexPod; no problems with Cisco UCS or the NetApp side at all. The auto support's great. For both, we get notifications and the parts are already on the way before we can even consider calling in an RMA. We're really happy with that.

Of course, with NetApp, you can add expansion shelves. NetApp's very expandable, easily expanded. With the UCS, we can add blades, we can add chassis. We have 18 UCS domains, I think, right now, all with NetApp storage backing it, whether it be E series or FAS; we have both.

We have not used technical support for FlexPod in a long time because, as I’ve mentioned, we've had good experience deploying FlexPod as a whole solution. We haven't had any problems deploying these. For actual day-to-day support, auto support takes care of pretty much everything. Very, very once in a while, we have an issue that we actually have to call in support, but most of the time it's hand off.

When we do call in for support, the Cisco side of it is fairly poor until you get past tier 1. In that situation, we have support and they're supposed to call us back, but a lot of times we don't get call backs. The TAC location that we can call to changes fairly frequently, so we've had some issues there. The NetApp side of things has been flawless, though.

I wasn't involved in the decision process to invest in a FlexPod. They decided on that before I joined the team. I know they evaluated Dell and IBM, and found that FlexPod was the clear choice.

One of the most important criteria for me in selecting a vendor is support; how quick they respond for RMAs and cases is a big one. I like to see how the sausage is made, exactly what the products do and how they do what they do. I like to evaluate on a very, very technical level before we make any decisions.

I was not involved in the initial setup, but I've been involved in setting up 10-12 of the 18 FlexPods that we have. Setting them up is very, very easy. There are validated design documents out there; it's very well documented. We've found that there is really no ambiguity at all in the setup and configuration; deployment.

The most valuable feature are probably the inter-app ability that it offers; knowing that everything is compatible; and the validated designs that we get with that.

Ease of set up and administration; knowing everything that we have is going to be working optimally. Getting that kind of support, too, when we call in. We can open up a FlexPod case if we have an issue and then we have vendor support across everything that's in our virtual environment.

It might be improved with some refinements to tools, such as the virtual storage console and similar items. We've had a few issues with that. The same thing applies, as far as the Cisco side; the UCS manager is kind of bulky and slow; a Java-based kind of thing. Maybe they could just refine the tools that we use to manage it.

It's really good, it's worked well, but we've had a few issues with various parts of the hardware, with our fabric interconnects from Cisco. We actually had to replace two of them because of some sort of corruption that was on them. We did an upgrade on it. Apparently, the specific version we upgraded from to the specific version that we upgraded to, there was a known bug that would cause corruption on our partitions on there. We had to replace those like three times because of issues we had. That was a big pain point, but besides small things like that, it's been pretty rock solid. That would be why my rating is not higher than it is.

I think it was just one of those things that's just so under the radar that it took them a while to even dig up that it was an issue. I referred to it as a known issue, not being that it happens a lot but known that there was some documentation that had pertained to it. It was one of those things, tough to catch until afterwards; already done.

It's pretty stable; as good as anything else that I've used.

Scalability is good, I guess. I'm not sure I can comment too much on that because we haven't grown our environment too much since we set it up.

Technical support has been pretty good.

It was already implemented when I started at my company, and then I just setup another new environment after I had gotten there.

I was involved in setting up one of our FlexPods. It was pretty straightforward. The most complex part was probably the fiber channel setup. If I would do it again, maybe I would look into more of an NFS-type setup; make that a little bit easier. Otherwise, you had the FlexPod, and as far as from the Cisco side and everything, it was pretty straightforward.

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

Give it a look. See if it fits your environment. That's kind of it, for anything you purchase, because it's got to fit your environment; it works for us. It works for what we're trying to do.

The most valuable feature is the fact that it’s a complete package, that’s the biggest advantage, and it can be rolled out pretty quickly. The last company I was at, we rolled it out in 90 days, and that was a pretty big environment.

The Citrix portion of it for one, as your desktop is available anywhere on any platform, and with any OS. You can really use it anywhere, even on an iPhone in a movie theater if you need to, although I don’t recommend it.

Very stable, it's highly available with only .9999 downtime, not .99999, which is an uptime designator.

We have found it to be very scalable, and that it affords you a lot of options.

We had a partner work with us and so it was really good. The only drawback is that you have three to four technologies, and you need someone to sort out which problem is whose responsibility. Our project manager took that on as a deliverable, and ran incident management for the solution.

Initial setup was very straightforward.

The cost is an issue – it is not a cheap solution and the other piece of it, is that for EMC users (like my current company) it may not be relevant. We had 80% EMC usage so it wasn’t relevant for us. We could have used the FlexPod EMC but I think cost was the main issue there.

Peer reviews are very important in our research.

