FlexPod XCS Pricing

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

Licensing can be interesting with the UCS refresh because of Intersight integration (IMM) and SaaS, connected virtual machine or private virtual machine. I have seen some of the different licensing models, but with the new purchasing, all customers are going to have to buy some sort of Intersight licensing with the new UCS X-Series, "FlexPod". I will explore the licensing, setup costs and options with my customers as we discover, assess, architect and get some estimates going!

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JM
FlexPod Architect

In terms of the cost, the last bill I saw was about $3.5 million from the latest contract. That might have been for a five-year contract. That was with the licensing for the ports for the FIs, along with the tax support and the software assurance with Cisco tech.

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John Kevin - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy IT Manager at MBBank

The pricing is not cheaper, but stability is more important for us now. We focus on business gains, not static numbers. 

Following XCS rules ensures a stable environment, which is crucial. 

For me, Cisco is perfect. But NetApp is more reasonable. 

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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.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Christian Schuster - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Designer at a logistics company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Pricing is always tough. We need to get to a point where the customer's happy. Then, as partners, we are also happy.

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Neil Bembridge - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Infrastructure Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

It's expensive, but when you want entreprise services and support you pay for what you get. 

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CF
Director of Product and Customer Management Services at CEDSIF - Ministry of Finance

The product's pricing is high and I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

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

I find the licensing and pricing structure to be favorable.

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JL
Senior Client Executive at Sirius

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.

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

Everything is purchased, so we do not do any leasing with this product.

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

Pricing and licensing is very affordable from a FlexPod perspective. Bear in mind, for total peace-of-mind support, make sure the guest operating system and off-the-shelf application vendors have premium support so that you can integrate all their supports together into one.

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VK
Senior Storage Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Our company makes purchases like CapEx (capital expenditure). So we do not have to maintain the license.

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

Make sure that you engage as much with whom you are buying from as a partnership, not just as a purchase. 

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AK
Solutions Architect at GDT - General Datatech

Because of the way they slice things up, you have FlexPod Express, FlexPod Datacenter, and FlexPod Select, which allows you to go small, medium, and large with multiple locations.

  • If you have ROBO locations, you can go to Express.
  • If you're looking at a converged infrastructure, you can use FlexPod Datacenter.
  • You can use FlexPod Select if you need to have that pocketed application which needs top-notch performance.
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SA
Sysadmin at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

The pricing and licensing are quite expensive. However, compared to other solutions, it is okay.

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LM
Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

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

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

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AC
Senior IT Manager at Vocera

It is expensive. My company is small. When you look at the price point, this is a big thing for us to invest in.

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

Make sure you understand the technology that you need, and anytime that you are buying any storage make sure you understand storage. Do not just buy storage based on what somebody sells you in terms of IO or throughput. Buy storage based on the solutions you need, the technologies you need, and what will make your life a lot easier down the road.

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RM
Storage Engineer Manager at Servix

Because the solution is now stable, we are saving about $100 million USD a year.

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OV
Senior Project Consultant at DynTek

Sometimes you may end up spending a little more to get it in the first place, but you gain it back in terms of infrastructure upgrade costs and troubleshooting costs. The solution also lasts a surprisingly long time.

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

Our licensing fees are on a yearly basis.

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

The pricing and licensing were tough to swallow. We would have liked to have had the solution be part of any state or other government GSA contracts.

Everybody wants to see a cheaper and more cost-conscious solution instead of the solutions that are out there today.

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

The total cost of ownership with this solution is good.

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MA
Senior Systems Engineer at First Ontario Credit Union

FlexPod is expensive but from my perspective, it is worth the cost. I say this because of the ease of use and performance benefits.

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it_user750828 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Cloud Systems Engineer at Alarm.Com

"Don't undersell some of the features that FlexPod provides to you." A lot of people will see the price tag on like, Dell's chassis systems or the EMC and they're like, "Oh, this is great," but they don't realize the things that they're giving up in the manageability of using a FlexPod, and the redundancy built into FlexPod. If your company really needs to be up 100% of the time, and you need to do a private data center, I don't know if I could realistically actually recommend another blueprint.

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David Rechsteiner - PeerSpot reviewer
Account Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The tool's pricing is fair. 

