FlexPod XCS Reviews

The setup was fairly simple. It was one of the first ones that I had done. I picked it up quickly. Overall, it was an easy deployment.

It does a really good job of what it is marketed to do. It is not as easy as a hyperconverged solution, but you are going to have a hard time finding that anywhere, where you can just plugin and run a deployment app. I do not know if they could make it work with a deployment app, but it was easy enough already, so no improvement is necessary. 

The only time that we have taken it down was when I have personally messed it up. That was all on me, and I can't fault NetApp at all.

We just added a new SAN onto our old one to scale it up and add new functionality.

We had an issue not too long ago, which ended up being my fault, but they figured it out pretty quick. We were able to determine before Memorial Day weekend, thankfully, that it was my fault, and not a product instability nor a problem with the new code. We called in because it was a pretty severe issue. We had a 20 minute outage because of it, and the issue did not resolve itself when I backed up my latest change. Therefore, we did not think it was my fault. However, everything just took awhile to come back up. So, we called support, who became engaged. It was pretty quick to resolve. 

When you open the box, they give you a very nice diagram. Which was my initial guide through setting up any NetApp SAN. It worked itself out pretty well. I knew a decent bit of the network side as well, so I might have had an unfair advantage. I connected everything up like in the diagram and went through the documentation online, then had most of the SAN set up by the time that we had engaged with our engineer to actually set up the SAN.

So, the initial setup was pretty straightforward.

I really can't fault them. I can't give them a 10 out of 10, because that seems over-the-top. It is not a revolutionary product, but it is a very good product. I would give it an eight out of 10, because it is easy to deploy, works well, the reps are good, and the support is great.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: The product works. Our vendor team is great. I love our account manager and our tech guy is great. It is a confident feeling.

The consistent delivery that we receive from the products. We deliver it to different customers, and we know it will be a consistent end-to-end solution as well. So, this helps us from a delivery side of things.

According to the product managers, there are some new products coming which will address some of our concerns around portability and compliance.

With the design guides that we go through, it has obviously been vetted and validated. It is very stable in our eyes.

Generally, our deployments are on the smaller side. We have been able to leverage the FlexPod express side for smaller deployments. I haven't hit any larger scale ones, but from everything that I have read, it would scale relevantly.

With the support side, we deal directly with Cisco, not directly with NetApp. We do have support from all of the vendors, even if it is or isn't a FlexPod solution. The support that we get from NetApp is second to none.

I wouldn't say it is more complex. It is different, because there are a lot more components than if you were just going to buy a traditional compute only or storage only solution. So, there is an added complexity given the size of the deployment and the number of components. However, it is not difficult from a deployment perspective by any stretch. If you were deploying those components individually, it would be the same amount of effort.

I would rate it close to a nine or 10, because of what the product looks like, the validated designs which are out there, and the support behind it. It's a great product. That is why we sell it.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

A combination of everything from best of breed, support, and if other customers who have used it have had good experiences with it.

As far as improvement, I don't know of anything immediate other than the performance with the All Flash. For our disaster recovery (DR), we rely heavily on SnapMirror technologies to accomplish our disaster recovery in VMware SRM. The most immediate benefit is definitely the performance.

When it started out, we did not purchase it as a FlexPod. It sort of organically grew into a FlexPod: UCS, VMware, and Cisco for the network. 

The storage is reliable in its performance.

The only downtime that we have had has been our fault with misconfiguration issues.

It does scale. It scales very well.

I have to admit that I don't call them directly, but everyone on my team has nothing but good things to say about them.

It was organic. We were running IBM storage. We knew we wanted to run a different storage, so we looked at NetApp, which was a good fit. We had run it in the past. So, we decided to go with NetApp. We were already switching from HPE to Cisco UCS for our compute side, and we already had a Cisco network. With the VMware added onto it, we started talking to NetApp and they told us that we could certify it as a FlexPod. So, we just organically grew into the FlexPod product.

From all of the feedback that I have received, it is an easy, straightforward system to set up and maintain.

None that we have measured. We do not measure any of our equipment or our data center, as far as ROI.

I would rate it as a nine out of 10, because I rarely rate anything as a perfect. It does have issues. We have had bugs which have been released, even though they have been minor. As far as the configuration (going back to configuration issues), on the UCS side, sometimes it is difficult to set up. However, once you get it set up, it is easy to add additional compute to it.

It has not improved my organization, because the products work so well on their own. We have not had any issues with it. Knock on wood.

It just works fine.

The assurance and the peace of mind that we get from knowing if we had an issue with either the NetApp equipment, Cisco equipment, or our VMware enviroment, we can call one number for support, then everyone works together and nobody is pointing fingers all over the place.

It is very consistent. We have had other systems that we have had to replace. Other vendors who we are migrating away from, or have already done so.

However, we are fully onboard with NetApp at this point. We love the company and their products with their ease of use and support.

We have several NetApp systems and we know that if we run low on space that we can add a shelf. We just recently did a head swap on some older systems, and it went fine. There were not any big issues.

NetApp's tech support is top-notch. We have a good relationship with our local guy. If he does not know the answer right away, he reaches out to somebody in the larger office and we receive answer very quickly. We are very happy with support.

Depends on who you are talking to whether the initial setup is straightforward or complex. Setting up a NetApp is one thing, setting up a Cisco UCS environment is another thing. We did not buy it as a FlexPod. We bought all the ingredients individually, then registered it as a FlexPod because it is licensed as such. 

We had subject-matter experts doing their roles. In the end, they realized it was a FlexPod and it should be registered as one. 

