Cisco and NetApp Expand FlexPod Portfolio

Cisco (CSCO) and NetApp (NTAP) announced that the two companies have broadened the FlexPod portfolio -- a converged infrastructure of compute, network and storage -- with new validated designs across the entire portfolio. Highlighting the effort is the introduction of the FlexPod Select FlexPod Datacenter for core enterprise data centers and service providers, and FlexPod Express for medium-sized businesses and branch offices. A new FlexPod Select for data intensive workloads is also available.

The FlexPod portfolio combines NetApp storage systems, Cisco Unified Computing System servers, and Cisco Nexus fabric into a single, flexible architecture. FlexPod solutions are validated and tested to reduce risk and increase IT efficiency.

FlexPod Select is the first family in the FlexPod portfolio to address targeted workloads, and features NetApp E-Series and FAS storage systems, Cisco UCS C-Series servers, Cisco Nexus switches, and Cisco management software into an architecture that shortens time to insight and accelerates time to value. A validated FlexPod Select with Hadoop comes in two configurations - one with Cloudera's distribution including Apache Hadoop and one with Hortonworks Data Platform.

Through a shared vision of a unified data center, NetApp and Cisco have rapidly grown FlexPod. Since its launch in 2010, FlexPod has grown to more than 2,400 customers and 900 channel partners across more than 35 countries.

“Cisco and NetApp are committed to constant innovation in our joint FlexPod platform to address the business needs of our mutual customers," said Jim McHugh, vice president, Unified Computing Marketing, Cisco. "This portfolio expansion delivers broader flexibility across the unified data center for an open, scalable, multi-cloud infrastructure that can now also support some of the world’s largest datasets.”

The FlexPod Datacenter solutions now feature the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switch, giving scale to the FlexPod platform with 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and support for up to 768 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports. The Cisco Nexus 7000 FlexPod configuration enables end-to-end Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), delivering a unified Ethernet fabric, and provides DCI capabilities for multi–data center deployments.