Cisco, NetApp Expand FlexPod Portfolio with New Infra Solutions

Aimed at making data center infrastructure more responsive to applications' dynamic requirements, Cisco and NetApp have broadened the FlexPod portfolio - of prevalidated, integrated infrastructure solutions - with new validated designs across the entire portfolio.

It is marked by the roll-out of FlexPod Select for dedicated, data-intensive workloads. The portfolio now includes FlexPod Datacenter (formerly FlexPod) for core enterprise data centers and service providers, FlexPod Express (formerly ExpressPod) for medium-sized businesses and branch offices, and FlexPod Select for data-intensive workloads.

FlexPod supports the growing need to tie storage, networks, applications and analytics (such as big data) into a more automated, responsive system that increases efficiency and lowers operational expense.

The FlexPod Select family combines high-performance 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.

FlexPod Select is the first solution in the FlexPod portfolio to feature patented NetApp E-Series platform as an option, delivering performance, density and modular flexibility for a wide range of data-intensive workloads.

FlexPod Select with Hadoop helps minimize the risk in deploying Hadoop by validating the open source analytics platform for storage, compute, connectivity and management.