Cisco and NetApp have announced that more than 150 customers have implemented joint data center solutions based on the FlexPod design architecture. Cisco and NetApp's FlexPod is a pretested architectural design guide that combines networking, computing and storage in a shared infrastructure, and supports multiple applications and workloads to help channel partners accelerate and simplify their customers' transition to the cloud. Last November, Cisco and NetApp introduced the first FlexPod solution with VMware, now available through 120 qualified channel partners worldwide. Today, Cisco and NetApp are announcing a new additional design guide for FlexPod that supports SAP applications in the cloud.

  • FlexPod is a design architecture with combined networking, computing, and storage infrastructure. The flexible, scalable shared infrastructure is pretested to help channel partners and customers lower deployment risk, increase data center efficiencies, and create a flexible information technology (IT) environment to build a private cloud.
  • FlexPod is built on the Cisco Unified Computing System server platform, Cisco Nexus switches, and NetApp unified storage systems running Data ONTAP.
  • More than 150 customers, including Dominion, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., and Radiant Communications, have deployed FlexPod and received benefits such as:
    • A shared infrastructure that scales to meet the changing requirements of growing data centers without disruption or the need to make architectural changes in the future;
    • Integrated networking, computing and storage components that can be centrally managed. These components are optimized for a virtual data center environments and enable central management of an entire infrastructure (storage, compute, network, and hypervisor);
    • An open design management framework that integrates with existing third-party infrastructure management solutions from vendors including SAP and VMware.
  • Today, Cisco and NetApp released new design guides that use the FlexPod design architecture in support of SAP applications.
    • The design consists of SAP solution-based landscapes validated on the FlexPod shared IT infrastructure that help customers minimize application downtime to accelerate the deployment of SAP solutions in a virtualized environment.
    • The design allows customers to transition their existing or new SAP applications to a dynamic and flexible cloud-enabled environment.
    • The FlexPod solution for use with SAP applications can support both virtual and physical configurations and scales up or down as required.
    • For added security, customers can isolate different development or maintenance environments, or manage different production environments for SAP applications through the Cisco, NetApp and VMware Secure Multi-tenancy (SMT) Design Architecture design guide.
  • Cisco, NetApp, and VMware have built a new Unified Support Lab where support engineers can reproduce customer environments, diagnose issues, and rapidly resolve customer cases. This further strengthens the global 24-hour cooperative support model that Cisco, NetApp and VMware developed to offer customers a streamlined response to identify and solve potential issues related to the FlexPod for VMware and Secure Multi-tenancy architecture designs.