NetApp Announces Several Updates To FlexPod

Today At NetApp INSIGHT 2019 in Vegas, NetApp announced several new features and enhancements for its converged infrastructure solution designed with Cisco, FlexPod. The new updates include the latest SAP HANA validations, DR tiering and backup, among other announcements. 

Today At NetApp INSIGHT 2019 in Vegas, NetApp announced several new features and enhancements for its converged infrastructure solution designed with Cisco, FlexPod. The new updates include the latest SAP HANA validations, DR tiering and backup, among other announcements. 

FlexPod has been around for some time now. It is a converged infrastructure that is a combination of both Cisco (servers and Nexus switches) and NetApp (AFF arrays). FlexPod comes in various sizes and is well known for its versatility. Users that want to leverage the latest SAP HANA workloads now can as the new versions of FlexPod leverage Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) programmability features and NetApp’s NVMe-based AFF storage array, such as the AFF A320.

The companies have announced updates to both the workloads and to the infrastructure that FlexPod can use. FlexPod continues to add new Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs) and NetApp Validated Architectures (NVAs) like the latest midsize and datacenter FlexPod vSphere updates to its family of more than 170 standard solutions. These updates include:

• A new FlexPod infrastructure midsize solution that is tailored for cloud-connected mid-size workloads. The solution is an affordable entry point into the FlexPod family retains all of the FlexPod advantages like cloud-connectedness, single-vendor support, end– to-end testing, and diversified, enormous expertise in the FlexPod partner network.
• FlexPod Datacenter solution that includes the latest technology, hardware and software updates including NetApp AFF storage, Cisco Nexus networking, Cisco MDS storage networking, the Cisco Unified Computing Systems Cisco UCS), and VMware vSphere software. The FlexPod Datacenter solution meets the business requirements of the most scalable, available, and reliable vSphere solution with comprehensive data services, seamless scalability, new levels of performance, and cloud integration.

FlexPod will now leverages NetApp’s FabricPool software. FabricPool is said to deliver automatic and transparent tiering of inactive data to the cloud, further optimizing on-premises flash, and reducing overall storage costs by up to 40%. Moving cooler data away from NetApp’s more expensive NVMe flash saves money, but moving hot data to it can result in a performance bump. Overall, this should give customers more bang for their buck.

Other updates include using features from NetApp ONTAP, Cisco NetFlow, and Cisco security software to provide end- to-end hardware and software protection against ransomware. And the NetApp Converged Systems Advisor (CSA) is also available on FlexPod. This will provide continuous monitoring and notifications that will help to ensure business continuity. 

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