FlexPod XCS Reviews

We are using for the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) for our hospital.

We are using a primary and secondary data center model. We have two locations where one is the primary and the other is the DR.

Essentially, it's reduced some of the overhead from our team of administrators, so they can focus on other areas.

The solution has simplified infrastructure from edge to core to cloud, which has given us some bandwidth to focus on some other core initiatives that we have.

The solution has made our staff more efficient, enabling them to spend time on tasks that drive our business forward. With the administration, it's given us a bit more time to do research and process development, even investing some time in automation.

We had everything that we needed to start it, stand it up, and get it working, then develop a proof of concept to see how it works. We could also scale it out to meet our business needs over time.

The solution’s validated designs for major enterprise apps in our organization are very important. It's basically become critical to our organization to have that system functioning a 100 percent of the time. If that system is not functional, then our doctors and nurses can't provide the care to the patients in an effective way. So, it's important that it is stable, works, and easy to understand.

There is a history of issues with hardware availability. For example, we'll buy an array or a filer with a particular configuration and particular size of drive, sizing it appropriately. Then, as we grow, they're like, "Oh, you can always get more." Then when you go to get more, that model or type of disk is no longer available. 

It becomes this big process to try to figure out what we need to get, how it'll work, and how that'll integrate into the system. That could be simpler. They could do a bit more to guarantee the availability of parts. Obviously, not being the largest storage vendor, I know they can't sometimes control what the hardware vendors do. However, a bit more transparency and communication about this would be helpful.

The solution has decreased unplanned downtime incidents in our organization. So far, it's been very stable. We haven't really had any issues with it.

We did have one issue which was related to a misconfiguration with the power that did cause downtime. That was the first issue that we had since we put it in about two and a half years ago.

There was a misconfiguration with the power configuration. This relates to UCS where it was set to the grid incorrectly. Then, based on the population of the blades, it was overpopulated and there was a power issue. One of the circuits was actually connected to a low voltage circuit which caused some issues. With that, we lost almost the entire chassis for a period of time. It was not fun.

It is just a system that we can scale as we need.

The scalability is good. We're in the process of systematically replacing all of the desktop computing environment in our health system with the VDI. Our plan is to take what we have and grow it to meet that need.

We have used technical support a few times, mostly just for questions. 

The solution’s unified support for the entire stack is really important. We can't ever find ourselves in a situation where something is down, and it's integrated with another vendor application and we're looking for support, that all the vendors are pointing fingers at each other. One of the requirements that we have for standing up a system like this is that it has this type of support.

We had primarily used another vendor for our Tier 1 storage applications, then when the all-flash options came out, they were seemed to be doing better. It was a more reliable, well-developed product. We actually switched when we upgraded our existing arrays to the all-flash offerings that NetApp had.

I wasn't the primary person for a good portion of the time that we've had it. Now that I've taken over that role, I'll be digging into it a lot more.

The setup is complex, but not unreasonable. There is a lot to learn. There is a lot to do to make sure that all of the versioning is compatible. I know NetApp offers some tools if you're not familiar with it or you haven't done it before. I'm not sure that I've seen everything or know all the places to look for that information. So, it can be a little anxiety provoking in that sense.

We have a partner through NetApp who does consulting for us. They came in and helped us configure it. The experience of working with them was good.

The main return on investment would be that instead of having to refresh all of our desktop hardware we have been able to go reimage existing machines and use those as thin clients, then also purchase new thin clients rather than buying actual hardware. It also reduces the overhead of having our technicians deploy those systems and maintain them.

If there are cost savings, they are are minimal, whether it's CAPEX or OPE. They balance out, as the vendors get paid one way or another.

Develop a relationship with a partner. Those resources for us have been invaluable.

I would probably rate it about an eight (out of 10). That's just because it does meet the needs, but It's not perfect. Nothing is. There are some features or advertisements about what its capabilities are, but when dig into it or you get down the road, it's not exactly what it was advertised as.

