FlexPod XCS Previous Solutions

Chris Haight - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Solutions Architect at CDW Canada Inc.

A lot of my customers use three-tier infrastructure, like HPE, Dell, and Cisco Rack servers in addition to all sorts of different storage (DAS, NAS, SAN). A lot of my customers also have all of the the vendors and equipment in the mix, e.g., where they had storage from EMC, from NetApp, and from Pure with the same on the compute side with generally, all Cisco networking.

With the FlexPod solution, you are standardizing on a platform and streamlining operations. You are utilizing Cisco compute and NetApp storage, reducing the vendors, less sprawl, fewer admin tools and easier management.

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JM
FlexPod Architect

I used HP and Dell. I was having a lot of problems with HP and Dell was getting expensive. I had a little extra cash to buy the UCS when it first came out. There was a little bit of a learning curve, however, once I got that down, it worked well. I'm a big supporter of Cisco.

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John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy IT Manager at MBBank

We used some IBM FlexSystems, but they're now retired and discontinued. We also used a non-FlexPod platform but didn't follow the CVD guidelines. 

After four or five years with that, we migrated to the certified FlexPod for better stability and standardization.

We switched to FlexPod for its certified design and better support.

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Buyer's Guide
FlexPod XCS
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about FlexPod XCS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Neil Bembridge - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Infrastructure Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

NetApp has been with our organization since before I started working here, although back then it wouldn't have been a FlexPod solution. It would have been a piecemeal solution of HP and NetApp.

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MJ
Infrastructure Engineer at Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center

Prior to this solution, I had experience with Vblocks. It is basically the same product, but on the storage side it uses all EMC and the compute is all UCS. All of the networking is still Cisco, VMware is still VMware.

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SS
Network Engineer at Department of Homeland Security

We came in and the solution had already been installed.

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SL
Infrastructure Lead at a non-profit with 51-200 employees

While we previously used Nexus switches, we've now transitioned to the Nexus Nine series, which offers enhanced capabilities. We're currently in the process of upgrading our UCS chassis and V200-M5 blades to stay up-to-date with the latest versions. Despite these upgrades, we haven't encountered significant challenges, as FlexPod has proven to be a reliable solution over time. In the past, we followed a traditional approach where we used Dell for computing and relied on NetApp for storage. Additionally, we had some HP equipment in our infrastructure. When the time came for hardware lifecycle management and replacing our aging systems, we explored our options. It was during this evaluation that we considered FlexPod. We realized that being a Cisco-centric environment, FlexPod would be a perfect fit for us. 

Over time, as we've continued to work with FlexPod, it has become evident that Cisco's UCS architecture, particularly when paired with NetApp, offers a more comprehensive and flexible solution. While other vendors like Dell may excel in computing, they tend to lack the depth of integration and support for FC/FCoE that Cisco's FlexPod architecture provides. 

Cisco's approach allows for a broader range of configuration options, provided they align with validated designs. This versatility has not only streamlined our operations but has also allowed us to explore more creative and efficient solutions, ultimately improving our infrastructure.

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ZS
IT Manager at Capgemini

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.

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JL
Senior Client Executive at Sirius

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.

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SP
Senior IT Analyst at a construction company with 10,001+ employees

They were trying to replace all the older hardware with new hardware, getting some new sites as well. At some of the sites, they used the IBM Blade Servers, which were having high failure rates. That was a big wreck. We were going to a UCS solution, so they were trying to integrate into the UCS solution as well.

Three or four years ago, our management decided they were going to put in EMC VNX at a site that had a lot of Oracle in it. It was one of our bigger sites. They do big trucks there, and for the three years that VNX sat there, they had all types of Oracle problems in terms of latency issues, but could never get that latency issue fixed. We brought in a ROBO solution, and I didn't do any tweaking on it. I just put it in and put the Oracle on SAS drives, then separated them out by themselves. We've had no complaints in two years.

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Ameet Bakshi - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant VP at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We purchased this solution to increase our capacity.

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KK
Senior Systems Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Our older solutions were not as reliable.

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HS
Engineer at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Before, it was on a Cisco UCS C240 M5 Rack Server, and we moved some of the applications on a very limited use case. With the innovation of the AFF A800, its ease of management, and supportability, we have seen some performance improvement with the solution. The performance has improved by two or three times.

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SM
Storage Administrator at HDR

The overall versatility and validate designs are great. We previously used a different platform, but we gained a lot of utilization with FlexPod.

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it_user481791 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Customer Engineer at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

We previously used VCE Vblock, VSPEX, Nutanix, SimpliVity, VxRail, HPE ConvergedSystem, and many others.

We still use some of these products, such as Nutanix, because of many advantages it has especially with new private cloud clients (VDI, virtualization, etc.) and service provider architectures, but the bottom line for a customer is:

  • Price in terms of ROI and value for money.
  • Flexibility: Does the solution scale both up and out considering the previous point?
  • Ease of management, reporting, provisioning (relieving the headache for day-to-day management of infrastructure).
  • Support that goes beyond their own boundaries.
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VK
Senior Storage Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

When we went to invest in a new solution we were looking for ease of implementation, peace of mind, future reference, and stateless design. That is the ability to take out any hardware piece, replace it with a new one, reboot and — boom — ready to go.

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KK
Systems Engineer at First Ontario Credit Union

Before, we used to run on HPE Blade Centers, so we had a networking guy, an HPE Blade Center guy, and a VMware guy. Using UCS and FlexPod, we now have two people at the company who run that whole stack, so there is no finger-pointing. It eases a lot of troubleshooting, because it's just two people versus multiple teams.

It has improved the application performance in our company. For us, it was about replacing old hardware with new hardware. The application performance was slow before, and it is better now.

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DM
Infrastructure Engineer at TechnipFMC

Our previous solution was an HP c7000 BladeSystem with 1-gigabit passthrough modules, and we were going to a 10-gigabit solution. We wanted something that was easier, better, and would support 10-gigabit. We actually ended up going to a 40-gigabit solution.

The HP solution, HP Virtual Connect Flex-10, only supported 10-gigabit modules.

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JB
Senior Data Storage Administrator at Denver Health

We had been using Dell EMC storage before, VPLEX, etc. We had a good bit of experience with that. 

