TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Cisco FlexPod

Score9.4 out of 10

5 Reviews and Ratings

Get a Demo

What is Cisco FlexPod?

FlexPod is a converged infrastructure option developed by NetApp and Cisco. FlexPod is available in streamlined and simplified Express version, and the FlexPod Datacenter edition for enterprise private clouds, VDI, scale-out infrastructure, or software defined data centers.

Categories & Use Cases

Reviews

What users are saying about Cisco FlexPod.
View all reviews

FlexPod makes private cloud easy and profitable

Incentivized
Joel Sprague, CCIEView profile
Principal Systems Engineer in Information Technology at JWS Consult (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

  • Service profile portability - Utilizing san boot, if we have any issues with a physical blade, it is simple to move that Service profile to a new blade. This is also useful when moving chassis between racks or migrating service profiles to new hardware.
  • Single point of management - we are able to get all VLANs and VSANs trunked to the FlexPod fabric interconnects and then the server etam can handle mapping whatever VLANs are required to each new server as it is built without having to open a new set of tickets with networking.
  • Performance - We are able to run a massive virtual load on these blades as we have 256 cores and 6TB in 6RU in our current configuration (and can go up to 352 cores and 12TB with larger processors and DIMMs). This type of CPU and memory density, backed up by 40GB based backplane, allows for high density virtualization.

Cons

  • KVM control of the blades still requires Java. Avocent is using HTML5 now, and it would be nice if the KVM console for these UCS blades could too.
  • Price - Like any Cisco product, there are cheaper options. They aren't nearly as fully featured, but at times, it would be nice if UCS could be a bit cheaper.

Return on Investment

  • FlexPod has allowed our team to be extremely quick to resopnd to new VM build requests. The amount of RAM, CPU and backplane offered by B series blades allows us to go with very high VM density. The quick deployment of service profile templates also means that when we have to add new hosts, it is done quicker.
  • FlexPod and the service profile portability (along with VMware) has allowed for full upgrades and migrations from M1/M2 series hardware to M4 hardware without any downtime or outages to the clients. Blades can be moved into new chassis, or service profiles moved to new generation blades, with no impact to the customers' ability to work.

Alternatives Considered

Smartstack, vBlock and Flashstack

Other Software Used

BladeLogic Automation Suite, PRTG Network Monitor, WhatsUp Gold

How Flexible is FlexPod?

Incentivized
Wesley HarrisView profile
Senior IT Systems Engineer in Information Technology at City of Avondale (501-1000 employees employees)

Pros

  • Single Pane of Glass Server Administration.
  • Ease of firmware upgrades.
  • Incredible support when you have an issue. The Cisco/NetApp/VMware FlexPod support teams work together and drive your issues down to the root cause.

Cons

  • Initial setup and config. You won't do it by yourself without going to a class. No wizards here. Very complex till you get used to it.
  • iSCSI boot could be easier. Lots of ways to implement it, but no real definitive guide.
  • Could use better documentation with specific examples. Would be nice if it had an initial setup wizard.

Return on Investment

  • Positive ROI, being a city we only have funds for server replacements every 5-7 years and this allows us to spec out our capacity and order a cost effective solution that will last that time period.
  • CIsco and NetApp and VMware have been very competitive in accommodating our budget.

Alternatives Considered

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Service Manager

Other Software Used

Microsoft Office 365, SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor