FlexPod Implementation Guide

8/18/2019 FlexPod Implementation Guide

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The opportunity is clearYour customers need to reduce their overall operating expenses while

increasing their agility and ability to respond to changing market conditions.

The solution is compellingThe FlexPod® Data Center Solution combines the computing, storage, and

networking expertise from NetApp and Cisco to deliver the cost, performance, and

management improvements your customers need.

Avnet can help!• Fast conguration and ordering processes• Pre-assembled and tested solutions delivered to your customer• Vertical industry expertise to help drive new and incremental revenue• Ongoing support to help you and your customers maximize ROI

SELLING THE FLEXPOD DATACENTER SOLUTION


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Selling the FlexPod Data Center Solution .................................................4

The Avnet Advantage ..................................................................................5

Know Your Prospect ....................................................................................7

Qualifying Questions ...................................................................................8

Solving Common Business Problems with FlexPod ................................9

Streamlining your Sales Process ...............................................................10

Handling Objections ....................................................................................13

Tools and Resources....................................................................................14

SELLING THE FLEXPOD DATACENTER SOLUTION


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In response to growing needs for a exible, cost-effective IT solution that will t into current

infrastructures, many organizations are moving away from silos of servers, storage, and networking

resources toward higher levels of virtualization and the cloud. The FlexPod Data Center Solution

from Cisco and NetApp directly addresses these needs via a validated, shared infrastructure that

scales vertically or horizontally across many different application workloads and environments.

And though you’re well aware of this revolutionary new data center architecture – and have

certainly had success selling FlexPod – what’s kept you from truly capitalizing on the potential

of this breakthrough solution and maximizing your FlexPod sales?

If you’re like many resellers we work with, the answer comes down to a simple concept: When

budgets are tight and resources are slim, you only have so much time and energy to dedicate

to identifying and nurturing potential FlexPod sales. But, because the solution holds immensepotential – both in terms of serving existing customers and acquiring new ones – it’s important

to do what you can to make the most of your FlexPod business.

FlexPod meets the needs of customers who have thefollowing requirements:

• Migration to a shared infrastructure with many applications• Improved agility to meet growth and key business initiatives

• Lower cost per user without sacricing scalability• Need to improve operational agility, processes, and costs• Evolution to operations that align with ITIL-based standards• Deployment of dedicated applications that support software as a service (SaaS),

VDI, and other cloud environments

The Market is Primedfor a New Data CenterSolution


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THE AVNET ADVANTAGE

At Avnet, we understand the challenges you face, and we recognize the potential benets the

FlexPod architecture can bring to your business. And, with our proven solutions distribution

expertise and strong relationships with NetApp and Cisco–as well as other complementary

solution providers– we are uniquely qualied to help you take advantage of your FlexPod

opportunities and maximize the effectiveness of your sales efforts.

To help you achieve these goals, you can leverage FlexPod Services by Avnet FSA – a single

source for the products, assembly, testing, technical expertise, and pre-sales support you needto quickly and successfully close high-prot FlexPod sales.

FSA provides the end-to-end resources required to help you understand your prospect’s needs,

customize the FlexPod architecture to t these requirements, and quickly deliver a nished

product – and support and enhance it throughout every step of the data center lifecycle.

Best of all, you can engage with Avnet for support at any point in the sales cycle to help drive the

deal to a rapid, successful close – either via your dedicated FlexPod Services team or by calling

1-855-GO-FLEXPOD (463-5397) – so you can identify more prospects, pitch more solutions,

and pump more dollars to your bottom line.

Your FlexPod Services TeamA dedicated solution sales and services team provided by Avnet and focused

exclusively on FlexPod, your FlexPod Services by Avnet team provides:

• Pre-sales support for fully congured FlexPod solutions• Ordering and POS/benet tracking• Assembly, pre-test, and shipment of fully congured FlexPod solutions• Demand generation and marketing for new FlexPod opportunities• Upgrades for FlexPod solutions sold through FSA• Service contract and asset tracking of all FlexPod components• Help identifying and driving post-sale demand generation activities• Roadmap for partners to successfully specialize in key high-growth vertical markets


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Partnering with Avnet to sell and deliver FlexPod can mean several advantages toyour business, including:

Simplicity

Standardization

Performance and

Configuration Excellence:

• Single, easy-to-understand quotes for the entire FlexPod solution

• Single ordering process and invoice

• Vartopia registration tool to register one FlexPod deal with multiple vendors

• A FlexPod solution that is pre-assembled, pre-tested, and shipped complete

• Sales processes that take costs out of your business, while helping you close

protable sales and drive dollars to your bottom line

• Validated FlexPod designs ensure consistent results for both you and your

customers

• Conguration guidance and support from certied experts provides the

condence that you’ll be delivering the best results to your customers• A dedicated FlexPod solutions sales and service team within Avnet