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EG
Data Center Manager at a consultancy with 5,001-10,000 employees

We previously worked with physical servers. We had a lot of HPE c7000 class. We started with RLX, which was pre-HPE. HPE bought them. 

We have played with the P class and C class, doing a couple different proven concepts along the way. We had Dell and Cisco, and some other people all come in, and they taught their stuff.

This time around, from the managed solution side of it, Cisco is what sold us. Hardware is hardware, but how you put the solution together was the selling point for us. To be able to get something saying, "You build it like this." Not, you have a bunch of parts, what do you want to do with it? This is what a lot of the other vendors are still doing. They are tailoring hardware to your workload after you have bought hardware. 

As opposed to finding the solution you need, helping you build it upfront, presenting the hardware and dock, then showing you how to build it. This is what is nice for us. While a little rough, once you have built it, the support matrix says, "Here is newest version of firmware. Here is newest version of something else." Then, off you go. They do not necessarily take all iterations of change back to the lab to recertify them. 

You work with the vendor partnership to keep you in compliance going forward. This is one of the reasons that I want to see the NetApp and Cisco partnership hold together. Otherwise, we are right back where we were before. NetApp has an update and Cisco has an update, and neither one of them have tested it with each other. 

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RM
Senior Systems Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

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. 

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SA
Sysadmin at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

We previously had several components for different workloads, using HPE and other storage providers. After that, we switched to NetApp and Cisco devices. In the end, we switched over to FlexPod's integrated and support solution.

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BK
Senior Infrastructure Analyst at a legal firm with 201-500 employees

This was our first experience with it. Before this, we'd buy hardware, storage products, and networking products, and we tried to integrate them. Whatever surprises we got, we dealt with them. With a validated architecture, there's a little bit more confidence that whatever you're putting in place has been validated, and then you got two major names, NetApp and Cisco, behind you.

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CK
Data Center Engineer at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

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.

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PK
Senior Storage Engineer at U.S. Bancorp

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.

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TT
Works at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

We hated taking racks down or putting them up just to deploy a simple solution. If we need an application and had to put another rack up, it means using a lot of resources. Instead, we could launch a virtual machine. The network, the compute and the storage is in a single solution.

If you have to spend more time during a day fixing computers, servers and the network than you do focusing on what you make money from, you don't need to be in the business you are in. That's why they provide hyperconverged technologies that are data-center-centric out of the box. You buy it, you bracket, turn it on, load an application onto it, and then you build it. 

It all started many years ago when IBM created the most intelligent compute system in the world. Everybody logged into a VT100 terminal. They didn't care about what was going on in the machine. They logged in and it worked. Then some guy decided to break it apart and create a disparate network. When they figured out they realized it was too sophisticated. As the company grew they needed a server for every single application. That's why you see the evolution of VMware and Citrix and the evolution of converge.

The future of things moved away from just hardware. The future of things now is going to be like hyperconverged but in a very virtual form. That's the reason why Cisco is buying organizations like BroadSoft. They want to get into organizations that provide virtual services.

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RP
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The previous solution required us to buy a server or node for the cabling, deployment, configuration, which meant a lot of time and resources every time we had to buy more nodes or servers and add them. We don't have this with FlexPod.

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MR
Network/Telecom/IT Security Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

Before FlexPod it was all physical servers. Believe me, the time savings, the issue reduction, I can't say enough about the solution over physical servers, to do it justice. It's night and day.

When I'm looking at a vendor, cost is always a component but that's not number one. My number one is their professionalism in getting me through from soup to nuts: from the start of the project all the way to the end, to make sure that it's running right. And on "Day Two", support. If they cover that whole project, I'm good.

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DB
System Analyst at ONEOK, Inc.

We had issues with our old storage provider: quirky stuff, weird outages, almost-outages, and performance issues. We had some IBM hardware and NetApp. Our good luck with NetApp made the decision for us when it was time for a refresh. We got rid of IBM and went all-in on NetApp.

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it_user750753 - PeerSpot reviewer
It Specialist at US EPA

We brought it in as a proof of concept. We were trying to bring virtual desktops to our organization and it was pitched as an all-in-one package deal we could deploy easily.

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it_user699783 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network engineer at Capital one

When choosing a solution, stability is absolutely what I am looking for. It has to stay running. The software is fine. It's the hardware that we want to make sure runs, runs, and runs.

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EK
Senior System Administrator at Bell Canada

We aren't investing in a new solution because we're currently using Cisco and NetApp products. We're most investing in a new configuration, which is FlexPod, since it aligns well with our current product lineup. 

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AC
Senior IT Manager at Vocera

We had multiple siloed solutions with various hypervisors and storage platforms. These solutions couldn't scale, so I consolidated all of them into a single platform solution, which is more scalable.

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AH
Senior Systems Engineer at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees

Environments that I worked with have always been hodgepodge. We are not huge right, but HBMSUs were even older than when EVAs were popular, but those were limited to block storage only. Yet, in the organization I am in, they were limited to Fibre Channel, therefore going to a FlexPod and having the flexibility to do NFS, CIS to do Fibre Channel, ISCSI, etc., it doesn't matter. We can do it all in one array for whatever vendor solution that we pick, whatever storage they say we need, whatever hardware they say we need, we have it. We have the flexibility to put it all away.

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AS
Chief Technology Officer at Triana Business Solutions Lda

We're transitioning to another solution right now. The main problem is that we don't have support anymore from NetApp due to the fact that the solutions we designed are end-of-life. We need to design a new solution.

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JC
Senior IT Planner Integrator at a government with 501-1,000 employees

We used VMware Private Cloud primarily, but we wanted to get into a more tangible private cloud experience as opposed to building our own with individual components that didn't fit together very well. We like that this is designed for network compute storage all in one rack. That's mainly what drilled us to invest in the FlexPod.

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RM
Senior Systems Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

We need to invest in a new solution because of our end users' compliance.

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it_user527241 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Storage Engineer at Esurance

I was involved in the decision to switch to this product. We were looking for a tool that was designed for the way our organization works. We wanted a silo environment for different applications. Since we have segmentation in our company, we have different domains, and FlexPod really does fit in really well in those situations where you need a FlexPod for a particular application or for a job area. There’s an idea of implementing Citrix and VDI on it, so those kinds of applications are really good.

