Entry-Level FlexPod A Simplified, Cost-Effective Data Center Platform

The Challenge
IT effectiveness is increasingly diminished by the proliferation of underutilized hardware, disparate management tools, and countless operational processes. The inefficiency associated with IT complexity affects large and midsize enterprises alike. These challenges are even more pronounced when combined with the need to standardize operations across several remote or branch offices. Proactive organizations have begun moving away from inflexible IT silos toward a converged, virtualized IT architecture that can improve responsiveness, lower costs, and drive business innovation. Enterprises with limited staff and tight IT budgets need an affordable solution that can help them build a next-generation data center thats simple to deploy and manage, flexible enough to operate with their current infrastructure, and can easily scale for future growth.

KEy FEATurES
Optimize Price/Performance While Reducing Risk
Confidently deploy a pre-validated data center infrastructure from industry leaders with a streamlined support model. Gain enterprise-class performance, right-sized for smaller workloads.

The Solution
The entry-level FlexPod solution is a proven, future-proof data center solution based on integrated, best-of-technology components from Cisco, NetApp, and leading software vendors. The FlexPod architecture is designed for rapid, predictable, and efficient deployment to increase agility and reduce risk while protecting your IT investment. The entry-level FlexPod solution is well suited for large enterprises that require a smaller integrated solution dedicated to a specific workload or those distributed enterprises with satellite offices seeking manageable smaller-scale IT infrastructure. The flexible, converged FlexPod infrastructure is also ideal for midsize enterprise workloads. The entrylevel FlexPod solution scales seamlessly as IT requirements grow to even the largest data center using the same unified architecture. It can easily scale vertically or horizontally, is optimized for a variety of application workloads, and supports consolidation, virtualization, and cloud computing.

Increase Business Agility While Containing Costs

Accelerate deployment with integrated, pre-tested components. Simplify management, provisioning, and data protection processes. Optimize infrastructure and enable a smooth transition to the cloud.

Grow Your Business Efficiently and Reduce TCO

Protect your investment with a unified architecture that scales as large as your business grows without replacing infrastructure. Activate new capacity and capabilities as needed, based on business demands.

2012 Cisco and NetApp. All rights reserved.

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SOLuTION BrIEF I ENTRY-LEVEL FLEXPOD SOLUTION

Why the FlexPod Entry-level Solution?

FlexPod is an infrastructure platform developed by Cisco and NetApp that delivers solutions for IT and business applications. It integrates compute, fabric, and storage components with a unified architecture for consistent implementation and management and non-disruptive scalability. FlexPod has been pretested and validated in conjunction with leading operating systems, hypervisors, and business applications. The entry-level FlexPod solution extends the breadth of the FlexPod architecture to smaller IT deployments including both midsize and small enterprise workloads and branch/remote office environments. By combining economically priced versions of Cisco and NetApp systems with the same FlexPod management and operational frameworks, FlexPod ES provides the value of the industry-leading FlexPod solution in a package thats right-sized for smaller workloads. It has a clearly defined upgrade path that leverages all components for smooth growth and superior investment protection. The entry-level FlexPod solution mitigates deployment risk by leveraging an ecosystem of delivery partners who have been trained and certified across all data center components. It also includes a simplified, flexible support model thats coordinated with Cisco, NetApp, and other key technology partners.

ENTry-LEVEL FLEXPOD DIFFErENTIATOrS

Optimize Price/Performance While Reducing Risk
Enterprise-class performance and features at a smaller scale Pre-validated infrastructure design eliminates guesswork and mitigates deployment risk. Seamless unified Cisco and NetApp support at every level resolves issues efficiently.

Increase Business Agility While Containing Costs

Clearly defined architecture accelerates time to deployment. Scalabilityup or outat each infrastructure layer provides growth without disruption. Integrated compute, network, and storage resources in one platform simplify management.

Entry-Level FlexPod Components

The entry-level FlexPod solution delivers enterprise-class capabilities and benefits using entry-level components in the same product families as other, larger FlexPod solutions. As a result you can scale the entry-level FlexPod easily and flexibly to meet changing business requirements. This consistent design extends to underlying technologies and architecture as well as management and operational processes. The Cisco unified Computing System (uCS) and Cisco Nexus fabric combine compute, network, storage access, and virtualization into a scalable, modular system that is easily managed as a single entity by Cisco uCS Manager. The radically simplified architecture greatly reduces the number of devices that must be purchased, configured, managed, and secured. uCSs highly efficient extended memory technology also reduces memory costs by up to 60%. NetApp FAS provides a high-performance unified storage platform that slashes capacity use with built-in deduplication and thin provisioning and space-efficient backup and cloning. NetApp systems enhance operational efficiency with automated storage management, data protection, and security and optimize performance with 10GbE. NetApp delivers the most flexible storage for virtualized environments, a key component for consolidating and optimizing IT infrastructure.

Grow Your Business Efficiently and Reduce TCO

Future-proof, unified architecture maintains a consistent operational environment as capacity and capabilities are added for lower TCO and long-term investment protection. unified architecture with a single, simplified 10GbE network. NetApp deduplication and thin provisioning can cut storage costs by 50%; uCS can cut memory costs by 60%.

2012 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. No portions of this document may be reproduced without prior written consent of NetApp, Inc. Specifications are subject to change without notice. NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go further, faster, and FlexPod are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc. in the united States and/or other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such. DS-3299-0312 Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the u.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this urL: www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110r)

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2012 Cisco and NetApp. All rights reserved.