How Flexible is FlexPod?
April 26, 2017
How Flexible is FlexPod?
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with FlexPod
FlexPod is the backbone of the city. We use it for all departments and services within the city. It gave us a single point of management for our servers and the ability to move or migrate physical server profiles from one server to another. [It gives] us a very consistent and reliable experience.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Service Manager
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.