• Support that helps you to add to the FlexPod brand integrity and benet

from the reputations of the vendors behind the architecture

Use this configuration… …to address either of these customer scenarios

VDI Users Virtual Machines

VELFP200VDI75VM

VFP.500VDI.140VM.M3 (NetApp FAS3210A)

VFP.500VDI.140VM.M3 (NetApp FAS3240AE)

VFP.1000VDI.200VM.M3





200

500

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

75

140

140

200

350

350

550

625

Typical ConfigurationsAvnet has leveraged FlexPod’s exibility and scalability to test and document several FlexPod

congurations that can address many customer requirements.

Conguration details—including complete product listing, workload assumptions, and power

information—are fully presented in the nal pages of this Selling the FlexPod Data Center

Solution guide.


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KNOW YOUR PROSPECT

When marketing FlexPod, it’s important to craft your messages so they will quickly resonate with

the different roles throughout your prospect’s organization. The following are the key individuals

you should be targeting, and the best ways to communicate the value of FlexPod to them:

CIO

VP Operations/

Director IT

Infrastructure:

Infrastructure

Architect

• Accelerate data center transformation through a exible IT architecture

• Reduce TCO with higher data center efciency to:

• Decrease the number of operational processes

• Shorten deployment times

• Reduce energy consumption

• Maximize resources

• Leverage existing infrastructure to new ends

• Reduce risk with a pre-validated infrastructure stack

• Benet from cooperative support and ecosystem of industry-leading partners

• One platform and set of operational skills and processes for all sites, applications,

and security zones

• Proven, repeatable conguration approach

• Right-sized components that deliver consistency via known power, oor space,

and capacity

• Infrastructure pools enable centralized management

• Application integration and wide feature support

• Extended management capabilities

• Proven, validated architecture

• Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs) and guides for deployment and optimization

• Secure multi-tenancy features can be easily added as needed


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QUALIFYING QUESTIONS

The following questions and follow-up statements will help you highlight the strengths of the

FlexPod architecture and the value of building a solution with the help of a knowledgeable,

experienced, and certied integrator.

Qualifying Questions

Many organizations have taken the rst step

toward cloud computing by virtualizing partsof their IT infrastructure. How familiar are

you with the concepts and benets of cloud

computing or IT-as-a-Service?

Dynamic cloud environments require

exible IT resources. Have you thought about

the improvements in business agility and timeto market that you could gain by provisioning,

scaling, and resizing resources almost

instantaneously?

How important is time to market to your

operations? How would a customized,

pre-integrated solution that’s ready to run

upon delivery help you better serve your

customers and execute new business

strategies?

Follow-Up Questions

• What are the key factors that would likely drive your

need to transform your data center (cost, agility,productivity, and so on)?

• How would you rate your organization’s desire to

support multiple business units, entities, or customers

within one shared, virtualized infrastructure?

• Does a cloud environment offer your organization

enough advantages for you to consider it?

• Are there partners you have looked to when

designing, implementing, and supporting your current

infrastructure?

• How long does it take to provision test orders or

new applications?

• How long does it take you to provision or repurposevirtual machine storage?

• How does that impact your organization?

Who else is affected?

• How do you establish QoS between virtual machines

and applications?

• How do you respond to requests to accelerate time

to market and project delivery in order to improve

business agility?

• How much time and resources could you conserve by

having a certied systems integrator congure your

solution before it arrives at your data center?


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The integrated approach to data center computing helps you address these customer challenges:

SOLVING COMMON BUSINESS PROBLEMS WITH FLEXPOD

Customers across many industries are facing similar challenges related to “doing more with less:”

• Migrate to a shared infrastructure with many applications

• Improve agility to meet growth and drive key business initiatives

• Lower per-user costs without sacricing scalability

• Improve operational processes and agility

• Evolve operations so they align with ITIL-based standards

• Deploy dedicated applications that support Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), VDI,

and other cloud environments

Business Problem

Unable to effectively manage

and allocate infrastructure

resources to meet demand

Difculty integrating

multiple vendor solutions

and technologies

Increased costs of managing

multiple networks based on

platforms, protocols or remote

locations

Increased risk from siloed

technologies and resource

pools

Increasingly restrictive

policies and regulations

regarding security and storage

of provide or sensitive data

FlexPod Feature

Scalable Shared IT

infrastructure

NetApp Unied

Architecture

Unied Fabric

Business Continuity/

Disaster Recovery

Secure Multi-Tenancy

(SMT)

FlexPod Benefit

Scale up within each layer of components, or

scale out to accommodate a variety of application

workloads and customer environments.