We are experimenting with the solution’s storage tiering to public cloud right now. We haven't really gotten too far into it, but that's something that we're actually looking to do.

It is our primary on-premise infrastructure.

It runs our VMs. Our SQL databases are all on VMs, so everything is virtualized.

Once the FlexPod is built, managers provision additional VMs. So, it's pretty simplified.

With the all-flash array, I think it did improve application performance in our organization.

The solution’s validated designs for major enterprise apps in our organization are very important. We just followed them to make sure the CVD was compliant or matched to what they designed.

The solution’s unified support for the entire stack is beneficial. It is all in one.

I would like to see more of a centralized support model because we have all the FlexPod components and we hand build them. So, if we have issues with one particular stack, we're talking to individual vendors, e.g., for UCS, I have to call Cisco, and for storage, I have to call NetApp.

So far, the stability has been good. We haven't had downtime or issues since I built it. 

The old one did have some outages. The old UCS FIs went down during the firmware upgrade.

Our stuff usually doesn't go down, so the unplanned downtime isn't worse or better than before.

Our department is pretty small.

Our models are pretty small. So, we'll be able to expand additional chassis in place, then additional disk shelves.

We have had to file tech support cases. Our experience with them is okay. We dislike going online with the robot stuff. Many times, it has delayed our reaching out to a real support engineer.

When I came onboard, they had already purchased it. I just put everything together.

The setup is pretty straightforward. 

My recommendation: If you are not familiar with the technology, you probably should engage some type of professional services to set it up.

We hand built our FlexPod environment. It is composed of a Cisco UCS 6332-16UP FI, NetApp AFF A700, and an NDS.

It was easy to build. We had an old FlexPod built by someone else and I built the new one. We're in the process of migrating all the workloads over.

It hasn't decreased our data center cost by much. It just one rack replaced by another.

I heard the NVMe stuff is coming around. We don't have that license or that feature yet. So, we probably will try it out and see how much improvement that's over our current setup.

Give it a shot. If you are experienced with other types of technologies already, it's pretty simple to put it together.

I would rate the solution as an eight (out of 10).

Over the last year, we've implemented several solutions with FlexPod. We implemented whatever the latest version is. I know we just put one in that was the latest version in a New Jersey school.

Our customers are using on-premise. It's all on premise, but we have implemented solutions that are more hybrid where they are deploying a model where they want their app dev groups to be able to deploy resources much easier to an on-premise infrastructure, as compared to an AWS subscription.

Generally, it's a mix between Azure and AWS. That's what we're seeing from customers overall. 

For a large food distributor using FlexPod, we were able to move them away from traditional server storage, networking, etc. This allowed them to have the ability in both data centers to have hybridity where the FlexPod infrastructure was local and wasn't hosted, then using cloud automation (mainly AWS) and being able to deploy company resources for their teams.

This really opened up a lot of doors for them. Their CIO's mantra was sort of cloud first. Well, here's a way to start on that journey and keep some of your stuff local. I think everybody knows you can't just forklift everything to the cloud. You need cloud readiness assessments: What are your application dependencies and tools that are you using? This is how we came up with the FlexPod approach.

The solution has decreased unplanned downtime incidents at our customers' organizations, specifically in the database and SQL realms. We are talking to some of our customers about containerization as well.

The most valuable features is its ability to be able to have multiple options. It can be fully on-premise, it can be hosted, or it can be the hybrid model. For customers, this is the biggest windfall. 

Having the combined Cisco/NetApp platforms. Having the configuration options to tailor it a certain way. This Is a windfall as well, having options for configuration: small, medium, large, etc. Because every customer is different, and there's no cookie cutter.

It is very important that the solution validates the design for major enterprises. We rely on the validated design, specifically for the customer. When you look at the designs and what you have in mind, the prerequisites have already been done for you. So, it was easy to make the fit a little easier for each customer. Each customer being different.

The solution simplifies infrastructure from edge to core to cloud. It definitely simplifies it and aids in going to that journey. Cloud is the last piece of that route and this gives a seamless way to do this.

