SYDNEY, Australia – 6 March 2024 – NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP), the intelligent data infrastructure company, today announced new capabilities that maximise the potential of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) projects and build competitive advantage for users. Customers can now take their AI projects to the next level by combining NetApp’s intelligent data infrastructure with high-performance compute, networking and software from NVIDIA.

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, organisations 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 optimised to maximise 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 optimise 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-optimised converged infrastructure for organisations’ highest priority AI projects, including training and inferencing. NetApp ONTAP and NetApp AFF A900 is certified storage for NVIDIA DGX BasePOD solutions with NVIDIA DGX H100. NetApp and NVIDIA DGX customers can be assured that a DGX BasePOD solution with NetApp’s AFF A900 will meet their AI at scale deployment needs. NetApp AIPod  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.

Wojtek Malewski, Director of Solutions Engineering at NetApp Australia & New Zealand states “In Australia and New Zealand, we are seeing unbridled enthusiasm for AI-driven uses cases, anticipating long-term growth for AI-driven applications. However, the potential of AI to succeed is directly determined by data quality. We’d like to see organisations deriving better return on investment from AI by ensuring their underlying IT and business infrastructures are properly equipped to manage data pipelines.”

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 organisations 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.

To learn more about the NetApp offerings to support Gen AI, visit: https://www.netapp.com/artificial-intelligence/

Additional Resources

• Your data, your AI, anywhere: Introducing the NetApp AIPod now certified on NVIDIA’s DGX H100
• FlexPod: Where converged meets cloud

About NetApp

NetApp is the intelligent data infrastructure company, combining unified data storage, integrated data services, and CloudOps solutions to turn a world of disruption into opportunity for every customer. NetApp creates silo-free infrastructure, harnessing observability and AI to enable the industry’s best data management. As the only enterprise-grade storage service natively embedded in the world’s biggest clouds, our data storage delivers seamless flexibility. In addition, our data services create a data advantage through superior cyber resilience, governance, and application agility. Our CloudOps solutions provide continuous optimisation of performance and efficiency through observability and AI. No matter the data type, workload, or environment, with NetApp you can transform your data infrastructure to realise your business possibilities. Learn more at www.netapp.com or follow us on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

NETAPP, the NETAPP logo, and the marks listed at www.netapp.com/TM are trademarks of NetApp, Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Media Contacts

Angela Coombes
Communications Manager, NetApp
+61 417 805 441
Angela.Coombes@netapp.com

Olivia Hammond
Senior Consultant, Espresso Communications
+61 423 177 005
netapp@espressocomms.com.au