flex pod solution brief

8/6/2019 Flex Pod Solution Brief

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The Challenge

Disuptiv, ixib tsitio om

istuctu sios

Todays IT departments are increasingly

challenged by the complexity and

management o disparate components

within their data centers. Rapidlyprolierating silos o server, storage,

and networking resources combined

with numerous management tools

and operational processes have led to

crippling ineciencies and costs.

Savvy organizations understand the

nancial and operational benets o

moving rom inrastructure silos to

a virtualized, shared environment.

However, many o them are hesitant

to make the transition due to potential

short-term business disruptions and

long-term architectural infexibility,

which can impede scalability and

responsiveness to uture business

changes. Enterprises and service

providers need a tested, cost-eective

virtualization solution that can be easily

implemented and managed within their

existing inrastructures and that scales

to meet their uture cloud computing

objectives.

The SOlUTIOn

Uifd, ptstd, d vidtd

sd istuctu to simpi oudt ct tsomtio

To meet this challenge NetApp and

Cisco have collaborated to create

FlexPod or VMware. FlexPod is a

proven, long term data center solution

built on a fexible, shared inrastructure

that can scale easily; be optimized or

a variety o mixed application work-

loads; or be congured or virtual

desktop or server inrastructure, secure

multi-tenancy and Cloud environments.

FlexPod is a prevalidated conguration

that delivers a virtualized data center in

a rack composed o leading computing,networking, storage, and inrastructure

sotware components.

FxPod o VMw

FlexPod diers rom other

virtualization oerings by providing:

Validated technologies rom industry

leaders in computing, storage,

networking and server virtualization

Inrastructure Solution

FlexPod or VMwareAccelerate your transition to the cloud with a prevalidated inrastructure solution

Key FeaTUreS

Reducebusinessriskand

time to deployment or all your

applications with prevalidated,

standardized components and

cooperative support and services

rom Cisco, NetApp, and VMware

Increaseefciencyanddecrease

costs with a simplied shared,

virtualized inrastructure that

increases asset utilization and

integrates into your existing

environment

ImproveITagilityandprotectyour

technology investment with a fex-

ible, unied inrastructure stack

that is built or virtualization today

and will scale to a ully private or

public cloud tomorrow


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and scale out one or more FlexPod

congurations to meet the ollowing

requirements:

Migration to a shared inrastructure

with many applications

Improved agility to meet growth and

key critical business initiatives

Lower cost per user without

sacricing scalability Simplied operating skills and

processes and reduced costs

Evolution to operations that align

with ITIL-based standards

Deployment o dedicated applica-

tions that support sotware as a

service (SaaS), VDI, and other cloud

environments

Medium-sized enterprises and cus-

tomers with more moderate growth

requirements can use FlexPod as a

starting point or virtualization solutions.

They can then scale up storage andcompute pool capacity or perormance

within a FlexPod conguration while

maintaining centralized management o

the inrastructure solution.

A single platorm, built rom unied

computing, abric, and storage

technologies, that lets you scale

to meet the largest data center

requirements without disruption or

architectural changes in the uture

Integrated components that enable

you to centrally manage all your

inrastructure pools

An open design managementramework that integrates with your

existing third-party inrastructure

management solutions

Ivstmt potctio wit

stddizd, xib IT

Together, NetApp, Cisco, and

VMware provide a unied fexible

architecture that is ready or virtualized

environments today, yet is fexible

enough to grow at your own pace to a

ully private cloud. The Ethernet-based

FlexPod ramework ts right into your

current inrastructure, eliminating the costo replacing your existing technology.

FlexPod components are integrated

and standardized to help you achieve

timely, repeatable, consistent deploy-

ments and eliminate guesswork rom

the ollowing areas:

Resource procurement and planning

Capacity and data center sizing

Identication o operations and

provisioning requirements

As a result, you can understand and

better predict the exact power, foor

space, usable capacity, perormance,

and cost or each FlexPod deployment.

FlexPod or VMware can support a

number o mixed workload environ-

ments, and it can be optimized or your

specic requirements. For example, a

base FlexPod conguration can support

1,500 users or these our popular

workloads simultaneously: virtual

desktop inrastructure (VDI), Microsot

Exchange, Microsot SharePoint, and

SQL Server and it provides sucient

headroom or additional workloads.