As far as ease of management, we do not have to hire more people to administer it or cross-train someone who is not necessarily an expert in one thing or another. If they do not know it and the primary person is out, then we can just call, someone will answer and help us out.

ROI is not a question or concern.

I would give it an eight or nine out of 10. I am not going to give anybody a 10, because you cannot achieve it. We are very happy with NetApp and Cisco, and our FlexPod solution.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Cisco and NetApp are best of breed. We just fell into this from years of using other products and vendors. 

At some point, you learn along the way that this company over here does a good job and I have heard good things, and this other company also does a good job. Then, these two companies find each other and you get a great solution.

It takes the time to market, then shrinks and shortens it.

The most valuable thing for me as a partner, as well as our customers, is the shorter time to market. 

In addition, the most important pieces are:

• The partnership between NetApp and Cisco.
• The engineering effort and time.
• The resources that they put into writing the CBDs.
• Doing all the lab validations.
• Having this product supported as a converged infrastructure.

Both NetApp and Cisco need to do improvements in their day-to-day operations management upgrades, and they are working on it. 

A piece where FlexPod has come up short in the past and an area for them to improve upon: single pane of glass management and single pane of glass upgrade process. It gets a tricky, because there are two different companies and two different partnerships. You do not buy it as a single product; you buy it all at once, and deploy it. 

It is extremely reliable. The length of time of this whole program has been reduced, greatly. FlexPod is very innovative on a month-to-month basis, but it is also extremely stable and well-supported because of the leadership and partnerships put in place.

It does scale well. I do not want to infinite scalability, but it is no different than a traditional data center. Silos, network, and storage, and compute; it is all of those same components. It is just prevalidated and predesigned. 

I used an analogy the other day. Someone learning how to cook and someone else figured out the entire recipe for you, you just have to cook it. When you go to scale, you can scale whichever pieces of the infrastructure that you need, either collectively, or you can leave it.

Because of the length of time that FlexPod has been around, it has been proven. The support center, Level 1 all the way through to the specialists, understand how the program works. NetApp's support understands the partnership with Cisco, VMware, and Microsoft, and the entirety of the system. 

At this time, they have become very good at understanding limits. They can have a management and/or partner issue during the deployment and still maintain the ticket. Our customers love it.

It is very straightforward. 

If we had never done it before, someone else has been the design guide, someone else has been the deployment guide, and it is step-by-step. If you have never deployed NetApp or Cisco before, you can follow these guides. If you have, they are just an augmentation of what you already know, and just a bunch of best practices, so you can get it up and running in a much quicker fashion.

It has a lot of big partner resources, which are consistently behind it, such as thousands of engineering hours and new CBDs coming out every year. It has both proven infrastructure which has been running for the eight-plus years, as well as being innovative. Every time Cisco comes out with a new Blade, Fabric Interconnects, or new switches, or NetApp comes out with new arrays, they are being integrated into the product that year as well as being integrated into the rest of the data conference suite. From that perspective, you are not really inventing anything; you are taking proven things and implementing them in a particularly efficient manner.

It is the first phase of the hyperconverged systems. 

It simplifies the management of the entire system. 

• Some of the define features could use improvement. 
• It needs more power.

We could not tell with the infrastructure entirely. We had some performance issues, but as soon as we opened the FlexPod, the technical support fixed them.

It is scalable. If you want to scale up merely with capacity, it is easy.

Regarding technical support, if you have any questions with the new configuration, just open a ticket to tech support and they will fix everything.

The initial setup was straightforward. 

I was also in the installation phase, which was easy.

It is a complete solution.

The primary use case is for customers that want to replicate infrastructure over and over again and have a consistent architecture for their workloads. It's appropriate for larger enterprises that want the pod design in their data centers.

The most valuable feature is the ability to integrate different products into one validated design. That allows customers to understand and get the value out of the hardware, as it was designed.

I would like to see better operations, a single pane of glass to manage and monitor the entire design across VMware, Cisco, etc. I would also like the upgrade process to be a little smoother.

From my experience, it is a consistently stable, reliable product.

The benefit of it being a pod is you have a lot of flexibility in terms of the hardware and platforms that you choose to have in that validated design, depending on your particular needs.

I personally haven't experienced the tech support from NetApp, but I have heard good things about it from customers.

I think the setup is straightforward, with the designs that I've seen in terms of the physical topology. "This link needs to go to this link. You've got to configure it in this way." The validated designs do a good job in terms of the layer 1 and all of the configuration.

I rate FlexPod a seven out of 10. The reason behind that is, there is a lot of value in FlexPod, and FlexPod is incorporating a lot of the newer technologies, like ACI, into the design, rather than just keeping it an xOS, as an example.

We are a NetApp partner. I, myself, am doing ACI and data center stuff. We have been active for a year and have several customers running on FlexPod SF functionality. We don't do native NetApp stuff, only FlexPod SF.

We are mostly looking at healthcare, and we also in the banking world. We have one customer to whom we sold this as a storage product.

It's a new architecture, really scalable and programmable. When you look at SDN propositions it fits very well in a next-gen data center.

I can't really say anything about improvements right now because we are relatively new to this product. It is implemented for the functionality and it delivers the functionality. Right now, it does everything we want.

It's a really good, stable product. It has good resilience.

You can scale it. You can add more boxes and you can have more IOPS available if you want. It's very easy to add new hardware to the cluster.

I'm not directly involved in support cases right now so I can't say what the support is like from my own experience, but what I have heard from my colleagues is that the support is good.

The setup is really straightforward. What I heard was you plug it in, you bring it up, and it's easy to install.

It's good, it's a very nice product. Very scalable.