The FlexPod reference architecture allows

the integration of existing IT purchases into the

FlexPod stack.

A single unied 10GbE network, running SAN

and NAS protocols, including FCoE, removes the

need for separate networks.

Maintain availability during planned and

unplanned downtime, while lowering the overall

cost of high availability and disaster recovery.

SMT offers the data separation and service-level

guarantees offered by application silos,

while leveraging the efciencies of a shared

infrastructure.


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STREAMLINING YOUR SALES PROCESS

It’s clear that the FlexPod integrated data center approach can help you win bigger, more strategic

deals and sell into a higher, more executive level at your customer locations.

Avnet can help you close more protable deals faster than before and help you deliver a higher

level of customer satisfaction!

SALES

Your customer recognizes the business and IT benets the FlexPod architecture will deliver

and has worked with you to develop an agreed-upon conguration that is tailored to their specic

needs. So what’s next? With the deal a few short steps from being closed, you can once again turn

to Avnet sales support resources to guide and assist you in the nal phase of the sales cycle.

For example, we can help you draft the requisite proposals and statements of work – and ensure

each contains the proper hardware and software components, services, etc. – and manage the

ordering process from each vendor on behalf of you and your customer.

Because our solutions architects are well versed in the specic FlexPod technologies your

customer’s solution will contain, and “speak the language” of NetApp and Cisco – as well as other

complementary solution providers – they can help you streamline the ordering process and ensure

the right components are delivered in a timely manner.

Avnet can help you reach greater profitability on your FlexPod deals.On a typical $250K deal at 15% margin:

• Gross prot on product components: $37,500• Gross prot on Avnet Services: $10,000• That’s a net increase 26% additional gross prot

Plus time savings and profit improvements related to letting

Avnet do the quoting, confirmation, and SOW work!


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DELIVERY/INTEGRATION

Before the FlexPod solution is deployed in your customer’s data center, it is rst routed to our

228,000 square foot Global Solutions Center in Chandler, AZ, where our dedicated integration

specialists and solutions architects will prepare each component of the FlexPod architecture to

your customer’s exact specications.

They’ll manage the required hardware integration and software conguration duties, including:

• Custom cabling and racking

• Application uploading

• Conguration and testing• Virtualization partitioning

• Operating system installation

• Custom image loads

• Database installation

Following these integration activities, you can turn to our world-class supply chain services to

assemble the sever, storage, and networking components of your customer’s FlexPod, pack it on a

skid, and manage and coordinate the shipping and delivery of the solution from our loading dock

to their doorstep.

And once delivered, we can aid the onsite installation process, coordinate support contracts

with NetApp and Cisco–as well as other complementary solution providers–and manage the

knowledge transfer between our solutions architects and your customer’s IT personnel.

We have highly trained staff members who are dedicated to the initial unloading and unpacking

activities. Let us handle the “hard labor” involved in readying the solution for integration, so you

can free your high-value staff to focus more time and energy on their core responsibilities.

Avnet can help you consistently deliver valuable solutions while moving awayfrom managing tactical implementations. Together, we are able to:

• Take the focus off low-value unboxing, cabling and installation• Reduce the risk of on-site integration challenges and delivery mistakes• Build perceived value in warehouse custom integration

Plus your customer relationship will transition away from systems and storage,

and focus on long-term business strategy!


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BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

After the solution is delivered, installed, and up and running, your customer can leverage our

lifecycle-based data center optimization services, which help them get the most from their

infrastructure investments by enabling them to:

• Plan new purchases

• Acquire the right solutions

• Integrate new and existing technologies

• Deploy solutions in production

• Manage the new environment• Dispose of aging systems

Our goal in providing these services – both during the integration phase and throughout the

sales cycle – is to help you build trust with your customers and prove to them that you should

be regarded as their go-to solution provider. And by complementing your knowledge and skills

with Avnet’s proven services and expertise, you’ll be able to save time and repurpose your sales

resources to do what they do best – identifying and nurturing prospects, lling your pipeline with

high-value FlexPod opportunities, kick-starting the next sales cycle, and driving more sales to a

successful close.

In addition, should you learn while dening the scope of the solution that your customer would

prefer a hosted deployment, we can work with you to determine if a full or partial hosting program

may be in their best interest. Avnet hosting services you can offer your customers include:

• Remote Turnkey Hosting: The customer will keep the FlexPod hardware in house, but Avnet will

host some of the software components and perform key management processes.

• Full Turnkey Hosting: The customer’s full FlexPod solution will reside in an Avnet data center and

be fully managed by qualied Avnet support personnel.