We were the first company to use EMC's Vblock implementation, and it was a Vblock pain. I was not there when the company selected Vblock, but I was told that there were a lot of issues. Being the first customer on Vblock was really a nightmare. We had to move to FlexPod. But it doesn't mean that Vblock was not good. Our timing on the purchase of Vblock was not right. Our expertise in the company was more Cisco driven and FlexPod really fit in well with that.

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it_user527172 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Services System Administrator II at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were previously using something I would not really call a "SAN", definitely not an enterprise-level one. We got to the point where we kind of handcuffed ourselves by not being able to expand or grow that system. It was really at the limits of what we could do with it.

Obviously, fiber channel versus iSCSI is definitely the direction we wanted to go, plus we wanted the high availability. At the time, we looked at a couple other systems and basically the FlexPod definitely met our needs the best. Also, we knew that it could grow.

In fact, about a year or year and a half ago, when we were spec'ing out our system and making a decision on a SAP ERP program, one of the deciding factors for adopting that technology was that we already had the infrastructure to support it because we had the FlexPod in place.

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NN
System Consultant at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees

We used NetApp in combination with HP products at my previous company. This combination worked well, but FlexPod offers more in terms of operational simplicity, making it easier to manage and operate.

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RM
Storage Engineer Manager at Servix

We were previously using Dell EMC servers and storage. We were also using HPE networking. We switched due to the support and the products were getting old, needing better performance.

When migrating from Dell EMC, the performance increased by 200 percent. We now have hybrid which is faster with SSD and SaaS.

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OV
Senior Project Consultant at DynTek

We've worked with Cisco for a long time. So, we ended up deploying most of our solutions with them, which were similar, even before there was FlexPod.

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it_user886947 - PeerSpot reviewer
TSE at Insight Enterprises, Inc.

In terms of selecting a vendor to work with, collaboration is important because the product is the product. It will sell itself. What supports that? Collaboration. This means being able to work with technical support and engineers to deliver a solution for the customer, who does not care about the challenges that we have to face. 

The customer just wants the product and that is our goal: To be able to deliver something from behind the "green curtain." If they love it, they buy it, then they want to buy more of it. We have to plan for it and integrate it with our future endeavors. That is what we are all here for.

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it_user527259 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Of IT Infrastructure at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Before I got to this company, I worked at another company where we had one FlexPod device. We decided to deploy another FlexPod device. After I left that company, I went to another company and adopted the VCE solution. I got exposed to both of them and I was able to judge which solution was going to be best and meet the company’s needs. 

That company had an aged infrastructure that was obsolete. We had to do an infrastructure face lift. It was easy for me, as I was exposed to both VCE and FlexPod.

It made more sense to go with FlexPod. I already had expertise on how to use it, NetApp storage, and VMware. I didn't have to spend a lot of time training my team how to deploy a solution when we already had prior experience on how to use it.

In addition to that, the cost was good compared to other products.

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DB
Senior Systems Engineer at a government with 201-500 employees

Prior to this solution, we were using a multi-vendor storage solution that included HP Blade servers with equipment from EMC. We switched to Cisco, which was a strategic management decision.

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JM
Director of Data Center Operations at Barry University

We have always been using NetApp, although about twelve years ago we went through consolidation. We had Dell storage, some Hitachi, some IBM storage, and then we had a NetApp filer. Our multi-vendor hardware came about from purchasing the cheapest thing that we could get when something else was needed.

When we met with our NetApp rep, they came in and suggested that we consolidate. We had been having trouble with backups, using Syncsort, and they suggested that we move to SnapProtect and get everything on NetApp. They helped us to take everything off of all the other storage, consolidate down to NetApp, and then replace our entire backup solution with SnapSuite and SnapProtect. After that, they made sure that everything would replicate back up to the DR site.

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AA
Network Administrator at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

FlexPod was recommended by our architect and vendor, WWT.

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it_user527316 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at McLean-Fogg

Before we went with FlexPod, we were still a NetApp customer. We were using Dell rack servers connected via 1-Gb links for NFS and 4-Gb fiber channel for block storage and still running VMware vSphere. Things were okay but it was time for a hardware refresh. At that time, we evaluated Dell, HP and Cisco UCS; both rack and blade servers. We pretty much eliminated HP right away. One of the reasons we decided to go with the UCS was that our NetApp reseller was very much certified with Cisco and had a good reputation. As I’ve mentioned, it would have that one source, where we could get support for everything through that reseller. It also didn't hurt that Cisco offered a fantastic deal, where they quoted a price for their blade servers almost exactly the same as what Dell wanted for their rack servers. The price is a huge factor for our company. We're a privately held company, so price is often the primary factor.

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GS
Network Architect at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

We did not have a previous solution.

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RB
Cloud Engineer at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

We were using IBM SAN and HP servers before this solution, and our uptime has increased from about ninety-five percent uptime to five-nines or six-nines.

Our IBM SVC SAN was over-engineered. The person that brought it in didn't want to take the time to properly size the solution, so they just overbought. We switched to this solution because management wanted us to look for ways to cost-save.

I had a very small amount of experience with NetApp while I was with a previous employer, but the storage people at the company spoke very highly of NetApp. We brought them in to compare cost, features, and performance, and NetApp was brought into the environment after that.

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TB
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at CANADIAN PAYMENTS ASSOCIATION

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

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CR
Lead of the Server and Storage Team at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

In our past converged platforms, we didn't have vendor support that would work together. That's actually what led us to abandon our Dell EMC solution in favor of FlexPod.

Also, there were engineering oversights with our previous Dell EMC solution. There is a single point of failure in the midplane which we had to replace, to the point where we actually replaced an entire chassis. It required a full outage to replace the chassis. On the other hand, there are multiple midplanes in every UCS 5208 chassis and a scale out into more chassis. And those chassis are a lot cheaper and more affordable than the Dell EMC solution. So there is no single point of failure in the system anymore.

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SH
IT Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

We did not have a previous solution. We used to use Dell, IBM, and HPE machines, which were all old. We used to always have a lot of problems with other domain controllers, file servers, DNS, and DNCP. 

