FlexPod Review

Its scalability is innovative for both compute and storage

FlexPod is a single product that you can manage. It has very good scalability. We can scale our UCS Servers. We can carry 12 storage nodes in the FlexPod. The main benefit is its single, all in one solution from server switch to storage.

It is enterprise storage. The latency is about five billion milliseconds, which is coming from the cloud servers. 

We have seen an 80 percent improvement in application performance.

If there are any failures, or anything needs to be addressed, we can make one call to support for assistance. 

No matter how busy the data is, we can put the data in the right place at the right time.

We would like to see a new design that comes with more productivity or graphics. Currently, the vendors, like HPE and Dell EMC along with NetApp, all have very similar products. We want more diversification.

The solution is resilient, because it has good scalability, and other products in the market don't have this. It has scalable storage and service. 

The scalability is innovative for both compute and storage. With other products, we can't scale the storage space, we have to buy more storage. E.g. with Dell EMC, if we want more storage with VxBlock, we have to purchase another VxBlock.

The technical support is good. I have been working with NetApp for the last two to three years, and they have solutions readily available for bug and code fixes. 

The initial setup is not complex. It is user-friendly since it is a single solution with all the components delivered in one package.

NetApp does some of our installations on some products, like SolidFire. However, they pass the data on to us, and we have to do the configuration.

It saves a lot of time because it is a single product. We also save time with the installation.

It is cheaper than other products. For example, Dell EMC VxBlock is more expensive.

We also evaluated EMC VxBlock, which has a similar design. Both products have flexibility.

The difference is NetApp's response time of 0.5 milliseconds, which we felt was very good.

This flexible is very good for private cloud solutions.