Moreover, Avnet solutions architects will also support your sales efforts by determining the best

ways to integrate the new FlexPod solution with your customer’s existing infrastructure, and how

this new data center architecture will help them further their IT and business strategies.


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HANDLING OBJECTIONS

It’s only natural throughout the course of a FlexPod sale to encounter some push back to the

solution you are proposing. Below are some of the typical objections you’ll encounter, and the

best way to respond to each.

Objection

We are not considering

any virtualizationinitiatives at this time.

We are already leveraging

virtualization and have

no plans to move to cloud

any time soon.

We are an [other vendor]

shop/are considering

a stack from anothervendor.

I have already invested

heavily in my current

infrastructure – I can’t

afford a “rip and replace”

at this time.

A shared infrastructure

doesn’t have the security

my business-critical

applications demand.

I prefer to integrate my

hardware and software

components in-house.

Response

I understand. But you may be interested to know that the validated,

pre-integrated FlexPod architecture can help you signicantly reduce ITmanagement costs, while providing a platform you can leverage to

accelerate your core business strategies.

Many organizations are in your position, which is why FlexPod is designed

to easily accommodate a move to cloud when your organization is ready.

Plus, because all components are integrated ahead of time and delivered in

a single hardware stack, FlexPod can reduce the risk and cost of new virtual

infrastructure and cloud deployments, while providing important and unique

new features.

While the solution you are considering certainly has its strengths, FlexPod

is a much more exible, scalable, and future-proof infrastructure solution

than offerings from other vendors – and features several capabilities uniqueto the FlexPod stack, such as Secure Multi-Tenancy, Single-Wire network

convergence, and long-distance V-Motion.

Then that’s all the more reason to consider FlexPod. Because you can

incorporate much of your existing infrastructure into the FlexPod

architecture, you’ll be able to leverage your current capabilities to new ends.

This way, you’ll have the freedom to maximize the value of your IT

investments without building a new data center from scratch.

Concerns such as yours are why we emphasized security and reliability when

building the FlexPod architecture. The solution offers reliable, automated

disaster recovery and data protection processes, provides high availability,

fault tolerance, and resource optimization, and delivers non-disruptive dataand application mobility – even over extended distances.

I understand the desire to maintain control over your IT infrastructure, but

what other initiatives could you be executing if you didn’t have to perform

these time-consuming tasks? When you leverage the expertise of a qualied

FlexPod systems integrator to build a FlexPod solution to your specications,

your IT team will have more time and energy to dedicate toward delivering

on strategic business initiatives.


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TOOLS AND RESOURCES

Programs

• NetApp on Avnet ATS website

• Quantum Leap

• Avnet ProSeries

• NetApp Field Portal

• NetApp NOW Portal

Educational Resources

• Avnet NetApp Training

• Avnet NetApp Events

• NetApp Tech on Tap

• NetApp University

Typical Configurations

The nal pages of this guide present the frameworks for eight tested FlexPod

congurations aligned to specic customer scenarios.

http://ats.avnet.com/ts-NetApphttp://ats.avnet.com/ts-NetApphttp://www.avnetquantumleap.com/http://www.avnetquantumleap.com/http://www.avnetproseries.com/http://www.avnetproseries.com/http://fieldportal.netapp.com/http://fieldportal.netapp.com/http://now.netapp.com/http://www.ats.avnet.com/na/en-us/suppliers/netapp/Pages/Training.aspxhttp://www.ats.avnet.com/na/en-us/suppliers/netapp/Pages/Training.aspxhttp://www.ats.avnet.com/na/en-us/suppliers/netapp/Pages/Events.aspxhttp://www.ats.avnet.com/na/en-us/suppliers/netapp/Pages/Events.aspxhttp://www.netapp.com/us/communities/tech-ontaphttp://www.netapp.com/us/communities/tech-ontaphttp://www.netapp.com/us/services/universityhttp://www.netapp.com/us/services/universityhttp://www.netapp.com/us/services/universityhttp://www.netapp.com/us/communities/tech-ontaphttp://www.ats.avnet.com/na/en-us/suppliers/netapp/Pages/Events.aspxhttp://www.ats.avnet.com/na/en-us/suppliers/netapp/Pages/Training.aspxhttp://now.netapp.com/http://fieldportal.netapp.com/http://www.avnetproseries.com/http://www.avnetquantumleap.com/http://ats.avnet.com/ts-NetApp


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©2012 Avnet, Inc. All rights reserved. NetApp, the NetApp logo, and FlexPod are trademarks or registeredtrademarks of NetApp, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks orregistered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other products, brands,and names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

FlexPod Implementation Guide

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