FlexPod ingredients are only getting better

Picture yourself hungry with a craving for pizza but facing the difficult decision of which pizza to choose among all the alternatives. Criteria could be to choose a reputable Italian or pizza restaurant that uses only the finest ingredients, has the best ovens, and adds their own “secret sauce.” Ingredients, ovens, and special sauce make the pizza, not the other way around. Another important criterion could be if the Italian restaurant is fast and efficient. Does the restaurant experience itself deliver value to you?

To continue our pizza metaphor, FlexPod® is a fully verified, end-to-end, converged infrastructure solution made of the finest ingredients, fully tested (analogous to the wood-fired ovens) by Cisco and NetApp, with the secret sauce of industry-leading cloud connectivity. 

NetApp recently announced four innovative storage advancements, analogous to our pizza ingredients, that are either already incorporated into FlexPod or will be incorporated in Q2, 2023.

A new family of capacity all-flash storage systems for midrange and high-end deployments, based on quad-level cell (QLC) flash. The performance and density benefits of flash mean more capacity at a lower cost and higher sustainability for FlexPod customers. The C-Series family is ideal for transitioning from hybrid or HDD storage to all flash; running non–latency-sensitive VMware, non-mission-critical database applications, and file environments; and serving as a secondary storage target for disaster recovery, backup, or tiering. Like all FlexPod ONTAP® storage systems, the C-Series is cloud connected, giving you the flexibility to optimize your on-premises operations with cloud use cases. The AFF C-Series storage array is the perfect FlexPod ingredient because it can reduce your storage footprint by up to 50X and reduce storage usage by up to 33X compared to spinning disks.

NetApp also recently announced, NetApp Advance, a new portfolio of storage programs and guarantees to deliver a best-in-class FlexPod customer ownership experience and to cost-effectively future-proof your on-premises environments. You now have the flexibility and choice to safeguard your storage investment while eliminating the pain and risks associated with tech refresh, whether the AFF C-Series, AFF A150, or other newly acquired AFF or FAS systems. You also have the ability to get a new controller every 3 years or to transition to storage as a service or cloud storage, as your business requires.

• The simplest and most effective storage efficiency guarantee in the industry:
  • 4:1 for SAN workloads
  • 1.5:1 for NAS workloads
  • 3:1 for VMware, Hyper V, and KVM workloads on NAS
• NetApp ensures that workload efficiency goals are met, or NetApp will rectify the issue at no cost to you.

• Industry-leading ONTAP anti-ransomware and tamper-proof capabilities provide autonomous detection and rapid recovery from ransomware attacks.
• Best-in-class data security and data protection keep important data secure, available, and protected.

• FlexPod adds its own ingredients to these industry-leading technologies:

  • One-call support for the entire FlexPod infrastructure (Cisco and NetApp).
  • Large and growing portfolio of end-to-end verified solutions across almost all workloads.
  • Cisco technologies, like the Intersight operations platform, simplify cloud operations and streamline and unify IT operations across data centers, clouds, and the edge with highly secure, cloud-delivered management.
  • Fast and tested cloud connection and choice of any hyperscalers.
  • Deep bench of partners who have an extensive understanding of FlexPod for almost every workload.

  If you're hungry for a pizza, look for one that's made with the best ingredients and baked in the finest oven. And if you're looking for infrastructure for your edge, core, and hybrid cloud solutions, use the same approach. Deploy FlexPod, which is made up of the finest components, integrated and validated by NetApp and Cisco. Plus, the new FlexPod solutions, based on NetApp capacity flash C-Series systems, give you even more choices for satisfying your infrastructure appetite.

  To learn more please visit:

  • netapp.com/flexpod
  • cisco.com/go/flexpod
  • NetApp^® AFF C-Series
  • NetApp Advance Program
  • Storage efficiency guarantee