The Flexpod Data Center Infrastructure - Detailed Explanation

By Author: Salvatore Andrea
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Flexpod data center platform is a joint effort by Cisco by NetApp. It is considered to be a converged infrastructure of highly flexible origin. This platform comprises of networking, server references, and storage architectures. Flex pod Cisco NetApp was launched in the market to improve on the IT responsiveness to the business needs while trying to reduce effectively the overall computing cost with minimal risk involvement and maximum uptime.
Why Flexpod came into existence
The Cisco flexpod data center platform can be defined as a pre-validated solution that combines networking, storage, & server components while integrating them into a single architecture of flexible nature. The FlexPod data center platform is designed to speed the deployment of critical business related applications & infrastructure with minimal risk, increased flexibility, & reduced cost.
The basic components of Flexpod
Cisco flex pod components basically include Cisco Nexus® fabric, Cisco® Unified Computing System™ servers, and NetApp® unified storage systems. ...
... It must be noted that the flexpod Cisco architecture can be easily scaled up and out. It can also be optimized for different types of workloads in both the non-virtualized as well virtualized environments.
What Flexpod offers
Flexpod Cisco differs largely from every other type of virtualized solutions available by offering the following facilities:
o Extremely flexible design to differentiate between scale & workloads, and leverage all the existing IT components.
o Suitable set of reference architectures for easy handling of the top-tier business apps.
o Providing a highly cooperative support model that can resolve issues with just single ticket solutions.
o Offering widest range of validated flexpod management & orchestration solutions.
The NetApp Approach: VMware vSphere developed on Flexpod
With increasing efficiency and consolidating management complexities benefitting largely from a certain type of converged infrastructure approach, Cisco in collaboration with NetApp & Vmware introduced an integrated IT stack based datacenter architecture called the Flexpod. This pretested solution follows the datacenter concept of flexibility, scalability, and shared infrastructure. It comprises of the NetApp unified FAS storage systems running Data ONTAP with FC and FCoE, Cisco Unified Computing System servers, and the Cisco family of Nexus switches.
The Flexpod support
In the world of converged data center infrastructure, the joint effort of Cisco, NetApp, and Vmware to introduce flexpod has paid off great benefits. The partnership also offers the best support for this excellent data center architecture. There is a new Support Alliance on offering from the trio. This Alliance offers highly streamlined response for identifying the problem while taking the quickest of approaches to resolve potential issues with the Flexpod infrastructure. With enterprise organizations strapped for time and resources, the alliance support model greatly improves efficiency when requesting product and technology support.