FlexPod XCS Reviews

We are using it internally for one of our departments to provide the platform in which our employees are working to support our customers.

For us as an IT department, it helped us a lot. Before we implemented FlexPod, we were using different solutions all based on a virtual infrastructure. On VMware, before implementing FlexPod, we had a lot of problems doing backups with disaster recovery. After integrating it, it enabled us to have shorter maintenance windows, instant backups, instant recovery, which also minimized the number of alerts that we get from the application team and from the employees who were working on the application that something is not working. Most of the time the reasons for the alerts were backups that had been done or there were some problems with them. Constantly getting snapshots in a virtual infrastructure. Thanks to FlexPod and thanks to NetApp snapshot technology, we were able to reduce it. Even now at this moment, we do not have any kind of information that there's some kind of issue because of backups.

Unified support for the entire stack is really important. It was one of the major points and one of the major decision-makers. FlexPod offered unified support. Before, when using various companies and providers, we had a lot of issues with support. For example, whenever we were opening a case with one of the vendors, they always said that it's not their problem, it's not with their application. Our solution is because of them. With FlexPod, now we do not have that issue. We can go to one of the partners or one of the vendors and tell them we have a problem and they will help us directly. Then they will tell us that they do see a problem that we have. That it's not with Cisco, please contact NetApp, give us the ticket number from NetApp and then it will work jointly or the other way around. Now it's much easier for us, for the technical teams to deal with all the issues, that we have in our environment.

FlexPod has enabled our staff to become more efficient. We have more time. We have been working with FlexPod for around 10 years now. Since then, we've grown three times. We are still managing the difficult infrastructure with the same number of people. I think it is the best proof that having a unified solution can minimize the admin effort.

It is hard to say by how much FlexPod has improved our application performance but we do see improvement. We do see a lower number of tickets coming to us saying that there's a performance issue with applications or there are some latency issues. Once we switched to FlexPod, especially for the last few years, when we are using AFF, we do really not see any kind of tickets coming saying we have performance issues.

FlexPod has decreased unplanned downtime incidents by a lot. With FlexPod, we have the opportunity to do un-disruptive upgrades. Since we began using FlexPod, I did not see any kind of disaster or any kind of maintenance that would really impact applications or end-users. We could do it basically on a daily basis without any kind of problems because of the redundancy, which we have there and the way the upgrades can be done.

Our data center costs have decreased as a result of having FlexPod. We could reduce the number of racks in which we are using in the data center because of the way FlexPod works. I think that at this moment, compared to what we had before using FlexPod, we still have a lower footprint in the data center as we had 10 years ago.

The validation designs, which we are using, are mostly for the deployment of FlexPods, Cisco, VMware, and NetApp. We do not use any validated designs for the application because most of the applications that are hosting our in house-build applications. Wo do not have any validated designs as those are only done internally.

In the next release, it would be really good to have some kind of unified update manager or something, which would allow us to update the whole infrastructure from beginning to end. All together like VMware, NetApp to go with Cisco, so that you don't have to do it separately in upgrading the NetApp, separately everything to UCS infrastructure then going with VMware. Something that will allow us to do it together in some integrated manner.

The upgrades should be improved. We would like to have the ability to do unified upgrades of the whole infrastructure from beginning to end. 

Stability is really good. We do not experience any kind of stability issues. I think the best proof is what we have now. We are now with FlexPod for a few years. Now we are running the third deployment of FlexPod and we are planning to do another one which will come next year.

Scalability is just fantastic. There's no problem to go vertical or horizontal. It's quite easy, modular, and can be done online.

Technical support is really good, especially when it comes to cooperation between various vendors like VMware, Cisco, and NetApp. At this moment, we do not have any kind of problem with support so we can easily get the kind of support that is needed.

Before, we were using a service with VMware, but there were various vendors. We had storage that was delivered by a different company. Your compute by a different company, networking by a different company. We had a big footprint in our data center. Secondly, we had a lot of issues with support, as I said. We were looking at solutions to help us solve the problem. Minimize the footprint in the data center. Minimize the discussions with vendors whenever we are buying something, so that we would not have to go to many different vendors and ask for the pricing and negotiate the price for the solution. 

