NetApp Unveils Unified Data Storage Built for the AI Era
NetApp, the intelligent
data infrastructure company, today announced new leading AFF A-Series systems
that can power the most demanding IT workloads customers face, including GenAI,
VMware, and enterprise databases. NetApp also released expanded capabilities
across its portfolio to help customers operate more efficiently as they
leverage their data to drive innovation.
In the AI era,
organizations are feeling pressure to accelerate innovation, unlock new
customer experiences, outsmart cyber threats, and gain ever greater
productivity. Many organizations see AI as a critical tool to help them achieve
those goals. According to the 2024 NetApp Cloud Complexity report, organizations realize
that achieving business success with AI hinges on two critical factors, data
(74%) and IT infrastructure (71%). With today’s announcements, NetApp is
helping organizations excel at both factors and drive competitive success by
offering innovative intelligent data infrastructure that empowers customers to
unlock the value of their data with AI.
The new NetApp AFF
A-Series systems continue NetApp’s leadership in unified data storage for the
next generation of workloads. Leveraging the same technology relied upon by the
top three public clouds, the NetApp AFF A-Series eliminates storage silos and
storage complexity, providing powerful, intelligent, and secure storage to
accelerate and optimize every workload. This includes integrated capabilities to
optimize VMware storage costs today and provide unmatched flexibility for the
future.
"Data is
undeniably the most valuable asset for any company to outpace its competitors.
Whether it's mission critical applications or leveraging enterprise data to
fuel AI, the data infrastructure a company chooses to run it on makes all the
difference," said Sandeep Singh, Senior Vice President and General Manager
of Enterprise Storage at NetApp. "NetApp's extensive, unified data storage
portfolio, from on-premises to the public clouds, makes it the go-to solution
for enterprises looking to have the robustness for the most demanding
workloads. The introduction of the new AFF A-Series Systems is a testament to
our unwavering commitment to delivering the most powerful, intelligent, and
secure enterprise storage in the industry."
New AFF A-Series Systems to Accelerate Business Technology Operations
With the
introduction of new, more-powerful AFF A-Series all-flash storage systems,
NetApp is continuing its commitment to innovation with unified data storage
systems designed for any data, any app, and any cloud. The new AFF A-Series
storage systems easily power the most demanding workloads—from existing
mission-critical apps to GenAI workloads that will drive success into the
future.
These new systems
are the NetApp AFF A1K, AFF A90, and AFF A70, which can turbo-charge enterprise
workloads by delivering:
· Up to 2x better
performance with unmatched 40 million IOPs, 1 TB/s throughput
· Proven 99.9999%
data availability
· Leading
raw-to-effective capacity, including always-on data reduction and 4:1 Storage
Efficiency Guarantee
· Integrated
real-time ransomware detection designed for 99%+ accuracy and Ransomware
Recovery Guarantee
NetApp's unified
data storage supports block, file and object storage protocols and natively
integrates with the three largest public cloud providers, allowing customers to
consolidate workloads, lower cost of data, and operate without silos. Powered
by NetApp ONTAP®, these systems deliver the simplicity and reliability tens of thousands
of organizations have come to expect from NetApp.
“As we’ve ramped up
our investments in AI projects to help accelerate our business, we needed to
grow our data infrastructure to deliver ever greater performance for those
workloads,” Christian Klie, Tribe Cluster Lead at T-Systems. “We rely on
intelligent data infrastructure delivered by NetApp to power our most critical
workloads, and the increased power of the new AFF A-Series systems, paired with
their integrated anti-ransomware features and hybrid cloud capabilities, will
help position us for success now and in the future.”
“AI is creating the
biggest business transformation opportunity we’ve seen in decades, allowing
enterprises to unlock new sources of value from their data,” said Justin
Hotard, Executive Vice President and general manager, Data Center and AI Group at
Intel. “NetApp AFF A-Series systems utilizing Intel Xeon processors provide the
performance and features to help businesses accelerate their enterprise AI
adoption.”
Providing Powerful, Intelligent and Secure Enterprise Data
Infrastructure
To continue its
innovation as the intelligent data infrastructure company, NetApp released
additional capabilities to provide customers with the advanced data management,
industry-leading ransomware protection, and cloud integration that modern
workloads like GenAI demand.
The new features
and capabilities in NetApp’s data management and integrated services include:
· New StorageGRID
Models: NetApp has introduced six new StorageGRID models that enhance the
value of large, unstructured data while reducing total cost of ownership.
StorageGRID can now leverage capacity flash to provide fast object access times
at the lowest cost. Customers can experience a new level of flexibility,
choice, performance, and sustainability for critical object workloads with new
models that offer a very competitive price per GB, up to a 3X performance
increase, 80 percent footprint reduction, and power consumption savings as high
as 70 percent.
· Cyber Vault
Reference Architecture: NetApp announced a new cyber vault reference
architecture that extends the company’s industry-leading data protection
capabilities. Combining the latest advances in secure data storage, autonomous
real-time ransomware detection, and rapid data restoration, NetApp’s secure and
resilient cyber vault delivers “logically air-gapped” storage based on proven
NetApp ONTAP technology, for unparalleled protection of customer data against
advanced cyber-threats.
· SnapMirror Active
Sync: The latest version of ONTAP includes SnapMirror active sync which
creates a symmetric active-active business continuity solution across two data
centers. Coupled with VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) and
enterprise databases from Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft, SnapMirror active sync
enables ongoing business operations with no disruption during a data center
outage.
· FlexCache with
Writeback: The updated version of ONTAP also includes FlexCache with
Writeback which creates local copies of data for distributed teams, resulting
in reduced latency and uninterrupted access while reducing administrative
overhead. The local copies can read and write data, granting local teams
greater control while maintaining data consistency with the core data center.
· NetApp AIPod with
Lenovo:NetApp and Lenovo are collaborating on a new converged
infrastructure solution designed for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and
inferencing use cases for GenAI, with Lenovo high-performance ThinkSystem servers utilizing NVIDIA L40S GPUs, NVIDIA Spectrum-X networking, and NetApp AFF
storage, all validated with the NVIDIA OVX architecture specification.
· BlueXP
Classification: This AI/ML-driven service is now available as a BlueXP core capability
at no additional charge, giving users immediate access to the ability to
automatically classify, categorize, and tag data across the entire data estate
to deepen data intelligence, enhancing efforts in governance, security, and
compliance while enabling strategic workloads such as GenAI. With BlueXP
classification, customers can now fuel GenAI and RAG innovation through the
AIOps ability to securely and programmatically augment pre-trained models with
auto-classified, proprietary data on demand for enhanced relevancy without
sacrificing cost or data security.
“AI is a massive
opportunity for companies to leverage their data in new ways to unlock
competitive advantages,” Ashish Nadkarni, Group Vice President and General
Manager, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies and BuyerView
Research at IDC. “However, as the AI market develops, how organizations
approach AI may change. They need storage infrastructure that gives them the
flexibility to combine their on-premises data storage with cloud environments.
NetApp’s strategy of delivering powerful unified data storage that works with
any data protocol, in any environment, to run any workload gives its customers
the power and flexibility they need to face whatever challenges come their
way.”
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