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Canonical OpenStack vs. Cisco FlexPod

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Canonical OpenStack

    Score9 out of 10
    N/ACanonical OpenStack is the cloud openstack option from Canonical in the UK. Using private and public cloud infrastructure at the same time allows users to optimise CapEx and OpEx costs. Users can create cost-effective, enterprise-grade public cloud infrastructure on Ubuntu.

    $7,500

    one-time fee

    Cisco FlexPod

    Score9.4 out of 10
    N/AFlexPod 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.N/A
    Pricing
    Canonical OpenStackCisco FlexPod
    Editions & Modules
    Private Cloud Build
    $75,000
    fixed price
    Private Cloud Build Plus
    $150,000
    fixed price
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Canonical OpenStackCisco FlexPod
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsAdditional features, functionality, and integrations are available via add-ons—
    More Pricing Information
    User Ratings
    Canonical OpenStackCisco FlexPod
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Canonical OpenStackCisco FlexPod
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Canonical Ltd
    Ubuntu OpenStack is well suited for startups where there are very tight financial constraints. As Ubuntu OpenStack is open source, the startup organizations will not have to spend a lot when compared to their commercial offerings in the market. Ubuntu OpenStack is less appropriate in organizations where they don't want to have private on-prem clouds. As deploying a private on-prem cloud is a very cumbersome and tedious task, the organizations must have a dedicated team to manage such on-prem deployments.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    FlexPod is great for mid to large size companies, where the flexibility and depth of a traditional SAN and high performance servers is required. For smaller companies, it might make more sense to go with a hyper converged solution such as Hyperflex or Nutanix (both of which can still run on Cisco UCS servers, but would not be making use of Netapp storage), to meet the requirements in a smaller footprint.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Canonical Ltd
    • Very easy to use, learning curve is very short. Don't need to invest months of training before using it
    • Well suited with Jenkins for automated tests
    • Works well on large sets of heterogeneous hardware
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Canonical Ltd
    • More customizable options while choosing virtual machine configurations would be great.
    • To have regular online learning sessions directly from Ubuntu OpenStack experts [to] help users and for those who implement it.
    • Giving admin more control on what privileges they can grant to their users.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Canonical Ltd
    Everybody knows VMWare which is the world's number one in data center infrastructure management. OpenStack is lot lot less expensive but doesn't offer all the functionalities you have with VMWare especially for High Availability and load balancing. You should go for OpenStack if you need an easy to use solution without the need for external consultants. If you don't have the capacity to manage your own infrastructure you had better go for VMWare.
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Being a Cisco shop already it was a natural fit to go with a solution based on their technology. Then add in VMware which we are were already using - that was two out of the three for the FlexPod. Then factor in NetApp's de-duplication technology and flexibility in configuration and options and it's a match made in heaven. Not to say we haven't had some stumbles and some issues but it works and it works well.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Canonical Ltd
    • Lighter on initial spending for the organization.
    • Deployments which have no vendor locking makes management decisions easier.
    • Support from great community saved lot of time for engineers managing it.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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