Compatibility and basically going with FlexPod enabled us to resolve those issues. We can talk with one partner whenever we're buying FlexPod for us. It's just one vendor, it's FlexPod. The support works, we do not have any issue with that. When it comes to integration, we know because of the validated design, that it will work and it will suit our requirements.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. We didn't have many issues with it. Of course, 10 years ago when we were starting with it, it was quite a fresh thing. There were not many documents available or validated designers like we have now, but we didn't have any major issues implementing it.

We are using one of our partners, with whom we have been working with for many years. It's a German company, and we are getting really good support from them. Not only when it comes to integration and deployment, but also consulting and design.

We did the research. We went through different vendors when choosing a FlexPod solution. For us at that time, and today, it is the best solution on the market when it comes to converged infrastructure. It has a really easy implementation, which gives you a lot of flexibility with the server profiles, which gives you easy disaster recovery with snapshot technology. If you are looking into such technology, have a look at FlexPod and you'll see that it will suit your needs.

I would rate it a ten out of ten. It gives us all the capabilities that we need. It gives us good performance. It gives us easy disaster recovery. It gives us easy modular upgrades and extensions. Basically, everything we need.

We have multiple use cases for it. Most of it is just based on the fact of its reliability and its performance. We have customers in the insurance industry, financial industry, retail and they mostly use it for compute and storage. 

FlexPod simplifies infrastructure from edge to core to cloud. Everything becomes easier. Everything is more collapsed. Everything is easier to manage and migration into the cloud becomes seamless.

With respect to FlexPod's unified support for the entire stack, it's always good to have a single pane of glass to work from. 

It has improved application performance. Anything that runs on instance nowadays is good. I suppose if you're going from spinning media to SSD you're guaranteed to see an improvement.

FlexPod has enabled our staff to be more efficient. Once it's working, it's working. There's not a lot of break-fix. It gives you time to be proactive and not necessarily reactive. I haven't come across a time when it's not working. We have the normal disk failures and hardware issues but everything is so redundant that it doesn't affect it. 

I see the most value in the UCS portion. I love Cisco UCS.

Its ability to scale seamlessly makes adding anything so much easier than having to run by separate new hardware from the get-go.

The validated design in the architecture is an ongoing debate. You don't need to buy FlexPod itself. You can borrow FlexPod based on the reference architecture. I wouldn't say that the validated design plays such a big role because you can just reference the architecture and technically have FlexPod as well.

At the moment, our customers don't use storage tiering to public cloud but there are plans for future use. 

Possibly the UCS could get a bit better. Other than that, overall I don't necessarily have any sorts of constraints or issues with it. It's done the job that it's been bought to do.

It's never given me an issue. Stability is perfect. 

I haven't yet used their technical support. 

The initial setup was quite straightforward. As with anything nowadays, the workflows are just so good that it's easy to configure one thing and just move on to the other.

Initially, it might cost an arm and a leg but the return on investment is going to be worth it. It's going to be worth in the long run. So taking money upfront now to make make money over the long run just seems to make sense.

It has reduced our data center costs. Having everything in a single cabinet versus multiple cabinets can reduce your cost.

Our customers also evaluated Dell ECM VxBlock. They chose NetApp because it's cheaper and during a POC it always performs and gives them what they want.

I have experience with Dell EMC, HP, and NetApp. NetApp is a bit more complicated to set up than everything else. Once it gets going, it's so much easier to manage than all the others. The others on the flip side are very easy to set up but then troubleshooting can be a bit tedious and complex at times.

The advice that I would give to anybody considering FlexPod would be to just do it. It depends whether you know NetApp or not. If you don't know NetApp, when you get into NetApp it's a bit confusing based on storage, virtual machines and stuff that other storage vendors don't necessarily use. Do a lot of reading and researching.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. Not a ten because it's not like it hasn't broken. There have been issues, but it's not major issues. 

We use this solution for backing up and storing banking and financial data. It is especially important for protecting data mirroring between multiple data centers using a hybrid cloud type approach. We have our own cases for what we use but we do like the input we get from the manufacturers and their suggestions on how we should deploy things.

Before we had FlexPod, we had just stacks and stacks of servers. You know, every time you wanted to build a server you had to go buy a whole pizza box (case for computers or network switches), put it in a rack, plug it up. We had EMC, we had a bunch of different storage providers, the way it connected was makeshift, a couple of late servers here and there. So to be able to put everything in one rack, one solution with the storage, was a big step up. Plus, every time we need to expand the storage for the old system, it wasn't easy. Cisco blades simplify everything from a compute standpoint and you can easily upgrade the blades. All you got to do is add a new chassis, change out your blades, and the blades are done. If a blade dies, you pull it out, you get a brand new one or you change the motherboard and you just slide it back in depending on the policy that you create for the surface profiles and you are good to go.