Everything is now in FlexPod and virtual. It is always up and running.

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DZ
Service Delivery Architect at Premiercomm

When I was a customer we still had NetApp, but it was all 7-Mode and then we were running HPE c7000 chassis. When we switched over we went to UCS Nexus and had upgraded to CDOT with brand new clusters at the time.

With my current organization, we sell a lot of solutions in many different categories but this is my go-to solution because of my comfort level with it, for sure.

When I'm having these conversations with customers, ultimately it's based around what the solution outcome needs to look like, what are the business requirements, what are the business needs and building it out from there. The biggest thing to take into account is the challenges that they're having, whether it's performance, or specific workloads and specific needs they have. A lot of customers use NetApp as just a NAS box, and I really try to do my best to get out there and evangelize that it's far more capable than that. I would say the same thing with UCS.

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it_user750555 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer at Energysolutions

I was hired to migrate a datacenter from an infrastructure that sucked to a new location on a better infrastructure, and so I put out the RFP for that and was involved in the purchasing decision, although not exclusively.

And unsurprisingly, FlexPod won. Partially, it had a leg up because that was what I knew backwards and forwards and trusted. I had an impact on that, and yes, it was intentional, but frankly it was the best solution for us.

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it_user699813 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of IT at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

We were coming to the end-of-life with our hardware, and we needed a platform that could easily grow. We were using the traditional stand-alone servers. We then went to the Cisco C-series, then we started virtualizing, and then we needed something bigger.

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it_user527283 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Administrator at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

It was already implemented when I started at my company, and then I just setup another new environment after I had gotten there.

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WB
Manager of IT Services at a comms service provider

We came from physical servers installed on old operating systems. We had around 20 to 30 physical servers. Not only did FlexPod reduce the power requirements in the data centers that we were running, but it also decreased repair, decreased support, and allowed us to have everything in one system as opposed to all these individual different branded devices that we previous had functioning.

We originally switched to FlexPod because everything was going to virtualization. We started doing some investigation and research into why, and found out that it was an overall better solution. In the long run, it ended up saving you money, putting everything together into one solution, and allowing you to utilize all your resources for multiple machines. Therefore, if you needed a new server, you did not have to go out and buy a physical server, you just spun up a new virtual machine, and you're done.

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IM
IT Engineer at CenturyLink, Inc.

What made us switch was the fact that we had limitation challenges with the old product. Everything was a little bit different every time. FlexPod helped us solve the problem so that we are deploying something that is the same all the time.

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BF
System Engineer at Missile Defense Agency

We had a mixture of workstations, some rack servers, some floor servers. We knew that wasn't working. We were being pushed to try to virtualize what we could. That's what drove us to it. The fact that we were able to clean up all that, got rid of racks of equipment, it was just the way to go.

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TE
Systems Manager at Marcum

We switched to FlexPod because of cost. The cost of our previous solution was too high. I couldn't scale out as easily as I wanted to.

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it_user870267 - PeerSpot reviewer
It Managed Services Provider at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

We switched because of the virtualization. We were a completely physical environment and we wanted to go to a virtual environment. That is the reason we went with FlexPod.

Regarding our most important criteria when selecting a vendor, this is a very big organization and there are multiple vendors. So it's all about the partnership. In this organization, we choose the vendor at the very beginning for three years or five years and go with the long term.

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it_user527094 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer II at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I was a recommender of FlexPod. The decision to go with it was made by management.

I've previously used the Vblock solution. I've used the HP solutions as well. EMC is overly complicated, disparate systems kind of lopped together, and I don't like their management interface that much. HP has a pretty strong solution as well. The FlexPod is a bit more integrated, consolidated and easier to deploy. Between the two, I would choose NetApp. If I didn't have a choice, HP would probably be my second.

The HP solutions are a little complex. Support is not as swift as with the NetApp FlexPod solution. The advantages of HP are similar to NetApp: it's one-stop-shop, one SKU, one deployment, a prevalidated system.

The Vblock is okay with EMC on it. Having that solution where you can get one SKU and scale it out, if you choose to go EMC, is good, but that's about it .

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JW
Engagement Architect at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

I have experience with Vblock, Vxblock, and FlashStack.

With FlexPod, we have a lot of validation around performance. Especially in the medical world, it's a very well-known entity, so we don't have to struggle a lot with finger-pointing. Those are all good reasons why we picked it.

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JH
System Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

We've always been roll your own, setting up the UCS, and the external storage arrays, and then plugging them in and zoning it in, so the fact that it's an all-in-one solution is great.

We use Infinidat and EMC. 

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JG
Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

The industry is going mainly for CAPEX, where people are spending less on individual devices, and most of working capital is going to converged or hyperconverged systems. Basically, we can leverage whatever money we're spending on the solution and get more technology built into the same platform.

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NF
Manager of Network Services at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees

We were using HPE G-Series Servers. We needed a lot more space and performance, since I'm not sure that we had good performance metrics at the time that we moved solutions. However, we were looking to expand our Exchange environment and have more SQL. We wanted making sure that we had enough I/O, and the FlexPod system had it. In addition, integrating with UCS made it much more flexible to add compute in our VM environment, and we were going from physical to virtual at the time. Thus, we cut down on the amount of space and power that we were using by going to blade chassis.

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GP
Systems Engineer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were running on legacy rack and stack; just single servers doing single things with server sprawl and multiple racks of servers. It's not a great way to do things. That's what drove us to FlexPod.

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RA
Director of Infrastructure Operations at ONEOK, Inc.

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.

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DA
Executive Director Of IT at a university

We were using all standalone solutions. We had Dell standalones, we had HPE standalones, etc. The problem with the standalones was, if one box went down, whatever application was on it went down too.

When this whole age of virtualization came out, I made the choice that we needed to go that way, for a couple of reason. We have a slim IT department, our resources are valuable, and this allows us to put resources in other places and not have to worry about the technology.

What I like, when choosing a vendor is when they bring solutions to the table, and then they go through with those solutions.

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it_user699834 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior product manager at Century Link

We leverage 3PAR in some cases. It really depends on our customer base. The advantages of FlexPod over 3PAR are that FlexPod is all integrated. It's a little bit more native, overall. That's really the major difference there. Also, since Netapp is a fully NAS based deployment and 3par being a mix of FC/NAS, it makes it easier to manage the Netapp from a capacity/deployment view.

