NetApp, the Intelligent Data Infrastructure leader, has introduced a series of next-gen products to enhance its enterprise data platform for AI-driven innovation. As companies are shifting AI projects from pilots to mission-critical use, being able to have AI-ready data on a new, scalable infrastructure has become critical to providing actionable insights and speeding up AI results.
The new products include NetApp AFX, a disaggregated implementation of NetApp ONTAP on the AFX 1K storage system, and the NetApp AI Data Engine (AIDE), a secure and unified addition to ONTAP in collaboration with NVIDIA’s reference-model AI data platform. These products integrate high-performance storage and intelligent data services into one, secure, scalable platform, allowing organizations to speed retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and enterprise AI inferencing across hybrid and multi-clouds. The products are accessible through direct buy or through the NetApp Keystone STaaS subscription model, making all pertinent data instantly AI-ready.
With the new NetApp AFX systems, customers now have a validated and trusted on-premises enterprise storage solution based on an integrated data platform that can quickly propel AI innovation,” said Syam Nair, NetApp chief product officer. “The NetApp AI Data Engine enables customers to easily integrate their databases across hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures to create a cohesive database.”. This enables organizations to significantly speed up their AI data pipelines by merging numerous data prep and management steps into the integrated NetApp AI Data Engine, designed with NVIDIA accelerated computing technologies and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software, such as semantic search, data vectorization, and data guardrails. The synergy of NetApp AFX and the AI Data Engine provides organizations with the resiliency and performance that NetApp ONTAP has delivered over decades, now in a disaggregated storage architecture, still based on the world’s most secure storage.
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Key innovations are:
- NetApp AFX: An all-flash disaggregated storage system of enterprise quality that is certified for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD supercomputers and offers exabyte-scale capacity, multi-terabyte-per-second bandwidth, and linear performance scaling up to 128 nodes. It features secure multi-tenancy, hybrid cloud integration, and optional DX50 Data Compute Nodes for a global metadata engine.
- NetApp AI Data Engine (AIDE): An end-to-end AI data service that streamlines and secures the entire AI data process, from ingestion to delivery for GenAI use cases. Based on NVIDIA accelerated computing, robust compression, semantic search, and policy-based, secure workflows, AIDE provides real-time access to current enterprise data while coexisting in cloud and on-premises environments.
- Azure integration object API: Customers are now able to connect Azure NetApp Files directly to Azure Data & AI services through an object REST API, facilitating end-to-end AI model training and analytics without having to migrate data.
- Unified international namespace optimized: FlexCache features in Azure NetApp Files enable global data estates to be unified by businesses, encompassing hybrid workflows, continuous backup, disaster recovery, and workload balancing.
Businesses need a robust, high-performance database to translate enormous amounts of data into actual insights that drive their AI journey,” said Justin Boitano, vice president of enterprise AI products at NVIDIA. “The NetApp Data Platform has evolved into an AI-native storage platform by incorporating NVIDIA accelerated computing technologies and software, including state-of-the-art AI models.”. With the new platform, businesses are able to index and search large volumes of unstructured data throughout their organizations to fuel innovation and drive real-world business value.”
“Today’s new solutions NetApp is launching show the pace of bringing an ambitious vision for managing data for AI to life,” stated Michael Leone, practice director and principal analyst at Omdia. “The way NetApp solutions bring intelligence to enterprise data reveals a deep understanding of the real-world challenges customers face and how to address them. Adding performance-agnostic scalability and capacity management to ONTAP’s robust data management capabilities, which have long defined NetApp’s reputation, will enable organizations to confidently invest in AI projects that quickly deliver value to their business.”