The solution’s unified support for the entire stack provides one stop shopping.

Data centers are shrinking. These solutions are part of that. Being able to have these solutions which will shrink your footprint in the data center and allow for easy cloud interaction, migration, and deployment.

I would like more support for different platforms, possibly different database platforms. I don't know if it supports Oracle today, but that would be a big improvement.

As the product matures, being able to support the things that customers are really looking at. FlexPod is supporting more containerizations, and that's a step in the right direction.

I just started working with it. I have only been with my company for about six weeks.

It's increased exponentially over time. I'm hearing a lot of this from my peers, as FlexPod has been out for a while now. With the improvements to the different versions, the stability has improved quite a bit.

It is very scalable. Though, I don't had any case examples of where we've had to scale it in terms of customer experience.

This is my understanding, since I don't deploy it. The initial setup is very straightforward compared to its competitors. Compared to an HPE solution, it is exponentially easier to set up. I know that as a fact.

It's sort of the one throat to choke philosophy. The customers in particular don't have to call here. If it's easy to get support, it isolates the problem on whatever stack you're running on. So, FlexPod supports multiple stacks. It doesn't just support one hypervisor or site.

The solution has saved our customers' organization in terms of CapEx. E.g., with the cloud availability, it's turned into sort of a hybrid CapEx/OpEx model.

I'm only delving into this solution over the last six weeks or so. I don't have the same level of expertise with FlexPod as I do with other solutions. I'm getting there slowly; trial by fire.

I came from a much larger integrated reseller. I worked more with FlexPods competitors where they really want to have these connectors and bolt-ons in place to be able to deploy something to Azure. As easy as it is to do it to an on-prem infrastructure, that's really where it's going for a lot of the commercial space.

For my current organization, it's opened up a whole new door for us as a NetApp partner to be able to have a competitive product against Dell EMC, HPE, etc., and to what I think to a degree is a better product in most cases, to go after that business. We go after the different verticals as well because we are in both the public sector and commercial space. So, these are much different verticals. Thus, you need to be able to the scalable solution. You need a solution that can meet the needs of these customers. When you're dealing with a healthcare versus a hedge fund, it is very different. Certain other companies they didn't have the same, they weren't able to scale or fit in these verticals.

Put them side by side. Do your diligence. There are other vendors out there. There are three other big players in this field: Dell EMC, Nutanix, and HPE. Obviously, each customer is different. But, if you're really looking at a true solution for hybridity with the ability to deploy to the cloud, take a real good hard look at the FlexPod CI solution.

We sell other products, and there are times because of the customer's relationship with another vendor that we might go with a different solution. However, we certainly look at putting them side by side.

The product improves over time, it's definitely helped in all-flash CI, private and hybrid cloud deployment, secure-multi-tenancy, end-to-end NVMW, and cloud storage tiering.

We are talking to customers about the solution’s storage tiering to public cloud, but we haven't implemented anything yet.

I would rate them a nine (out of 10). I don't think anybody rates a 10, but FlexPod is close.

We use FlexPod for customer data center solutions — as well as internal solutions in our data center — to host customer data.

FlexPod is easier for us to maintain and do build-outs with scalability. We're able to install a lot of the build-outs and service profiles more quickly and it takes a lot less time to have all that stuff set up for the customer. It cuts down on the man-hours it takes to get an implementation done.

The ease of setup is probably the most valuable feature for us. When we're bringing out a new solution, it's easy to get everything in the rack. When we need to add into it, later on, it's easier to have all that stuff available and then just adding to the installation as we need to in order to build it out. It's easier to bolt on components that are already created than to make them from scratch or retrofit them or replace components. The integration between the pieces is a lot easier on the setup side, too.

There are not really any additional features that I could think of that are not available already. As technology is enhanced, that may change.

We don't have any issues with stability as far as the product is concerned. It's solid. Issues are not directly related to the product itself.

We can scale the solution really easily. We've been doing that fluidly. We were probably one of the first Cisco customers to come online when the UCS line came out. We have a lot invested in our architecture and we pass that on to clients.

Scaling is easy to do. We can pretty much have any one of our clients do it on demand.

We use technical support from time to time. Most of the time if we really need assistance we end up having to get above the tier one support. We're able to do a lot of the tier one troubleshooting on our own. We have a lot of engineers who can handle that. We spend some time trying to get past tier one when we already know the issue is more complicated in order to get to the support we really need.

The setup is generally pretty easy and faster than most other systems.

We do our own installations as we are the ones who install for clients.

We have historically been a really big Cisco partner. We started doing more with hosted client opportunities for data. When they came out with that line, it was something that we moved right into as a natural progression. Once we thought it worked and saw how easy it was to scale it out, we decided to go that way and save a little extra money while scaling out the usage of what we already had in place.

I would probably rate the product as a seven out of ten. The amount of time it saved us on the setup, maintaining the system and the fact that we haven't had to do a whole lot of troubleshooting with it makes it valuable. 

As far as people entertaining the solution, they should go look at their equipment, know what their pain points are and then get in touch with somebody at Cisco. Reach out to an account manager or see a demo. I know when we were first looking at it, an account manager came out to us and brought a systems engineer with him. We had the opportunity to see the solution and they went over the potential benefits in great detail. It was easy for us to see the gain that we would be getting by implementing the product. 

People need to do their own due diligence in researching new solutions. Exploring other solutions is important to determine which particular solution is the best fit. Once you get the possibilities down to two or three solution sets that may work for you, compare them rigorously before committing. One will probably stand out as the best be it because of budget, features, capabilities or application.

Our primary use for this product is for virtual desktop infrastructure and for virtual server storage.

Since going to all Flash, employees are much happier working remotely in our VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure).

The most valuable asset of the product is the use of all-flash storage, low latency I/O (quicker Input / Output).

No really good opportunities for product improvement come to mind. For our organization, it does what we need it to do.

The product is very stable. I don't think it's failed once since I have worked with it within the organization.

We have a pretty stable workload, so we have not had to consider the scalability of the solution.

We did an upgrade during my time but that was just moving to a newer version of the same product.

The initial installation was straightforward.

We implemented through Paramount.

Return on investment is not always tangible. The workload for individuals is faster and our employees are happier for being able to accomplish their responsibilities in less time.

Before this solution, the organization used some Synology products that were more appropriate for small businesses. The organization had many remote sites and it was not centralized. We also considered VMware vSAN as a solution.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate this product as an eight. That is mostly because the cost is comparatively high for what it does.

Storage I/O is pretty important for enhancing user experience and utility.

We use this solution in our data center. It runs all of our ESX environment with SQL and Exchange servers on it.

The most valuable feature of this solution is that there is one call for support.

It is good to have validated designs, so at least supposedly it will work.

It would be helpful to have more flexibility for adding other components. It is always better to have more possibilities.

This is a resilient solution that keeps running, and we haven’t had any problems.

We haven't had to really increase its capacity, so I don't really know how scalable this solution is.

Technical support has helped us out when we needed. When you call for support, at least you don't have a finger pointing session of one vendor product versus the other.

We had to upgrade because our previous equipment was hitting the end of its lifespan. We went to an integrated solution.

The setup of this solution is a little bit complex at first. After you understand the major components, it gets easier.

We purchased our system through a reseller, CDW. However, there wasn't any special value added. They created a bill of materials.

We have a lease for approximately $10,000 USD per month.

This is a stable solution with good technical support. However, there is always room for improvement.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case for FlexPod is Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). We sell multi-tenancy services to our customers.

We appreciate having the validated designs because it takes the guesswork out of piecing it together. The solution can be innovative when it comes to cloud computing storage and networking.

The most valuable features of the solution are reliability, scalability, and support. 

Having the validated designs helps because it takes the guesswork out of piecing it together.

It works well in private and hybrid environments. Multi-cloud, I have yet to see.

The solution saves us engineering time, which translates to savings in money and it streamlines our IT admin.

