VAST Data today announced a new collaboration with Equinix that leverages the VAST Data Platform for NVIDIA DGX systems and the NVIDIA AI Enterprise platform, deployed in Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) high-performance data centres. This collaboration provides the infrastructure foundation of an AI development platform to help customers develop and implement generative AI applications by modernising and leveraging enterprise data for AI workloads – without compromising on data security or infrastructure ease of use.

In today’s fast-moving market, activating enterprise data to unlock new insights requires new technologies and presents new challenges that involve complex, orchestrated workflows. To address these challenges and simplify the process for enterprises, this collaboration leverages a global multi-cloud network connected through private network access to cloud services and enterprise providers. This solution enables quick generative AI information retrieval while meeting data security and compliance requirements. Certified for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, the VAST Data Platform offers high-performance data access and enables users to achieve parallel performance and scale up to exabyte levels.

“Equinix is helping customers access the benefits of AI by providing a fully managed global platform in close proximity to their data through private, high-bandwidth interconnections to cloud providers,” said Jon Lin, EVP & General Manager, Data Centre Services at Equinix. “Enterprises seek trusted, secure solutions to safeguard their most critical AI training data. The VAST Data Platform feeds and powers that AI infrastructure, providing customers with a simple, secure and scalable solution they can use to unlock the power of generative AI and deep learning.”

Key benefits of this collaboration include:

• Optimised Performance for AI Infrastructure Investments: Underpinned by the VAST Data Platform to store, serve and protect unstructured and structured data, this Equinix-managed solution validated for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD and NVIDIA AI Enterprise solution is designed and architected for peak performance with AI workloads.
• End-to-End Infrastructure Solution with Complete Control and Security: This fully managed AI supercomputing service provides customers with total control and total data ownership. Within a secure data environment that is entirely within the customer network, the offering is complemented by VAST’s end-to-end encryption, nearly unlimited snapshots, data retention tools, auditability and ransomware protection so that generative AI datasets are protected with the rigor required for even the most stringent regulatory mandates.
• Hybrid Cloud AI Computing: Equinix provides secure, private connectivity to on-demand shared resources from major cloud service providers (CSPs). Organisations can manage their hybrid cloud ecosystem in a centralised and simplified view, accelerating multi-cloud management and decision-making. In tandem, the VAST DataSpace offers a global namespace that makes hybrid cloud AI computing simple and intelligent across core or edge data centres, or in major public clouds.
• Simplifying Data Management Across AI Pipelines: VAST addresses entire AI pipelines with the first solution that uses new data structures to accelerate computing for data preparation and feature engineering. Through this integration, Equinix leverages and supports NVIDIA accelerated computing with the VAST Data Platform to deliver a parallel file and object storage system that is ideal for model training and distribution – speeding AI adoption and time to market.

“By combining supercomputing services with VAST’s AI-native offering for scalable and secure data services deployed in Equinix data centres, we’re setting a new standard in delivering high-performance, scalable, simple and sustainable accelerated computing infrastructure,” said Renen Hallak, Founder and CEO of VAST Data. “Through this collaboration, customers now have access to a data platform that was designed from the ground up for every demanding aspect of an AI pipeline. Working with Equinix and NVIDIA, we are building the foundation for accelerated computing with a secure, enterprise grade accelerated data platform.”