A valuable feature of the FlexPod solution is that it is all one architecture and I can call one number and get support for Cisco and NetApp without having to jump through open TAC (Technical Assistance Center) cases and do multiple things to get issues addressed. When integrating with VMware, I know all the parts that came with it and all the parts and when I need to update something in it, I can just get the complete package, do all the firmware stuff and the fabric interconnects.

The real improvement I could see on the FlexPod side is it falls on the NetApp components. The upgrades that they had to go through from 7-Mode to CDOT (Clustered Data OnTap) did not make for a good transition. I'm pretty sure they learned the lesson from that because you basically had to stand up a side-by-side system, copy your data over, upgrade your stuff and move your data back. No one wants to do that and it is a nightmare.

It would also be nice if you could manage everything through a single pane of glass — but that won't happen. With a single pane, we could look at everything at once in the UCS (Cisco's Unified Computing System) components as well as VMware and the NetApp components. It would be good to be able to do that without having to navigate into four different web pages.

The solution has decreased downtime incidents by close to 100%. With the resiliency built into the system, one component fails and the others still work. I mean, you just can't get any better than that. So the stability of the solution is really good.

We have lost a blaze server here and there. But we run about 30 servers on each side, so, losing one isn't that big a deal. Besides that, we don't have that many issues with it. It just works. This is our third iteration. Obviously we bought it the first time and we liked it enough that we bought it again.

Scalability does have some issues being that NetApp is all part of the FlexPod. It could limit how much you can scale. Depending on what head system you bought that came with NetApp it will make a difference for you to be able to scale. I don't remember off hand what the step-by-step is to upgrade. But I know sometimes that it can turn into an issue. If you didn't gage right and you bought the wrong piece and you went too small on your storage and you need to expand, you might have to change stuff out.

The technical support is good. We've never had an issue with them. We paid for a service and we have a dedicated support person. We call him, he opens the case, then the engineers call us back. We don't wait on hold or do any of that. So it works really well for us. I like that. The solution's support for the entire staff has been very important. That I can get the help that I need and help find solutions to fix issues that happen between the stacks is really valuable.

Before we started using FlexPod we just had a regular old hodgepodge of different IT systems. A couple of Dell servers, a couple of HPs, a couple of IBM blades, and that kind of network doesn't really function well as a solution once your organization starts to get to a certain size. You need to commit to a solution that you will be able to grow with for the next five or six years.

The fact that the product integrates with all major public cloud services did not influence our decision to go with FlexPod, although I think that maybe the case with some people.

In the end, we went with FlexPod because of everything that they offered. The complete scalability of the system, the recovery capabilities of it, and the whole integration opportunity. The NetApp part was a big deal and a component we wanted because the NetApp storage solution could do everything that we wanted it to do. We didn't have to buy 60 licenses just to make it do what it was supposed to do right out the box. That was a big thing.

I was involved in the initial setup and it was a bit complex. It was complex at first because I mean it was a new system and stuff and there were some parts that we had not managed before that we had to learn. Using the UCL software was new to us. We can easily manipulate the fabric interconnects. You don't have to get the networking people every time you need to do something. They just have to touch the 9k or the 5k or whatever you running.

We integrated through Sigma Solutions as a reseller and consultant. They were excellent. We enjoy working with them. They worked with us on the first installation and then again when we redeployed our data centers and helped us get the FlexPod solution. They actually took us and brought us to California and we actually went to the EMC shop and we went to the NetApp shop there in California. We toured the main offices and looked at the solutions there and where we ultimately went for the next NetApp FlexPod instead of the EMC FlexPod version.

Our shortlist included a Dell EMC.

We have found that the solution simplifies infrastructure from edge to core to cloud — although we have not really implemented the cloud yet.

The solution has made our staff more efficient and enables them to spend more time driving the business forward. It's primarily what we do. We don't really have other tasks. But as far as not having to worry about daily maintenance on the network very much — it just works. I'm not messing with it every day and trying to get something to work right. It is set up, it is configured, We have got our policies in place and you pretty much roll. We can focus on doing other things like analyzing the data, mixture throughput, things like that when you don't have to worry about the hardware tripping you up.