Some of the other advantages with NetApp, are that it scales within that environment. It's not really plug-and-play like 3PAR, from the storage app perspective. With that integration, however, everything is native. With the Vnomic software, it handles the automatic deployment of the storage. That's great for us because I don't need to perform manual touches on the environment. That really allows us to stay focused on our customers and the workloads.

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it_user527223 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager - Storage and Backups with 1,001-5,000 employees

Last year, we bought Vblock infrastructure and CloudBurst infrastructure from IBM. We switched because they don't have the scalability and the performance that we have now in FlexPod.

We decided to invest in FlexPod because we have a good relationship with NetApp. We did not only invest in FlexPod; it’s possible that most of our clouds are NetApp.

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it_user527187 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a engineering company with 501-1,000 employees

I think the team that I joined had a different vendor. They migrated from that vendor to FlexPod because we're scaling out our business. The business is doing well, so we have a plan to scale out 10 times the business size over the next three years. That's why we addressed all other different solutions and we found the FlexPod would help us out when it comes to scalability.

If we buy the appliance right now, we don't have to buy the full size, but if we want to scale out, it gives us that option to scale out as big as we want it. Our business tripled over the last two years and we're starting to create performance labs to see how much it's going to handle when we go 10 times our size. FlexPod is helping us out with that a lot.

In general, for the backend IT people and the infrastructure team, support is one of the most important criteria when choosing a vendor. When you call, I don't want to be waiting on the line. This is the smallest example I can give: waiting on the line for a callback and support that just keeps pointing fingers at other appliances. We look for the quality of support; getting to solve and follow-up on our issues; RMAing items, if need be; and proactivity.

With NetApp, we have the online support where, if one of the disks goes down, NetApp automatically knows about it and they approach us saying, “Hey, you've got a disk that's going down. If your alerting is not working, our alerting is working. We need to send you an RMA for this disk.” Those things make an IT department feel more secure because it is not only us having to watch our back to show that we're doing a good job for our business; we've got somebody else on our side doing that for us, as well. That's another good thing.

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it_user335835 - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Manager (Storage) Cloud Managed Services at IT Convergence

We were previously using HPE 3PAR and then we migrated to NetApp. It wasn’t that HPE 3PAR did not serve the purpose, but NetApp having the validated design helped us to arrive at the solution even faster. We know that they have a strong engineering team. It is not that NetApp would just buy other companies and add to their portfolio, but because of their strong engineering team, they invest in their own research and bring out products. It also reflects in the support, when in need.

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it_user527265 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Architect at JWS Consult

With our particular case, our previous company had spun us off without any IT staff, so we were using third-party IT and we were trying to bring IT in house. Because we were having to build our IT staff from the ground up, the flexibility and all of the things that FlexPod made easier means it is a whole lot easier to bring IT in-house. We didn't need multiple storage people, server people. We had it more integrated, and had the single company to call for any issues we had bringing that all up.

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PD
Pre-Sales Specialist at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Our customers choose this solution because of the validated design and for the one-stop solution where it's one contract. It's one building block which is an advantage for the customer instead of buying separate items.

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AT
Senior IT Infrastructure Specialist at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

We did not have FlexPod before. We had a bunch of standalone HPE rack servers.

We switched after analyzing the performance needs and what customers wanted to spend.

We reduced the environmental footprint, like reducing electricity costs and heating. However, we are hosting our data centers from somebody else. We reduced our footprint of equipment by approximately 80 percent. Meaning that about 70 percent of our cabinets right now are empty because we switched to FlexPod.

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SC
Cloud Service Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

We used NetApp from the start. Before my time, I'm not too sure what they were using. I think before it was just storage on servers, like integrated in. As long as I've been here, I've been using NetApp. 

At the time we went with that solution, public clouds didn't exist. However, knowing that it does integrate with public clouds is an absolute bonus. It's awesome because we're moving towards that type of integration. Knowing this makes our lives a lot easier because we don't have to move from where we are to get to where we want to go. We've already got what we want, which is absolutely amazing. So, it's great.

We are very strong NetApp partners.

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HB
Network Engineer at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees

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

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it_user750843 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

We switched because we needed a converged infrastructure.We didn't have it. We had bunch of siloed environments across the board.

We chose NetApp because it helped us unify what we already had. All our training experiences with UCS - we have an environment of UCS, we have VBlock. We decided, "All right. Let's use the training that we already have and let's take UCS and let's take all the virtualization that we have and let's just continue to use it." We had NetApp already, so might as well just take NetApp with it.

FlexPod has been around for a long time. We said, "All right. Let's PoC this," so we PoC'd it. We got a lot out of it, lot of the requirements were met. It worked well for what we had.

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it_user692457 - PeerSpot reviewer
Datacenter manager at Defenders

When selecting a vendor, I would say my most important issue is not price. It would be scalability and knowing where the company's future roadmap is five years down the road. That's more of a concern to me. I want to make sure the company is still going be around in five years and has a vision, as far as where they want to go.

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JP
Systems Administrator at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Our old solution was horrible and slow. We were using Dell EMC. We switched due to perceived latency.

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CF
Network Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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

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JF
Systems Administrator at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were previously using NetApp, which is why we wanted FlexPod. We wanted to virtualize our servers, but also needed more storage and power.

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MP
Capacity Manager at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We had such a disparate collection of servers and vendors which didn't make sense since it meant having a lot of different support contracts. We had different servers, switches, and hardware coming out of support, and keeping track of that was quite difficult. We made the decision to move to consolidate data centers. In that decision, we decided to go with FlexPod.

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it_user692439 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior network arcitect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

This is a tricky question. I don't think there was one major reason. It was a combination of the stability of NetApp, the integration with our environment, and that everything comes in one box.

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SB
Site Reliability Engineer 2 at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

I have not previously used another solution.

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OS
Team Lead at Grenke Digital gmbh

We chose NetApp because we've used them before and we trust them.

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AS
Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees

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.

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JW
Director of Datacenter at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

We were already a big Cisco partner when they came out with this line, and it was something that we just moved right into. Once we saw that it worked, and saw how easy it was to scale it out, we just decided to go that way to save a little extra money.