We use it for my private cloud. We are providing a service.

FlexPod has helped us reduce our time of deployment because we are really only missing integration with different applications.

It has also allowed us to streamline our IT administration.

The integration is something else.

The core cloud is a good feature. If we had a login that extended from the private cloud to the public cloud that would be the best, but it's up there.

The solution has granular scalability.

I would be interested to see more integration with other applications.

FlexPod is very resilient. So far, it has been stable. Keep in mind we are still deploying it, so the real use case has yet to be seen.

Scalability looks okay because it’s based on the capacity of the device, so I wouldn’t normally assume any scalability issue.

Their technical support has been okay.

The initial setup was straightforward, but the migration has taken some time.

We used a reseller for the integration. 

FlexPod saves us money. There is definitely a return on our investment.

I would rate FlexPod as seven or eight out of ten. It's too early to say anything, but for now, my only concern is the limited integration with applications.

The biggest lesson I learned was that from the automation point of view, this should be saving us time. When you’re doing it for the first time it’s not going to be very easy.

It's used for managing our virtual workload exclusively. It manages our virtual servers and our internal business systems are run on it.

We use FlexPod for Managed Private Cloud. It functions.

It simplifies that you don't have to manage all the additional hardware. It simplifies support, as it is all in one area. You don't have to worry about individual pieces of hardware going end-of-life at different times.

• Ease of use
• Flexibility
• Scalability
• Stability 

The ease in the event that there is hardware failure and having it be stateless. We can swap components out without incurring any significant downtime. 

We would like to have a single pane of glass available for it. It is something that the management in the business would like to have.

It is stable. I can't think of any significant downtime that we've incurred with it.

Unfortunately, we are limited on upgrades. They don't really let us do them. However, upgrades have been stable.

Scalability is simple. It allows you to continue to grow out, compute, or store as necessary.

I have never used FlexPod's technical support.

I was involved in the refresh, and it was relatively straightforward. We had an existing UCS infrastructure that we were replacing, which was being moved over to a secondary sight where it was a new UCS stand up.

At the time of installation, we used Varo. However, they no longer exist. 

Go for it.

It simplifies everything. It gives you a single place to go if you need support or if you need to expand.

We don't have a true FlexPod.

The consolidation of our data center. It helps us migrate. It makes DR easier for us. Our Cisco solution interoperates with it very easily. It makes visibility into those different environments easy for the virtualization guys, the Window admins, and telecom as a whole. Holistically, it is a lot better.

This question doesn't really pertain to me.

I know the virtualization guys love the FlexPod, and we do too. It is the visibility into it is nice, and it interacts with our Cisco data center well.

It is stable. We are migrating our whole data center onto the FlexPod. We have vetted out all of the issues that we could be running with the resiliency and redundancy. So, it is our solution moving forward.

It scales very well. We use this for all of our DR. We just spin it up at our DR location.

I do not have a lot of interaction with them. We have assisted their tech resources, bringing up cores and running cable runs. They seemed sufficient.

This is a little bit out of my environment. They give us what they need on-premise from a telecom's perspective. Then, our virtualization teams and the NetApp teams go in and deploy it. I can't speak on the granular issues.

We are pushing big towards the ACI infrastructure within our data center. Rack space is another, then integrate the storage solutions into that. As a company, we have seen return on investment. Therefore, I think the product is going to work out.

I rate it as a nine and a half out of 10, because of all the additional visibility and the integration with our equipment, and how well it plays. DR has been tremendously easier.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor: It is a little of everything. Support is key because no network is the same. No protocols running across it are the same. You are going to run into weird issues, and talking to our virtualization guys, they are really happy with support. I see NetApp all the time on our campus.

Simplicity.

It has allowed us to scale out a bit more.

It is a uniquely valuable product to our company, because it allows us to easily put a product in there as a whole solution without going out and purchasing different pieces.

We really haven't had any issues or problems out of it. We do feel with the whole FlexPod solution that we were actually sold more than we needed as far as extra parts. We just did a lift in shift of one of our FlexPods to a new datacenter, and instead of using the 5000 series switch, we went straight for the 7000. We didn't really need the 5000 series switches in the first place. 

Two years.

It's fairly stable. We have not had downtime because of the solution, but because of the software, VDI.

It seems very scalable. We have had to scale out. We have actually doubled in size.

I was involved in the initial setup. At the time, it seemed complex, because we had never done it before, but as I look back on it, it was pretty straightforward.

For installation, we used CDW's professional services. It was a learning experience for all of us. We actually helped them install it, so it was actually our first iteration FlexPod and it helped us actually get up to speed on it.

I wasn't involved in this.

We invested in FlexPod because we were setting up a VDI environment.