I think the integration improved application performance in our organization. The back end on the FlexPod with the 40 gig connections on the NetApp makes the DB admins life a whole lot easier with a lot less latency for them. And not only that, with the components, we can monitor it and see where they are being affected and then we can fix those issues for them without a lot of back-and-forths.

I'm sure the solution has saved the organization money. Because it creates a smaller footprint you do not need as many servers. I don't know offhand how much power and storage and residual costs we saved. But the solution has decreased organization data center costs.

The solutions have affected our operations with the opportunity to use things like All-flash, CI, Private and HyperCloud. I'd say that one of the biggest improvements was All-flash. Before we were still using mechanical drives and actually we did on the first generation of FlexPod. We are on our third generation. They did have mechanical drives in the first iteration. So for us to move to all-flash, which we have now, was a really good step up.

On a scale of one to ten where ten is the best, I would rank the product against the competition as a ten.

My advice to anyone considering this solution is that they really start out looking at their needs depending on the size of the company. The product is kind of expensive even from an entry-level standpoint. I know they have the edge systems for branches, but if you have a small to medium-size business you probably have to have a lot of data to make it worthwhile. I would say FlexPod would be the way to go if you are a larger business or one with large data volume.

In our case, we were building out a brand new data center. They were rolling out Epic, which is a big healthcare application. So, we bought 200 UCS servers. This was five years ago when we first implemented this, and the FAS 8060 has been serving this customer very well. It has allowed them to start with what was 26 hospitals and grow up to 45 hospitals, all with the same set of infrastructure over the last five years. 

With FlexPod, it is about the synergy of the server, the storage, and the whole management layer. Together, it is really about minimizing staff. You don't have to hire more people. You can work with the minimum level of resources and the availability is really good. We have had very little downtime.

1. Scalability. We knew that we needed to grow, but we allowed them to start with a footprint. Then, we were able to add shells and drives. With the way that ONTAP works, it was seamless migrations throughout. 
2. Ease of use. They were familiar with NetApp and some standalone environments, which made it a lot easier for them.
3. It is cost-effective.

There is always room for improvement. I believe we can do hot swaps on the fly. On the release upgrades, if there was a way to do a release on the fly, that would really be cool because it does take some downtime. It takes restarting. It is more of a software thing. Customers hate doing releases. 

An area for improvement would be on Level 2 and 3 support when there is a release issue.

On the whole, this Flexspot environment is very stable. We have had hiccups. Over a five to six year period, one could look at any environment, and say, "There have there been hiccups." However, for the approximately 90 percent availability that we are looking for. we are very happy with the results.

The technical support is very good. There are times when we get stellar support, then there are times when you get an individual who may not have had the right sense of urgency when we had a sense of urgency. But when we escalate, the response is very good. So, we are happy, and that is why we continue to invest in NetApp.

We have a different storage platform running cache database, which is its main application or database for their healthcare environment. Due to a number of future proofing. scalability options, and simplicity, the customer chose to go to with NetApp from a competitive platform. So, we have just finished the migration off the competitive platform that went very smoothly. They are in GenIO testing right now. Within a few weeks, we were able to migrate them off, and it's going well.

The way that we do the initial setup, there are a lot of volumes. There are multiple copies of the same database. 

Let me speak specifically about our recent migration, where the customer actually has four copies of their production workload. In this specific environment, it is complex. Could my customer do it by themselves? No. We helped with that implementation. Their scripts are written in just to help automate the process. This enabled the migration to go very smoothly.

We were able to optimize utilization. We had NetApp over two data centers and in the secondary data center we noticed that the utilization of storage was not optimal. So, we broke up the clusters, which was really easy to do. We were able to repurpose a lot of the drive sets that were in the secondary data center and move them to the production data center. That was a huge cost avoidance at the two and a half year mark which saved the company money and still met the production requirements without having to buy anyone else's storage.

The NetApp portion was a $5 million investment five years ago. That has served the customer well over five and a half years. They are having to do another upgrade. But, if one could forecast as well as we did five years ago, that is pretty good.

I came from IBM and my customer had IBM in place before. So, we can't do FlexPod with an IBM. We can't do FlexPod with a Pure. Dell EMC is a probably the closest one that can do the whole converged environment. But, in this case, my customer would not choose to do this with Dell EMC. 