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BP
Senior Storage Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

We did not use a previous solution.

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EW
Solution Architect at Charter

We didn't work with a previous solution. Our background was all Cisco networking. Then, when Cisco came into the compute market we moved into it.

When selecting a vendor my most important criteria are support and validated designs.

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it_user750681 - PeerSpot reviewer
Server Engineer at Amtrust Financials

No. We've used bits and pieces of it; the three different pieces, we have always used VMware. We're always using that app but then kind of brought UCS into it and then built the FlexPod.

We switched for the simplicity of having one number to call.

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it_user527133 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

I've been at my current company for a year. They were already using FlexPod.
I have previous experience with EMC and Pure Storage. Compared to those, I love FlexPod. I like the scalability, because it has the storage virtual machines. It's very easy to build upon that.

For people comparing NetApp vs Pure, or NetApp vs EMC, I'd tell them to seriously look at NetApp because of the scalability and because of the ease of use.

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it_user527253 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

We were using HP for blades – the HP C7000, C3000s – and the FlexPod. The FlexPod implementation actually was dramatically different for the setup. Once it was set up, it ran a lot more stable.

In terms of speed, we did see an improvement over the HP blades, but we also upgraded from seven-year-old equipment to three-year-old equipment. We had a massive increase. We purchased on a forecast of five years; this is what we think we will be in five years. As I’ve mentioned, we're at about 70% right now. I think that we overpurchased it. It was a dramatic shift when we first got it and it's still holding up well.

Compared to the HP solution that we were previously using, it's considerably more stable, outside of the initial setup. It’s better in almost every way, outside of the initial setup. The stability; the flexibility that it gives us. It is scalable if we ever need to add additional capacity in.

We decided to invest in a new solution when we were migrating to a new data center. We looked at a bunch of different vendors because we were going to put all brand-new gear in. We already used NetApp previously and so we went to the FlexPod architecture to become more standardized across the industry.

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it_user527202 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of IT Infrastructure at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

As I’ve mentioned, we were previously using HP. We decided to switch because we had actually seen the FlexPod at a conference and at a number of other things. We were looking at the solution. At first, we had a specific application that we needed a closed-loop solution on. We tried it with that. When we saw it and liked it, that's when we decided to do a larger deployment with it.

We are working our way out of the C7000 line of BladeSystem infrastructure. We got in Gen 6, I think. We're at Gen 9 now. I just signed a PO for a bunch of Gen 9 gear. Those systems, where we've had them, have been rock solid and have lasted us the entire thing. The storage piece to HP was a little less convincing. Particularly since they are kind of leaning on 3PAR and their storage keeps changing. We weren't as convinced. We had a lot of NetApp and we just felt more comfortable staying with it. When we saw that NetApp had partnered with Cisco, it seemed like a one-shot kill; it seemed like a good idea.

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it_user424989 - PeerSpot reviewer
Server Administrator at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We had outgrown our EMC array and we were looking at alternatives. We began talking to multiple storage vendors. We selected NetApp because they are Meditech approved, which is our EMR at the hospital. We had spoken with a few other hospital entities that have had NetApp in their environment for quite some time. We're very pleased with it.

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it_user330141 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Engineer at Expedia

The previous solution was just a standard desktop Windows laptops and desktops platform and we just moved our users to FlexPod. We had user, data and file shares all over the place; now they're in a central location. The user experience for desktops was haphazard and they were getting a lot of different calls to the help desk on different issues with individual work stations. Now, if there's a problem, it's going to be a generic problem for everyone but it's a lot easier to troubleshoot a desktop issue or roll out another application for a user. It's very easy to add an application. I think it's a great productivity and time-saving tool.

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MB
Systems Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

It worked for me at my last company so we went with FlexPod. It's what I know. It's what I trust, it's comfortable, and it's worked well for me in the past.

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CG
IT Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

In terms of performance, our old architecture was far behind and couldn't keep up. That was our tipping point when deciding to move to a new solution.

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DH
Snr Technical Solutions Architect at World Wide Technology

For a lot of customers, when they are setting up data centers or adding onto their data center, it gives them a way to buy a prepackaged solution. A lot of FlexPods that I have sold, they are building a new data center, or adding on. It is an easy purchase or add-on, because they know it will work, and they know it will be scalable and reliable.

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it_user750813 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Architect at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

We had specific workloads that needed a converged infrastructure, and it was just the one we picked.

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it_user692451 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager with 201-500 employees

They made the decision before I started working here. I know that they chose it for the reasons I mentioned.

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JC
IT at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

When we were deciding whether to bring on FlexPod as our solution, we did look into other vendors and other solutions. FlexPod was far more advanced than other solutions that we were introduced to at the time.

The primary reason we selected FlexPod is that we understood that the solution was secure and could upgrade and manage day-to-day work. This is why we decided to go with them. 

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AR
IT Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

We knew we needed to invest in a solution like FlexPod because we were growing and we have evaluated different solutions and after that we decided.

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MB
Practice Lead at Bedroc

The product was adopted as a solution before I came to the company. 

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it_user979815 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Solution Engineer at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees

We have been using FlexPod here for about 10 years.

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SI
Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees

It was just a refresh of storage and hardware that got everyone talking. And then this was the solution.

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JP
Information Systems Manager at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

We used physical servers, different storage, older legacy equipment.

The most important criteria when selecting with a vendor are 

  • reliability
  • technical expertise
  • speed in response time.
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it_user527268 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager of Systems Engineering at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We previously used Dell blade centers and HPE blade centers.

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it_user527262 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Engineer II at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I wasn't involved in the decision process to invest in a FlexPod. They decided on that before I joined the team. I know they evaluated Dell and IBM, and found that FlexPod was the clear choice.

One of the most important criteria for me in selecting a vendor is support; how quick they respond for RMAs and cases is a big one. I like to see how the sausage is made, exactly what the products do and how they do what they do. I like to evaluate on a very, very technical level before we make any decisions.

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it_user527235 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Technology at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The existing solution was a decade old; we had to invest in a new solution.