The FlexPod service and support could be improved. The integration of the different storage equipment could be improved because NetApp is the biggest piece and it seems to be well covered, but not so much on the Cisco side.

FlexPod has been very stable for us. It is resilient. 

The scalability is one of the key features in this solution.

Technical support is reasonably good. It simplifies our support experience.

I don't have as much insight into the NetApp side of it, as compared to the Cisco side.

We were looking to build a fully-certified data center to provide our IaaS solution to customers.

I wasn't part of the initial setup. However, I have been part of the expansion and it's very simple.

The deployment time has been reduced, although I cannot say by how much.

We are a system integrator, so we use our in-house team.

At the time we deployed FlexPod, there wasn't a whole lot else available other than Vblock.

It just came down to a strong relationship with the key vendors that make up the product, NetApp and Cisco.

The biggest lesson that I have learned, working with this solution, is that it's better to go with something that has been vetted, tested, and designed by people with knowledge, as opposed to trying to go on your own. This is why we chose a certified, validated design.

This product has all of the big players behind it. Overall it works, and the reliability is top-shelf. I don't know what's better.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The primary use case for FlexPod is for our websites, intranet, internet, internet facing sites, compute storage, and processing power. We have a NetApp storage device, we have FlexPod, and we have flash storage which is part of the app. It's mostly for internal storage and compute needs.

We are more than likely going to be moving to the cloud. We'll probably do some sort of hybrid cloud solution. We're looking at AWS. Cisco has FlexPods that work with AWS. More than likely we'll do something like that at the end of the year. We'll probably integrate with AWS or whatever cloud provider we go with. We have thought about it. They have an excellent platform idea.

FlexPod is perfectly capable of supporting what we have. Our needs are mostly clients that are based off an internet website. All the computer requirements that we have are more than sufficient. For now, this is all the solution we need.

The solution can be innovative when it comes to compute storage and networking. FlexPod is very flexible and innovative. We can design it as we like. We can do just a single tenant, multi-tenant, whatever we need. It's very helpful. 

FlexPod is exactly what we're looking for as far as performance is concerned. For our use cases, this is more than ample. It has all the flexibility and the performance capabilities that we're looking for right now. FlexPod helps us meet the needs of diverse workloads.  

We have seen a major improvement in application performance by around 30%, even though we're running in a hypervisor and we don't have a dedicated service for it.

The solution reduced the time we required to deploy an application. It's almost instantaneous. It's not as fast as the cloud, but it's close enough. It's very good. It has been reduced by at least 50%. 

FlexPod reduced our data center costs by around 20%.

For staff productivity, FlexPod helped with some of the manual tasks that we had to monitor within the infrastructure. We don't have to do it now because FlexPod is very reliable. Even replacing basic disks is automated. FlexPod seems to be very quick and reliable. It's been running well.

FlexPod also simplifies our support experience. It's mostly internal in our own company. We know exactly what we're looking for. We know what to monitor. We have alerts set up for that. FlexPod helps.

The most valuable feature is that it's flexible and best of breed. We can add and subtract as we want. It takes care of all our needs. FlexPod is exactly what we're looking for. 

We don't have any plans for AI right now, but I'm sure when we do, it'll probably be more than helpful.

We have found it to be resilient because of the flexibility and redundancy built into it. 

I would like to see more cloud-centric modules that are specific to applications and more software-based solutions. That's all that is missing.

Our impressions are very good. It's the best upgrade hardware. We have had no issues so far. 

We had a couple of outages with FlexPod, but they were mostly software based. They weren't hardware based. So far, so good.

In terms of scalability, that's exactly what we have with FlexPod. We're trying to expand into the cloud. Anytime we need to add some servers or take some down, it's very scalable. FlexPod is very fast.

We have a support contract with Cisco. It is very quick. We are on the phone with them immediately. Out of 10, I would give them an eight.

We had a reseller for the setup. I'm fairly new at the company. I wasn't there for the setup. From what I have heard, the experience was very good. They have dedicated account managers that work with us directly. It was a good experience.

