By Brad Bailie, Senior Solutions Architect, Logicalis US
Your CEO has probably already asked you how your compute systems can help the organization be more nimble, adapting to changes and market forces more quickly. And, as you continue your path toward digital transformation, user expectations for enterprise IT rival the performance requirements they have for their outside-of-work lives. It’s a tall order – and thankfully, there are ways to meet it.
The need to be nimble and agile, to provide increased performance at a decreased cost – these are all reasons IT experts were excited from the start about FlexPod, a long-term data center solution built on a flexible, shared infrastructure that can scale easily and can be used for a variety of mixed application workloads or configured for virtual desktop, server, or secure multi-tenancy cloud environments. While FlexPod delivered much of what IT pros needed as they began their digital transformation journeys, today’s technology takes it even further. At Logicalis, we are recommending that CIOs employing FlexPod solutions consider a refresh to capitalize on the increased performance and decreased energy footprint FlexPod’s move to an all-flash array can provide.
Beyond faster processors and bigger servers, FlexPod’s new all-flash array delivers significantly reduced response times and faster application deployment. So, while it’s a good idea to assess the health of your FlexPod environment at least every third year of your maintenance contract, the addition of flash today offers a new kind of performance and agility previously unheard of, while simultaneously simplifying management and cost.
Why Do a Refresh of Your FlexPod Architecture?
It’s important to remember that a FlexPod refresh isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. For current FlexPod users, everything you have already bought is still valid, but you can add these new capabilities to dramatically increase your performance and decrease your costs.
More Flexibility
Very few businesses can pinpoint their growth path for the next few years, which means you need an IT environment that can grow and change with you. FlexPod’s new automation capabilities allow you to make significant changes without having to re-architect your entire IT environment, giving you a faster time to market – and thus, a better ROI.
Less Energy
By taking advantage of FlexPod’s new all-flash array, you can literally increase performance and reduce your organization’s energy footprint at the same time – particularly important if your FlexPod is in a co-location facility where you pay for power. How much energy savings can you expect simply by switching from spinning disk to flash? Experts say as much as 76 percent.
Operational Efficiency
When your CEO pushes you to do more with less, a refreshed FlexPod with an all-flash array and new automation capabilities may be the answer. How long does it take you to provision a server now? Days? Weeks? With FlexPod’s new pre-racked, pre-cabled infrastructure and its expanded automation capabilities, it’s now possible to shrink that deployment window to a single hour, and applications that once took months to deploy can now be in use within weeks.
Increased Performance
When you need to do more things faster, an upgraded FlexPod can help you get things done. Imagine a retail or manufacturing environment that runs nightly reports. Before the change to flash, their reports may have taken all night long to generate; with flash, they can be completed in a couple of hours. In fact, SQL tests have shown as much as 208 percent response time increases, while enterprise application performance can be as much as 20 times faster on an all-flash array.
Want to learn more? Wondering about the infrastructure efficiencies inherent in a FlexPod solution? This datasheet will explain what a FlexPod architecture can do for your organization. Next, in this brief webinar, hear Logicalis expert Brad Bailie explain the advantages of a FlexPod refresh. Then, explore what you can learn from a Logicalis Network Healthcheck.