The synergy that Cisco and NetApp put together initially for FlexPod worked very well together from an availability standpoint, minimizing staff to manage the environment, keeping costs down overall, and just enabling the whole environment to work smoothly.

I would give it an eight (out of 10). I always think there is room for improvement, especially with technology changing as much as it is. 

Our primary use case for this solution is for VDI.

We have offices across the globe in some 20 to 22 countries and there was a time when people from Singapore needed access because they experience similar issues as we do. When we implemented this solution, all 250 VDI sessions seamlessly were accessed over the internet. That's the benchmark.

It simplifies infrastructure from edge to port to cloud. It proves that deployment is easy and straightforward. There isn't any need to do extra work. 

We are definitely getting good progress and good improvement from them. It has decreased our data center costs by around 8 to 10 percent. 

FlexPod has improved our application performance by 40%.

With FlexPod, Cisco UCS compute-wise accessing is much faster.

FlexPod's validated designs for major enterprise apps are really important because we can go with our SAP HANA solution, our Hadoop solutions, our HP solutions, and our Media solutions. A vendor-specific solution is always preferred.

In terms of unified support for the entire stack, UCS hardware-wise is much faster. The storage and NetApp are good. We use Cisco switches and the connectivity and other aspects have improved. 

The GPU based VDA solutions could use improvement.

We don't have any issues with stability. 

We can scale up whenever we want.

Their technical support is good. I would give them a ten out of ten. 

We used to do it by ourselves but we got a really good intro and demo for this product. We got a strong marketing push from NetApp. 

The initial setup was straightforward. It's all built at the factory and it came put together as a rack. Everything was straightforward. 

We used an integrator and the process was seamless. They took all of our requirements and from there it was straightforward. 90% of the process was done at the factory. We only had 10% to do and it was done within hours. 

We haven't seen ROI yet. 

My advice to someone considering this solution is to go for it. 

I would rate FlexPod a nine out of ten because this is definitely a huge improvement based on what we saw. 

Our primary use case for this solution is for custom applications. 

FlexPod has improved my organization in the way that it has given us much greater flexibility for getting our apps rolled out.

It simplified infrastructure from edge to core to cloud. We aren't doing anything to the cloud but within the infrastructure, it's much simpler because anytime we roll out dedicated applications, we are essentially deploying dedicated FlexPods for each application.

The solution's IT support has been key for it because we're able to size appropriately depending on the application and the flexibility to grow out each FlexPod depending on the application requirements.

It has also enabled our staff to be more efficient. Previous to this, the infrastructure was all outsourced and so when we were bringing everything insourcing, it enabled us to essentially start fresh. We were moving off of the legacy block storage from a specific vendor and this allowed much easier siloing of our applications so that we didn't have resource contention between the applications.

The application performance has also been improved. I don't have exact metrics but we're moving from legacy hardware to essentially new hardware, so there's a big jump in the actual overall hardware quality that we've been doing.

Unplanned downtime incidents have decreased. We haven't had any unplanned outages that I'm aware of since we went to the FlexPod model.

The ease of expansion is the most valuable feature. 

The solution's validated designs for major enterprise apps are very important.

In terms of what needs improvement, nothing jumps out at me. It is meeting our requirements and so I'm pretty happy with the way it is right now.

It would be helpful if they sold a pre-boxed option so that you can buy a rack and everything's already there, everything's connected.

FlexPod seems very stable so far. We haven't had any unplanned outages so far.

I am very impressed with scalability because, given the applications that we're running on it, it's much easier to ensure that the resources are dedicated for each application and we can scale each application's own pod as we need to.

We went from an outsourcing model to an insourcing model. It was a good time to make a conversion from legacy, just standard blocks, a lot of physical servers and convert over to a virtual environment and have everything integrated into a nice little box.

The initial setup was very straightforward. We've got all our reference documentation and we had everything planned out. Our VAR did do a good job of saying, here are the components that we're using and here's how everything goes together.

We used a VAR for some of it and then just for the purchasing. After the first couple of rollouts, we just use them for the purchasing piece and we started doing all our own integration. 

They were a bit slow. They were taking two to three weeks to roll out a pod and we were doing it in a couple of days.

We have not seen ROI yet. 

FlexPod was pretty much the way they wanted to go from the start.

I would rate it a solid eight out of ten. It's not perfect. Everything's already plugged in when you get it out of the box. Obviously there is a bit more configuration involved than a VCE where everything comes in and you're buying a box, essentially. But that's a pretty minor knock on it.