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it_user527112 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Sys Admin at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We've been a NetApp customer probably since 2005, not so much in the FlexPod but actually from the initial FAS arrays. Because we already had the FAS arrays or the FAS systems, it was a natural progression, really. We were looking to refresh or move away from HP for our compute. With FlexPod, we already had the NetApp storage and it was sort of a natural progression. The price point was pretty good.

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OS
Enterprise Solution Architect at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

At my previous job, I used to use Vblock, Dell 7000 series (from Dell EMC, Cisco, and BMC).

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AP
Network Systems Specialist at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were using physical servers, Cisco physical servers. We switched because it was mandatory for updating COREmanager to 8.x, it was mandatory to go VMware.

For us, the most important criteria in a vendor is that they need to pick up when we call.

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BD
Infrastructure Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Before we went FlexPod, we had hard physical servers with networking. Then depending on the networking and a virtual environment, we had several networking environment stacks which required us to have larger servers with more than one cable, maybe even more than one media type. Now, we have a whole rack full of media-type connectors, even media converters doing the same thing.

With this particular setup, you have one 10 gig or 140 gig cable, and that is all you need. Instead of having eight cables, you only have one. We had a physical server to NetApp storage. With the components that come in FlexPod, it has enabled us to reduce connectivity down to one wire, whereas before, we had eight, 12, or 20 wires going to one server.

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it_user750789 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Storage Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

It was there before I came.

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it_user750822 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Jones Walker Llp

We switched because EMC and Dell, and EqualLogic sucked and it was driving me nuts and it never worked.

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it_user750612 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Architect at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Before Flexpod, we had other Meta app systems going back to 2008.

We're a health system company, so we have a number of different storage solutions. However FlexPod, it has everything.

We still have a few solutions because some applications have their specific storage systems, and being in the health industry, those applications are usually approved by FDA, and it's not something which can be changed at will.

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it_user692436 - PeerSpot reviewer
Scada supervisor at Brook fields renewable power

We needed to migrate away from our older servers. When we did the cost analysis through the FlexPod, and replacing each individual server, it just made more financial sense with the FlexPod in the long term. We were using individual Dell servers, or HP servers, it was kind of a mishmash.

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it_user692448 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems engineer with 1,001-5,000 employees

We needed to migrate away from our older servers. When we did the cost analysis through the FlexPod, and the cost of replacing each individual server, it just made more financial sense going with FlexPod in the long term. Previously to this solution, we were using individual Dell and HP servers. It was kind of a mishmash.

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it_user527352 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Staff Storage Admin at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were doing a technical refresh of our systems and of our storage. That's where we combined that to use a FlexPod-type architecture, to do both of those things and make sure that we're aligned with best practices.

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it_user527208 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Sys Admin at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

We decided to move over to streamline the equipment and standardize the equipment that's across every site and every place that we deal with.

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it_user330603 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Many companies have used different solutions in the past. Blade server and bare metal servers have been around for a long time, but Cisco got it right with UCS. The UCS computing platform is the key to making a FlexPod what it is, and the primary reason for clients to choose it for their computing needs.

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SK
Network Engineer at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

We began to look for a new solution when the stuff we had was at end-of-life.

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KH
Information Security Engineer at a aerospace/defense firm with 10,001+ employees

FlexPod was really our first major endeavor in large converged hardware.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor are the availability of support, to get it when we need it, and to upgrade as fast as possible when we need to.

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RK
Manager Of Network Administrator at a educational organization with 201-500 employees

We had EMC storage before we got to the NetApp storage. We had a lot of supportability issues. It was an older system, so it was better just to upgrade the system or replace it.

We knew we needed to invest in a new solution when we were replacing four hard drives a day.

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JB
Senior systems manager at a transportation company with 201-500 employees

We were previously using very individual systems, then our vendor suggested this. Also, because our phone systems, we were also using reference design.

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it_user298266 - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Leader – Storage & Security at CoreLogic RP Data

FlexPod is more about the way that the pod is build. We've probably used all the individual components before but never put it together. The validated design was the big thing for us.

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it_user750783 - PeerSpot reviewer
Group Leader at a consultancy

We were on a platform, which we thought didn't have a long life from another vendor.

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it_user750648 - PeerSpot reviewer
It Infrastructure Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

Our old solution was outdated, old, and out of support. We were at our hardware refresh point of three to five years.

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it_user527076 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Team Lead & IT Architect at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were using a mixture of Dell and HP solutions. We were using Dell 910s for a lot of our ESX environment. We were using old Cisco MDS switchers for fiber channel. We were able to consolidate all that infrastructure down and use one standard platform coming off the Nexus.

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it_user527124 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Sys Admin at a logistics company with 501-1,000 employees

I just thought that the way that the trend of technology was going, aging hardware; there was just a requirement that we needed something like it.

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TT
Virtualization Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

We brought our IT in-house and needed a solution to host it on, and FlexPod was the solution that we decided on. That was for a smaller subset of the company. 

The larger parent company used what the contracting IT provided at the time. When we released that contract, we moved to have all in-house employees and an in-house IT. We also decided to use FlexPod because we had seen the value with the smaller companies. It has scaled out well.

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DC
Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

We were just building stacks by hand. We were strongly encouraged by Cisco - we partner with them - and when the platform began to get some traction, we looked into it and got on board.

For me, the most important thing when working with a vendor is the flexibility. We have great partner relationships with Cisco and NetApp, but it's the flexibility of the platform and the product, the way we can sell and implement it, that makes it really easy for us.

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it_user750738 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Analyst at Muscogee Creek Nation Casinos

We didn't have any centralized storage at all. When we purchased it originally, it was all to expand and growth, and everything else. NetApp was our vendor of choice.

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it_user527085 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Systems Engineer, III at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I've actually been working with NetApps for 15 years now, way before FlexPods; the 800 series, way back when; had a StoreVault for a little while and then the 2200 series. Working with Icon is my first leap from the small business to a global enterprise.

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EZ
Director Of Engineering

Before FlexPod we were using IBM. We switched because it's all about unifying the systems, converging the systems. We felt we should have a solution from network to storage to the server, and computing power, from the same vendor, all in one solution; not take pieces from different vendors and put them together.

When choosing a vendor the most important criteria are the vendor's reputation and tech support.

