FlexPod XCS Reviews

Our use case is for a life sciences cloud offering.

It makes us more lateral and faster to production.

Quick deployment.

I have not really heard any complaints from our storage engineers.

It is pretty flexible. We are able to deploy faster.

I have not personally used support. 

We were using a different solution between Hitachi and other NetApp solutions. 

We switched to FlexPod for its flexibility and quicker deployment. Also, we use other NetApp products.

I was involved in the networking side of the initial setup. It was pretty straightforward.

We did the installation with a core internal team. We had some NetApp help for the storage guys, but for the network portion, it was more self-explanatory.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: flexibility and licensing costs.

It is where we keep our production network: all our main controllers, accounting applications, and our file servers. They are running on FlexPod.

The virtual environment is a lot more efficient than physical boxes. It allows us to move stuff around a lot, adding resources and removing resources with minimal disruption.

It is a simple turnkey solution.

When we purchased it, we had to configure everything. However, everything was already there. We just cabled it up and started to build the virtual machines (VMs).

It is been pretty stable. We have had it running for over five years now, and have had minimal problems.

It is pretty scalable. It has allowed us to add more stuff very easily.

The technical support is amazing. The NetApp support is really good. We had some problems with the storage, so we contacted them. They jumped right in and were able to take care of the issue quickly.

The solution was already implemented when I arrived at the company.

I was not involved in the initial setup, but sometimes I am involved with upgrades which are challenging. This is because there is a lot of documentation that has to be reviewed before you go through an upgrade. It is not as straightforward as some other solutions. However, the product is very stable and it does what it needs to do.

Make sure you have your NetApp support up-to-date.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: reliability, support, and value for money.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it combines storage and server – very streamlined, very flexible, and built upon reliability.

It reduces the operational costs with just one platform to manage. It’s a seamless integration between three different products: servers, storage and switches.

I think that allowing faster certification times on newer codes on both Cisco and NetApp sides could be good as this is a pain point. They need to make certification more streamlined.

It's very stable and there's very few issues with it because it’s a certified product in which all the components work together.

It's very scalable so you can add more server, networking or storage infrastructure, or just add more FlexPods. You can add another FlexPod and have the same features, reliability and scalability with no issues.

Phenomenal – you can work through Cisco or Netapp and they will get the right people involved. The customer doesn’t need to call three people – it’s one entry point per customer.

It's deployed by NetApp or Cisco, so a lot of FlexPods are done through a partner so there is a single point of contact for the customers.

The most valuable feature is the reference architecture, which helps to standardize our computer stack.

It has helped us standardize what we get in terms of purchasing hardware, around VMware and Cisco, and the computing system.

I think that a unified dashboard would be beneficial across all three of the components to show you the status of all three components.

It’s extremely stable. Rock solid in our experience.

It has been very scalable – our guys scale it across six sites right now.

Good, the relationship between the three companies has been very good. It is not a case where one vendor dumps you off on the other; all companies involved have good information about the other companies involved in the product.

For our setup and deployment we put together a solution using all three components, and then they came out with the reference architecture so we standardized the system.

Peer reviews are very important because you want to know what experiences other people are having.

The most valuable features of the solution are the ease of support and industry leading technology – in storage, servers and networking, as well as virtualization.

• Ease of troubleshooting is good
• Ease of further deployment or expansion

In the config advisor tool, it could be more specific in pointing out or letting you know what to fix when it confronts issues.

It’s extremely stable.

It’s extremely scalable, which is excellent. Either adding storage to the existing cluster, or more nodes, and then the same thing on the Cisco side – more blades or chassis – all of it is extremely easy.

It's very responsive, good customer support.

It's been efficient for the customers to call the NetApp support line and then they can help assist in opening cases with the other vendors.

The setup is fairly straightforward. We have used all three vendors for a long time.

• It's simple as the software is in the fabric instead of having to install the software
• Management is easy through the UI
• You can see all the data
• Integrated networking

It’s two vendors who have a good track records, so it’s a safe bet, and it’s innovative in that it's planned and being planned. It’s reliable, but has an enterprise cost; however, from an IT perspective it’s worth it.

Storage and compute could be better managed. Right now, there are two separate consoles for NetApp and Cisco components. There's no unified management available, and an add-on for that should be a standard option. Also, the cost.

Very stable as an enterprise-level product.

The fabric interconnecters with our older version is fine.

Haven’t had to use tech support because it hasn’t given us trouble.

Not around for initial setup, it would have been complex four years ago, but now it's straightforward

It’s a good product, and I wouldn’t say not to go with it. If you are heavily invested with another vendor, for example HP, don’t change.

• Reference architecture is very useful so we know how to plug it in
• We can scale each component differently and separately
• Each component is best of breed, and better than the competition

Originally, we already had many components, and we never combined it as reference architecture before. It was easy for the company to learn. Also, the different components can be scaled differently. We can put it in different sizes and make each component a different size easily.

Simplification of configurations. Easy instructions/configurability for adding components and expansion. It loses points because it could get simpler.

Excellent stability. We were already pretty stable with separate components, but now we’re more stable.

Fantastic scalability. You can scale each component separately, which is very useful.

Good tech support. One throat-to-choke option is nice, but we also have alternate sources of information.

Pretty straightforward. We used professional services for the first configuration, and for expansions we did it ourselves with no problems.

Make sure you have expertise in Cisco and NetApp components so you can operationally ace it over, because even though it’s a reference architecture, you have to know about each component. Have in-house expertise, otherwise, it’s the best of the products out there.

In our facilities we use FlexPod to host business applications: bpm'online (our tool for the help desk), SugarCRM, Microsoft Exchange Server, Cisco CallManager, some applications related to telephony and collaboration, and for demonstrations of our solution.

On some occasions, when we have needed virtual machines to install new applications, the administrator has provided them in a matter of minutes. Similarly, we have created virtual desktops for environments of 50-100 users in minutes. Finally, the integration with VMware NSX has allowed us to recover from a failure of the main site in a matter of minutes.

• Centralized administration with Cisco UCS Director allows you to perform all administrative functions from a single interface, as well as automate tasks.
• UCS Profiles enable recovering a physical server in less than 15 minutes.
• FlexClone allows you to create copies of volumes in seconds, and without occupying physical space.

At the moment I do not find any functionality that could improve, other than perhaps the automation interface.

I consider this solution a 10 out of 10. It is a very complete solution and easy to administer.