FlexPod comes with a sizing guide that

shows you how to fex the solution to

meet your specic requirements or

other workload environments.

Scbiit o coud soutio

FlexPod congurations can be right-

sized up or out, and then duplicated

in modular ashion to t your specic

organizational needs. For example,

large enterprises or service providers

with mature IT processes and rapid

growth expectations can deploy

The Cisco, NetApp, and VMware inrastructure is a

game changer. We can run our entire business on an

integrated and veried platorm that we deployed

in our data center in just a matter o hours. Thisinrastructure is where everybodys going to be in

2012, but were already here.Bi Dto

CTO, ExamWorks


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Tb 1) FxPod ciitts vit o vituizd, coud viomts.

eviomt exmps Cpbiitis

Exchange 2010, Microsot SharePoint,

or SQL Server

StartwiththeFlexPodpredesigned,simple,validateddatacentersolutiontorunona

variety o application workloads

Datacenterefciency

Virtualizedsharedinfrastructure

Virtual desktop inrastructure Deduplicationofimages

RapidprovisioningthroughVMcloning

Array-baseddataprotection

Development/production Space-efcientcloningofdatasetsandVMs

Datacenterefciency

Dynamicinfrastructure

AddITSMandvCloudorchestrationforself-serviceportals

Virtualizedsharedinfrastructure

Optionaltoaddsecuremulti-tenancyarchitectureforsecureportioningandisolation

Array-baseddataprotection

Internal private IaaS cloud/secure

multi-tenancy

Addsecuremulti-tenancyarchitectureforsecurepartitioningandisolationofworkloads

AddITSM/orchestrationforautomatedprovisioning,workows,usagemetrics,and

reporting

Service provider Datacenterefciency

DynamicinfrastructureforSaaS,PaaS,andIaaS

Addsecuremulti-tenancyforsecurepartitioningandisolationofclientenvironments

Bst-i-css compots d

tus

Leading components rom VMware,

Cisco, and NetApp include:

VMware vSphere, vCenter

Cisco Unied Computing System

and Cisco Nexus amily switches

NetApp FAS and complete bundle

Features include:

Perormance-matched stack

Step-by-step deployment guide

Detailed application sizing guide

Support or multiple classes o

computing and storage in a single

FlexPod deployment

Centralized management: VMware

vCenter with Cisco Unied

Computing System and NetApp

FAS plug-ins

FlexPod enables a wide range o

virtualization applications and cloud

solution environments out o the box.

You can also add optional sotware

to transorm FlexPod into a highly

available inrastructure that provides

mobility at all layers or nonstop opera-

tions. FlexPod can even expand into a

secure multi-tenancy environment that

enables your shared inrastructure to

be segmented into securely isolated

partitions that deliver specic service

levels or applications, business units,

or customers.

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xtm fcicis

Traditional storage solutions or virtual-

ized inrastructures orce you to buy

separate systems to accommodatedierent storage needs. NetApps mul-

tiprotocol unied architecture reduces

cost and complexity by meeting all

o your storage requirements with a

single, highly scalable solution.

You can urther enhance eciencies

and save disk space with built-in

deduplication, thin provisioning, and

rapid cloning technology, which let you

deploy thousands o virtual machines

within minutes. Optimize perormance

with your choice o 10 Gigabit Ethernet

or Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)

and boost availability with integrated

Snapshot technology or space-

ecient backups and ast disaster

recovery.

Innovative NetApp sotware integrates

with major applications so you can

automate key storage management,

data protection, and security activi-

ties and manage storage rom amiliar

application-centric interaces. With the

most fexible storage or server and

desktop virtualization, you can increase

storage eciency and slash hardware

and operational expenses in your cloud

environment.

Cisco: uifd computi o simpifd

coctivit

The Cisco Unied Computing System

(UCS) is a data center platorm

specically designed or virtualized

environments. The Cisco United

Computing System unites computing,

networking, and storage connectivity

and virtualization into a single cohesive

system. Its designed to eliminate time-

consuming manual integration, reduce

total cost o ownership (TCO), and

dramatically increase business agility.