We have a single tenant application. The compute engine power and the cloud resources that we need for the application are more than sufficient with FlexPod. We don't have any issues with performance using the application. For now, it's exactly what we are looking for. Performance is one of the reasons that we went with FlexPod. 

From CSA, we have some product requirements. FlexPod has been more than enough for us to secure our sites and pass the audits. It's been very helpful.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate this product a 10. There are some good products out there. FlexPod is in the top five for sure.

Go with the best of breed product, it will make your life easier. I would highly recommend FlexPod.

We use the FlexPod solution for all of our VMware workloads.

Prior to using this solution, we had a legacy VMware environment and there were a lot of problems. Comparing to that time, we can really see the cost benefits of using FlexPod.

The most valuable feature is that it integrates with NetApp, as well as the Cisco B200 M4 and M5 Blades. It is a fully integrated system.

The Validated Designs are very good because they act as a reference to see whether we have done things properly.

It would be very helpful if the upgrades for Cisco, VMware, and NetApp could be bundled together and performed at the same time. Currently, if I need to upgrade NetApp or VMware then I have to request a service outage. If all three were bundled together then it would be very easy.

Every time Cisco introduces a new product like the M3, M4, or M5 blades, I have to build a new cluster because the CPU chipset is different. It cannot be accommodated within the existing cluster, necessitating having to build a new one, which causes me to invest more money.

The stability of this solution is very good.

The two partners, Cisco and NetApp, have both been in the market for a long time. Stability-wise we don't have any issues, but if we do then we will call technical support.

It is very resilient. The resiliency is obvious.

There are no issues in terms of scalability with this solution. If I want to grow the compute resources or Azure separately then I can do it. Or, if I want to add a fabric internet switch then I will just buy it.

Technical support is very good. I would rate it ten out of ten.

The setup of FlexPod is straightforward because all of the components are there.

We use a qualified reseller for all our Cisco procurements.

I can say that we are getting a good return on investment at this point.

We have saved approximately twenty to thirty percent by using this solution.

We pay approximately $1,400 USD in total for between five-thousand and ten-thousand ports. 

Apart from FlexPod fees, I have the VMware annual license cost.

We evaluated solutions from HP, Cisco, and IBM before choosing this solution.

This solution runs all of our mission-critical applications, and the cost benefits to using this solution are very good. It integrates well with other products, and in fact, the biggest lesson that I have learned from this solution is that integration is a good thing. Cisco and NetApp have done a good job.

I have been hearing that NetApp will be taken over by Cisco. If this happens, and NetApp is integrated with all of the Cisco solutions, then it would be very good. Currently one of the weak points with Cisco is that they are not a storage company. It was similar in the case of Dell, who took over EMC.

Overall, this is definitely a good product.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case for FlexPod is providing cloud services.

FlexPod impacted us by making things easier to deploy. The solution is a private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environment. That's very important to us. We're doing a lot of hybrid cloud. 

The solution's infrastructure enables us to run mission-critical workloads. I do work for the Department of Homeland Security. We have a lot of critical applications. 

The validated designs and overall versatility in terms of integrating our technology and capabilities are pretty good.

The solution brings us a scale of broad application support that helps us meet the needs of diverse workloads.

The most valuable feature is the automation.

FlexPod's ability to manage from edge to core to cloud for supporting modern data and compute requirements is very good.

We have found the solution to be innovative when it comes to computing scores and networking because of the ease of deployment.

It has increased staff productivity and has simplified our support experience. It streamlines our IT admin. 

FlexPod is very stable and resilient. 

FlexPod is very scalable.

The solution's technical support is knowledgeable.

We came in and the solution had already been installed.

The initial setup of FlexPod was straightforward.

We haven't seen ROI yet. 

We have found the solution to be resilient in the way that everything is regarded. The solution reduces the time required to deploy a new application. 

There's a lot of different ways to deploy. Look into FlexPod because it makes things easier, especially for operations, i.e. to fix things and get things back up and running.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate this product a nine out of ten.