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it_user750846 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Admin at Tats Consultancy Services

I'm new to my new project, so probably yes, there would have been something, which they have replaced with FlexPod. But I don't know what was replaced, to be honest.

They switched because they wanted better performance and we are especially using FlexPod for datastores over the network. It's more feasible, I'd say. Performance wouldn't be as good as SAN. But still, it is a better solution.

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JB
Senior systems manager at a transportation company with 201-500 employees

We knew we needed a new solution because we ran out of capacity and performance. On top of the NetApp, we also evaluated EMC. They were the main ones, and we just ended up still staying with the NetApp. We decided to stay with NetApp partially because the support model we had for it, we liked better.

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it_user527346 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Administrator with 1,001-5,000 employees

We knew we needed to invest in a new solution because we were at capacity on our blades and we needed to move to something else. Cisco UCS at the time was just kind of up and coming. I think we really made the right decision, because their one-profile approach of propagating all the configuration data down to the blades was really nice.

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it_user330303 - PeerSpot reviewer
Virtualization Team Lead at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

That’s the selling feature – configuration is essentially done for you. It’s good. Less of a puzzle and more of a procedure.

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JQ
Network Engineer at a government with 10,001+ employees

We knew that we needed to invest by talking with consultants.

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MM
Enterprise Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

We were using a mismatch of different things like Cisco switches, NAT storage, and HPE servers. The reason we switched was the validated, one-vendor support for everything. It's one of those things you set up and you just forget it. It just works.

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it_user750837 - PeerSpot reviewer
Server Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

The original project was no longer needed, so we took it apart, and repurposed the components.

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it_user750687 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Engineer at a financial services firm

The previous solution was physical servers with a storage so everything was separate, administered separately, and they decided "Hey, let's go with this FlexPod to size everything together with unified support and unified products." So that's why they chose it, to slim things down, but at the same time, to gain some functionality that maybe they didn't have before.

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it_user750624 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager Infrastructure Services at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

We spoke to NetApp, because one of our biggest concerns that we had was cloning our environments. We had to have identical replicas of our production environments in Dev and UAT, and the flexible solution was the best option for us at that point.

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it_user699825 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

We’ve worked with IBM, HPE, and Pure Storage. The only storage vendor that isn't an actual partner with Key Information is EMC.

I've been doing storage since Viber channel was invented and I've implemented Versa stacks and FlexPods. I don't think I've had an issue incorporating any other storage product in with the environment as well.

The advantage of FlexPod over the competition is ease of use. A lot of that is because NetApp already has a lot of customers who are familiar with the product. It wasn't a barrier of getting in with the FlexPod.

A lot of that was the reason we were allowed to come in and have a conversation. They were already buying NetApp storage. FlexPod added to that solution and that story.

We just really needed to come in and talk about the compute side of it and how that tied in. Most of our FlexPod work has been discussions around UCS and the Cisco side of things, and not around the NetApp side. I don't think I've run into a customer who isn't happy with NetApp.

I started using NetApp back when all they did was NFS and the waffle file system in the entertainment industry for SGI systems to store data.

I've been using them for years and years. I am now able to have block level access, as opposed to NFS. These are things that came out years and years ago, but these are the benefits that I see with this solution.

There is a common platform with both file level protocols, as well as block level protocols for a common storage infrastructure.

Instead of having to add your ICE storage and your fiber channel storage, or having an NFS gateway into those kinds of things, you can have everything incorporated.

Obviously, having all the protection capabilities of the snap features, snap vault, snap ears, and snap cleans have added value to it as well.

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it_user527280 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

We were on legacy equipment already. We basically said, "What's the next big thing?" Obviously, being a partner with NetApp, they try to promote FlexPod as much as possible.

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it_user527256 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Analyst at a leisure / travel company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Previous to this solution, we were using NetApp without FlexPod. We had a lot of issues, so this actually fixed those issues.

I was part of the decision to switch. I like the reliability and the all-flash performance.

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it_user527244 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Storage Architect at a legal firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

We didn’t have a previous solution. It was relevant for us to get FlexPod from NetApp.

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it_user527073 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Eng at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

I did not previously use a different solution; not to the level of storage that NetApp is going to provide for sure. It was kind of a homegrown system that they had.

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it_user527067 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. SaaS Operation Engineer at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

The company has been using FlexPod for a while, actually; three years.

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it_user527250 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Infrastructure Manager at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees

We were using the IBM-branded X series, so we had NetApp storage in the past. It was reliable, it was great. We really didn't a see reason to move away from NetApp. At that time, we were building a brand new data center and got the opportunity to do a full build out. That was when we selected the FlexPod.

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it_user330111 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Solutions Architect at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Our old platform was IBM.

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MC
Principal Infrastructure Engineer at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

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

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it_user527301 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Administrator, I at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We needed faster networking. We use it primarily for our virtual servers, for migrations. To get 10 Gig into our data center, we had to run cables all the way across the building to our networking area. The more cables you're running, that pipe's only so big. We ran a couple of cables to the FlexPod, plugged it in, and all of a sudden, I've got 40 Gig to move data back and forth in the rack. I don't ever have to leave it, so that was our primary reason for bringing it in.

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FD
Senior Network Engineer at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

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it_user692442 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal engineer at a media company with 10,001+ employees

There are several solutions that we used, but I can't be specific for proprietary reasons. We have researched other solutions. We're always researching.

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it_user332622 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

No previous solution was used.

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JS
Systems Administrator at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

We were previously using Dell EMC and HPE servers. I prefer NetApp over Dell EMC.

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RH
Technical Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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

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it_user692433 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Admin with 1,001-5,000 employees

We look at reports out there, and see who is up and to the right. I think that Pure Storage was leading the charge on SSD for a while, but the all-flash FAS has really been awesome.

The ability to do better deduplication is what the differentiation is right now. Who is doing the best deduplication and who is doing the best compression? Right now, the all-flash FAS with 9.2 is pretty awesome on deduplication and compression.

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it_user692445 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems engineer lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

When looking for a solution, I look for brand recognition. In this case, Cisco and NetApp both have very good reputations. We look for value, total cost of ownership, and return on investment.

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Buyer's Guide
FlexPod XCS
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about FlexPod XCS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
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