System Overview; Design Principles - Cisco Nexus 7000 Design Manual

FlexPod Design Details
This section provides an overview on the FlexPod design and also the topology differences between the
FlexPod model with clustered Data ONTAP and Data ONTAP in 7-mode.

System Overview

FlexPod is a best practice data center architecture that includes three components:
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These components are connected and configured according to best practices of both Cisco and NetApp
and provide the ideal platform for running a variety of enterprise workloads with confidence. FlexPod
can scale up for greater performance and capacity (adding compute, network, or storage resources
individually as needed), or it can scale out for environments that need multiple consistent deployments
(rolling out additional FlexPod stacks). FlexPod delivers a baseline configuration and also has the
flexibility to be sized and optimized to accommodate many different use cases.
Typically, the more scalable and flexible a solution is, the more difficult it becomes to maintain a single
unified architecture capable of offering the same features and functionalities across each
implementation. This is one of the key benefits of FlexPod. Each of the component families shown in
Figure 1
infrastructure up or down, while supporting the same features and functionalities that are required under
the configuration and connectivity best practices of FlexPod.

Design Principles

FlexPod addresses the following design principles and architecture goals:
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Note Performance and comprehensive security are key design criteria that were not directly addressed in this
project but have been addressed in other collateral, benchmarking and solution testing efforts. The
functionality and basic security elements were validated.
FlexPod - Distinct Uplink Design
Figure 2
the design is fully redundant in the compute, network, and storage layers. There is no single point of
failure from a device or traffic path perspective.
Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS)
Cisco Nexus switches
NetApp Fabric-Attached Storage (FAS) systems
(Cisco UCS, Cisco Nexus, and NetApp FAS) offers platform and resource options to scale the
Application Availability—Ensures that the services are accessible and ready to use.
Scalability—Addresses increasing demands with appropriate resources.
Flexibility—Provides new services or recovers resources without infrastructure modification
requirements.
Manageability—Facilitates efficient infrastructure operations through open standards and APIs.
details FlexPod distinct uplink design with clustered Data ONTAP. As the illustration shows,
VMware vSphere 5.1 on FlexPod with Nexus 7000 Using FCoE
FlexPod Design Details
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