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WB
Manager of IT Services at a comms service provider

We purchased FlexPod though Datalink. Be sure you use a known company to be sure you get the correct licensing and products for your specific needs.

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

Overall, the solution works pretty well. The biggest complaint I have from customers is the cost.

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JC
Storage Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

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

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

You get better management and orchestration, but it still costs you money. You won't be spending less money to go to new technology. You're just getting more. You're still spending a lot of money.

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

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

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it_user750858 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Administrator at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

I wasn't involved in this.

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

Our licensing costs are about $50,000 per year.

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JD
Platforms Engineer at Logicalis

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

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

As a startup, for the amount of budget we have and the amount we spend, we are getting what we expected.

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

Beat them up on pricing, because they’re not cheap.

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it_user330141 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Engineer at Expedia

The cost is an issue – it is not a cheap solution and the other piece of it, is that for EMC users (like my current company) it may not be relevant. We had 80% EMC usage so it wasn’t relevant for us. We could have used the FlexPod EMC but I think cost was the main issue there.

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

It was more expensive than others but the reliability in the tools has saved us money in that regard, so it's worth it.

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VD
Sales Analyst at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

We would like everything in one piece of hardware. This way we can just sell the product like a silo by putting everything in a stack together.

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it_user330099 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Thin Technologies

Don’t let the price point scare you away because what you’re gaining is not only scalability, but a product that is easily manageable.

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MB
Practice Lead at Bedroc

The solution has reduced data center operating costs by about five percent.

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

The FlexPod licensing can adjust to your purse, i.e. there are different levels available for businesses of all sizes.

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

If you can afford it, I would certainly go for it. I don't think there are very many other options. Now you have HCI, so you could skip the Cisco piece. I'm not an HCI customer but I would assume it would have better, tighter integration than Cisco and NetApp.

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

The pricing was competitive against what else was out there. We were already a NetApp shop, so it made it more of a sell for us because we already had the knowledge in-house for NetApp and ONTAP. Going to the FlexPod was easy in that sense.

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

Licensing is also an interesting topic since you will need to license UCS for the number of chassis as well as rack servers. NetApp needs to be licensed by the features you intend to use. Nexus licensing is based on the number of ports in the switch if I remember correctly. Then it comes down to what kind of installation you’re doing for any additional licensing. If you’re installing VMware, you need licensing for that product. If you chose to install Hyper-V, then licensing is different. If you choose Oracle Linux, or Windows, or something else, licensing changes again. What I suggest if to get a vendor in to help discuss and design the FlexPod around the needs of the company.

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

We purchased from CDW•G. They are great partners on the government side.

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it_user750783 - PeerSpot reviewer
Group Leader at a consultancy

I had pricing from separate vendors. I got storage from NetApp and Cisco Blade Servers, so I don't know. I didn't buy it as a package, so it's hard to say.

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

It's a little more expensive to go down the FlexPod route, but I think the ease of management in having all the vendors aligned really helps us in the long run. There is more upfront cost, but less down the road that we have to pay; maintenance and support, man-hours, actually managing the system.

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it_user750738 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Analyst at Muscogee Creek Nation Casinos

The price point is pretty competitive. I'm pretty happy with where the price is right now, but it can always be cheaper!

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

The cost is a little high.

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

I don't deal with the pricing too much but, from what I understand, we got a pretty good deal on some of the FlexPod equipment that we have.

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

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

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

We purchased the solution through CDW. They are a partner and knowledgeable. 

We are good and comfortable with CDW.

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

It was a little spendy, but you get what you pay for, though. It's rock solid, other than my firmware issue. Other than that, I plugged it in, and other than checking on it once a month to make sure that there are no alerts, I leave it alone. That's fantastic.

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it_user330852 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Systems Administrator at City of Avondale

I would like it to be cheaper but other than that nothing to add. As much as I can try to get the price lower, why should I have to negotiate in the first place?

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it_user330105 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Thin Technologies

Licensing for fabric interconnects could be better. If you want to enable more ports, you have to buy licenses which can be costly, and you have to go back to Cisco and start the process again. It’s not a cheap product.

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it_user330906 - PeerSpot reviewer
Pre-Sales Technician at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

They need to make the platform a little cheaper in Brazil.

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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.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.