It is a really solid solution. The pod flexibility along with the containerization of each pod is very nice.

We have been using FlexPod for a virtualized environment, mainly for virtual machines running on VMware or Hyper-V with database solutions, application servers, and web servers. In general, it is for all data center infrastructure. 

It is our integrated system between NetApp and Cisco.

FlexPod gets very strong performance and efficiency from NetApp storage as well as it is very simple to install and implement. We can be up and running in two or three day after we get the rack.

CVDs reduce risks for implementations. We always make sure that all installations are based on best practices.

FlexPod has so many versions and capabilities. So, we can simplify the data flowing between edge, port, and cloud.

FlexPod can improve with a single control management interface to manage all aspects and components of the solution.

FlexPod is very stable. It has redundant components and the uptime is 100 percent.

FlexPod has a long history of innovations in each release. They introduce each new functionality into FlexPod, like cloud integration and All Flash FAS. We are seeing all the time NetApp and ONTAP working together to create new features. 

FlexPod allows you to scale as your business grows because they support a lot of expansions from the network sites.

In Brazil, there is a special chain to support FlexPod technical support issues. It is a special chain that is integrated between NetApp and the software layer.

The unified support is very important because we have a single point of contact. Whether it is Cisco, NetApp, or VMware, they work together in order to solve any problem that the FlexPod has.

The setup is very straightforward since all our installations are based on CVDs. So, it is very easy to install.

FlexPod can decrease data cost costs because it is an integrated solution. 

We fear high availability so we can't buy from different providers.

I would rate FlexPod as a 10 (out of 10).

The primary use case that we have is we like the support model of the FlexPod. We like it being converged with NetApp storage, Cisco, UCS, and VMware. We like having a single point of contact phone number for all support inquiries. These are some of the main selling features that we enjoy about FlexPod.

The validated design is really important for us because it gives us a model on which to base our architecture and continued support for all firmware upgrades. It also provides consistency throughout the environment.

FlexPod is making our staff more efficient. They don't have to spend as much time validating infrastructures and designs because that has been already taken care of out-of-the-box. The support model makes it a lot more efficient in the case of incidents.

The unified support is the most valuable feature. What I really enjoy about FlexPod is the support model. You have a single point of contact number for all troubleshooting issues and the vendor that you call takes ownership of the case. It goes with the NetApp validated designs, which are based on Cisco, which is really interesting.

The features of FlexPod that have had an impact on us are the new additions that we have made with the all-flash arrays: added performance, and flexibility management. These are very nice features. 

If they could reduce some of the complexity at the system manager level for ONTAP. I find it gives a lot of flexibility. You can do as much or as little as you want. But to be able to do as little as you want, you do have to do a lot. So, if they could bring that down to a more manageable effort level, that would be nice and simplify it a bit.

Stability has been awesome. No outages to report throughout the whole stack since we implemented the whole Flexspot solution. So, it's been really stable, which is nice. 

FlexPod has reduced the downtime in our environment because of the fact that we have a validated design and all the firmware is up-to-date, validated, and matched up across the entire platform.

We will see if it can scale, because it's still fairly new.

FlexPod is improving our business by giving us rapid support and rapid response to incidents.

The FlexPod unified support was really important for us in a case where we contacted one of the associated vendors. They redirected the case, taking charge of it, and really speeding up the process of troubleshooting with the other associated vendors, who are included with FlexPod

The initial setup was was very well coordinated between NetApp and us. It was very smooth and very painless. 

We leveraged NetApp services to come and install the solution in this case. It went very well.

FlexPod has saved data center costs, due to the fact that we reduced our footprint for storage in a big way. We went from three complete racks down to a 2U storage array for more than 300 terabytes of storage. 

We immediately saw a return on investment due to the fact that replacing our legacy storage arrays with the new AFFs reduced the footprint and maintenance costs. Overall, we saw an almost immediate ROI.

The short list was a essentially Dell EMC and NetApp. We chose NetApp because of this FlexPod support model.

Look at the end-to-end solution. Examine what the needs are. The solution is so flexible, and there are so many options. If you plan it well, you can plan a very cost effective cost-effective solution throughout the whole gamut of storage arrays available through NetApp.

I would rate it a nine (out of 10) because there is always room for improvement. I can't be perfect.

We don't use tiering to public cloud.