NetApp introduces simplified, secure, high-performing infrastructure

Gen AI has captured global attention for its potential to automate tedious tasks, uncover new insights, and drive product innovation. Nearly three out of four companies are already using Gen AI, according to the NetApp 2023 Data Complexity report. To unlock the potential of Gen AI, organizations need secure, high-performance access to data spread across complex hybrid and multicloud environments. NetApp has a long and successful history of expertise in supporting AI with solutions that deliver management simplicity anywhere data lives, provide high performance without requiring new infrastructure silos, and supply trusted, secure data to drive responsible AI.

“NetApp is the intelligent data infrastructure company, with solutions optimized to maximize the potential of our customers’ AI investments,” said Arunkumar Gururajan, Vice President of Data Science & Research at NetApp. “Our unique approach to AI gives customers complete access and control over their data throughout the data pipeline, moving seamlessly between their public cloud and on-premises environments. By tiering object storage for each phase of the AI process, our customers can optimize both performance and costs exactly where they need them. Our unified approach delivers the performance, productivity, and protection customers need to quickly innovate with AI.”

To support companies leveraging Gen AI to improve their operations and strategic decision-making, NetApp released updates to its intelligent data infrastructure capabilities including:

NetApp AIPod™ is NetApp's AI-optimized converged infrastructure for organizations’ highest priority AI projects, including training and inferencing. NetApp AIPod powered by NVIDIA DGX is now a certified NVIDIA DGX BasePOD solutions using NVIDIA DGX H100 systems integrated with NetApp AFF C-Series affordable capacity flash systems to drive a new level of cost/performance while optimizing rack space and sustainability. NetApp AIPod powered by NVIDIA DGX also continues to support NVIDIA DGX A100 systems.

New FlexPod for AI reference architectures extend the leading converged infrastructure solution from NetApp and Cisco. FlexPod for AI now supports the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform. FlexPod for AI can now be extended to leverage RedHat OpenShift and SuSE Rancher. New scaling and benchmarking have been added to support increasingly GPU-intensive applications. Customers can use these new FlexPod solutions as an end-to-end blueprint to efficiently design, deploy, and operate the FlexPod platform for AI use cases.

NetApp is now validated for NVIDIA OVX systems. NetApp storage combined with NVIDIA OVX computing systems can help streamline enterprise AI deployments, including model fine-tuning and inference workloads. Powered by NVIDIA L40S GPUs, validated NVIDIA OVX solutions are available from leading server vendors and include NVIDIA AI Enterprise software along with NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand or NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet, and NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPUs. NetApp is one of the first partners to complete this new storage validation for NVIDIA OVX.

To further enhance its AI leadership, NetApp also is announcing revolutionary new cyber-resilience capabilities including one of the first uses of AI/ML embedded in storage to fight ransomware. The new Autonomous Ransomware Protection with AI (ARP/AI) will provide the next generation of machine learning in ONTAP, giving the increased accuracy and performance required to detect and mitigate new, more sophisticated cyber threats.

“AI powers mission-critical use cases in every industry, from healthcare to manufacturing to financial services,” said Tony Paikeday, Senior Director of AI Systems at NVIDIA. “NetApp AIPod certified for NVIDIA DGX BasePOD provides a powerful reference architecture that helps enterprises eliminate design complexity, reduce deployment time frames, and simplify ongoing operations.”

“GenAI has massive potential to help organizations harness their data to uncover business insights and improve operational efficiency,” said Archana Venkatraman, Research Director, Cloud Data Management, IDC. “NetApp has continuously adapted to deliver the services and solutions customers need to effectively manage their data pipelines. These updates further illustrate NetApp’s willingness to evolve and bring innovations to customers that unlock the full potential of AI.”

NetApp delivers a unified approach to infrastructure and data management that eliminates data silos, brings enhanced performance and trusted data protection to customers’ AI turnkey solutions, and helps customers accelerate the time to results for their AI projects.