To help customers accelerate their transition to the cloud, Cisco and NetApp announced plans to extend the FlexPod with a series of new pre-validated design architectures priced and sized for smaller workloads. The new FlexPod is built on a flexible, scalable, shared infrastructure that combines computing, networking and storage solutions from Cisco and NetApp. Additionally, to simplify and accelerate implementation of cloud automation capabilities, Cisco and NetApp have also validated several new management solutions from leading software management vendors for of the all FlexPod design architectures.
“Cisco and NetApp have evolved the FlexPod architecture to address growing demand among midsize enterprises, and deliver greater value to an expanded range of customers,” said Chris Cummings, Vice President, Products and Solutions Marketing, NetApp.
The entry-level FlexPod solution is sized for business application workloads with 500 to 1000 users andd allows customers to invest only in the infrastructure they require. It combines NetApp entry level FAS 2240 and the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) C-Series. Similar to other FlexPod pre-validated solutions, this entry level FlexPod provides greater flexibility and customer choice, supporting multiple hypervisors and business applications to help accelerate deployment of private clouds. In addition, customers can also maximize their investment in existing management tools by managing their solution via open APIs, Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud or VMware vCenter™ Server.
“As customers balance their need to scale for their future growth with simplified solutions that can be rapidly deployed. With NetApp, Cisco is working to increase opportunities for partners to provide customers with the scalability, flexibility, and manageability of Cisco UCS with NetApp storage to achieve maximum return on investment,” said Satinder Sethi, Vice President, Data Center Solutions for Server, Access, and Virtualization Technology Group, Cisco.
The first Cisco Validated Design for the entry-level FlexPod solution with vSphere 5.0 is expected to be available in May.