FlexPod: It just keeps evolving

Everything changes. Think about your childhood photos, and how different you look today. IT also evolves, changing in multiple areas, technologies, applications, consumption models, and solutions. IT customers are seeing these differences, and they need an evolving platform to keep up and anticipate variations.

FlexPod^® too has evolved throughout its life. It uses meticulously tested, industry-leading standardized technologies, innovations, and solutions. FlexPod customers benefit from this end-to-end solution design with some workloads that get a return on investment of 125% and a payback period of 13 months. FlexPod is constantly evolving and modernizing, adding new Cisco Validated Designs and NetApp^® Verified Architectures to its current family of more than 200 standard solutions. FlexPod validates the reliability, scale, time to value, and performance of modern enterprise and hybrid applications like Red Hat OpenShift, virtual desktop infrastructure, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and SAP—the most complex, scalable, mission-critical applications that run in the largest of enterprises.  FlexPod is also continually adding new applications, workloads, and technologies to facilitate a long future of application, innovation, and technology improvements. In other words, FlexPod is evolving and saving customers money.

FlexPod continually solves more customer problems through its proven and rigorous standards. 

Here are the latest additions to the FlexPod family of solutions.

• FlexPod Datacenter with Cisco UCS X-Series, VMware 7.0 U2, and NetApp ONTAP^® 9.9 incorporates the UCS X-Series Modular System and Cisco Intersight operations platform. It gives customers assurance, lower cost, and faster time to value for even the newest VMware-based shops.

• FlexPod for Genomics illustrates how the FlexPod converged infrastructure platform expands its portfolio and enables a healthcare organization to host one or more genomics workloads, along with other clinical and nonclinical healthcare applications. 

• FlexPod for SAP HANA TDI with the UCS C890 offers a prevalidated data center architecture that incorporates computing, storage, and network design best practices to reduce IT risk and help ensure compatibility among the components.

• End-to-End NVMe for FlexPod with Cisco UCSM, VMware vSphere 7.0, and NetApp ONTAP 9 enables FlexPod customers to scale up for improved performance and capacity (adding compute, network, or storage resources individually as needed), or scale out for environments that require multiple consistent deployments (such as rolling out additional FlexPod stacks). Customers get lower cost, better strategic alignment, and improved outcomes for their performance critical, NVMe workloads.

• FlexPod DataCenter with NetApp SnapMirror^® Business Continuity and ONTAP 9.10 helps customers lower risk and reduce solution downtime, while increasing the availability, scalability, flexibility, and security of the FlexPod solutions.

Another new addition to the FlexPod family is FlexPod XCS. FlexPod is the first and only converged infrastructure that is natively integrated into the three major hyperscalers.

Now, FlexPod as a Service enables FlexPod to be consumed over time in an operational consumption model. Customers can:

• Align costs to usage
• Lower up-front costs
• Increase operational and financial flexibility

In addition, FlexPod as a Service is now available as an integrated offer through the Cisco Commerce Workplace (CCW) pricing tool. Partners and customers can order FlexPod and FlexPod XCS directly from the CCW, inputting a few simple business and performance outcomes in a concise interface that gives them a payment term. The best part of this integrated offer is that it is still FlexPod, but now it has a totally new consumption model with simplified ordering. Again, FlexPod continues to change and meet new customer needs. Clients continue to win with Flexpod.

Everyone and everything changes. FlexPod has been changing and evolving to meet customer needs for years. Consider FlexPod and FlexPod XCS—they only get better with time!

• FlexPod: The platform fit for your future  
• FlexPod XCS: Where converged meets cloud
• NetApp and Cisco solutions  
• If you attend Cisco Live, Las Vegas, 2022, please learn more about FlexPod XCS and FlexPod as a Service at the NetApp Booth #2150