The Cisco United Computing System

integrates computing resources with

Cisco Nexus switches and a unied

I/O abric that provides an intelligent

method or identiying and handling

dierent types o network trac. You

can consolidate all trac onto a single

high-perormance, highly available 10

Gigabit Ethernet network to greatly

simpliy network management and

reduce costs.


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www.netapp.com

Copyright 2010 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. No portions o this document may be reproduced without prior written consent o NetApp, Inc.NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go urther, aster, FlexPod, and Snapshot are trademarks or registered trademarks o NetApp, Inc. in the United Statesand/or other countries. Microsot, SharePoint, and SQL Server are registered trademarks o Microsot Corporation. VMware is a registered trademarkand vCenter and vSphere are trademarks o VMware, Inc. Cisco and Cisco Nexus are registered trademarks and Cisco Unied Computing System isa trademark o Cisco Systems, Inc. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks o their respective holders and should betreated as such. DS-3105-1110

The Cisco United Computing System

Manager interace also provides

service prole templates that let you

automate large-scale server and

application deployments based on pre-

dened policies to deliver a stateless

computing environment.

VMw: stti t stdd o

sv d dsktop vituiztio

The powerul VMware virtualization

solution enables you to pool server

and desktop resources and dynami-

cally allocate them with service-level

automation so you can deploy a pri-

vate cloud and deliver IT as a service

(ITaaS). VMware components provide

a scalable approach to virtualization

that delivers high availability and

agility to meet your changing business

requirements.

VMware vSphere, the industrys mostcomplete and robust virtualization

platorm, increases IT eciency

through consolidation and automation,

dramatically reducing your capital and

operating costs while giving you the

reedom to choose your applications,

OS, and hardware.

VMware vCenter Standard oers proac-

tive end-to-end centralized management

o virtual environments, delivering the

visibility and responsiveness you need

or cloud-ready applications.

Ctizd mmt

A critical advantage provided by

FlexPod or VMware is the built-in cen-

tralized management o the NetApp,

Cisco, and VMware technology

elements. VMware vCenter provides

a central ramework or managing

FlexPod resources as virtualized data

center pools. Both NetApp Virtual

Storage Console and Cisco United

Computing System integrate withVMware vCenter to enable well-coor-

dinated management across server,

abric, and desktop layers.

NetApp storage integration includes

VMware vCenter plug-ins and supports

VMware vStorage APIs. This tight inte-

gration greatly improves productivity by

enabling your virtualization inrastructure

administrators to directly perorm stor-

age and data management operations

using VMware vCenter without requiring

storage administrator assistance.

The open FlexPod architecture alsoprovides APIs that enable IT service

management using your existing

third-party inrastructure management

solutions.

Cooptiv suppot o pid

soutio

Our cooperative support model

provides a more streamlined response

rom Cisco, NetApp, and VMware to

identiy and rapidly resolve problems.

Global 24-hours-a-day support provides

expert technical support when needed.

Pov ptsip

As industry leaders in storage, net-

working, and server virtualization,

respectively, NetApp, Cisco, and

VMware have a powerul global pres-

ence and have been working together

on a shared virtualized data center

vision since 2003. Our collaboration

has resulted in more ecient virtual-

ization and cloud computing solutions

and numerous jointly validated reer-ence architectures. Together we have

helped thousands o mutual customers

improve agility and lower costs.

Op div cosstm

You can choose rom a broad net-

work o world-class solution delivery

partners to implement FlexPod or

VMware. These partners understand

your business requirements and are all

certied and trained on NetApp, Cisco,

and VMware as well as complementary

technologies to deliver a complete cloud

solution that ts your business needs.

gtti sttd

To learn how FlexPod enables you to

build a fexible and ecient shared

inrastructure today as your oundation

or uture-ready IT, contact your local

data center partner.

aBOUT neTaPP

NetApp creates innovative storage

and data management solutions that

deliver outstanding cost eciency and

accelerate perormance breakthroughs.

Discover our passion or helping com-panies around the world go urther,

aster at www.netapp.com.

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