NetApp expands data infrastructure to support GenAI & VMware

NetApp has announced the expansion of its intelligent data infrastructure capabilities to support strategic cloud workloads, including Generative AI (GenAI) and VMware environments. The new enhancements are aimed at reducing the resources and risks required to manage these workloads in hybrid multicloud environments.

Pravjit Tiwana, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cloud Storage at NetApp, stated, “Strategic workloads, including GenAI and virtualised environments, are driving business innovation and have increasingly complex and resource-intensive infrastructure requirements that are pushing IT teams to the limit. NetApp is helping customers take back control of their data with intelligent data infrastructure that leverages unified data storage, integrated data services, and automated cloud operations.”

The new capabilities introduced by NetApp include several key features designed to optimise and simplify data operations. These include the NetApp BlueXP Workload Factory for AWS, the NetApp GenAI Toolkit for Microsoft Azure NetApp Files Version, and a joint reference architecture with Amazon Bedrock and Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP.

The NetApp BlueXP Workload Factory for AWS automates the planning, provisioning, and management of cloud resources and services for GenAI, VMware cloud environments, and enterprise databases. This service aims to optimise deployment time, cost, performance, and protection of resources. According to NetApp, the BlueXP Workload Factory allows users to profile infrastructure requirements and compare different resource options for cost and performance needs, ultimately provisioning the selected resources and migrating existing workload data to newly provisioned cloud deployments.

The NetApp GenAI Toolkit for Microsoft Azure NetApp Files Version allows customers to include private enterprise data stored in Azure NetApp Files in their retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workflows securely and programmatically. This integration aims to enhance the ability of customers to generate high-quality, relevant results from GenAI projects by combining proprietary data with pre-trained foundational models.

NetApp and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have also introduced a joint reference architecture that helps customers implement RAG-enabled workflows. This architecture enables the secure use of proprietary data stored on Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP with a choice of high-performing foundational models. The reference architecture allows developers to use APIs for Amazon Bedrock to connect with Amazon FSx for ONTAP data stores.

AWS has announced enhancements to Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, improving the scalability and flexibility of the cloud storage service. The next-generation service offers up to 6 GB per second of throughput for a single highly-available pair from 512 TiB of SSD storage. For large-scale, high-performance workloads like GenAI, the service supports dynamic scalability by adding highly-available pairs as needed, offering up to 72 GB per second of throughput from 1 PiB of SSD storage.

NetApp's BlueXP disaster recovery service has been expanded to support VMFS datastores for on-premises to on-premises disaster recovery, providing guided workflows to design and execute automated disaster recovery plans.

Commenting on the new capabilities, Matthew Swinbourne, CTO Cloud Architecture at NetApp Asia Pacific, said, “Enterprises in Asia Pacific are eager to tap the innovative power of GenAI and virtualised environments. Yet they are often held back by complexity, security and cost constraints. The range of enhancements announced by NetApp today aims to address challenges like these.”

Archana Venkatraman, Senior Research Director, Cloud Data Management at IDC, noted, “When it comes to GenAI, the prime focus for organisations is to adapt their data strategies to ensure they can balance data security, cost efficiency and innovation as they leverage pre-built large language models to surface relevant, useful insights from their proprietary, business-relevant data. NetApp’s intelligent data infrastructure capabilities can help customers overcome the data challenges and offer specific guidance to automate workflows.”

Derek Elbert, Solutions Architect at WWT, also highlighted the importance of optimising VMware workloads, stating, “Organisations are now facing different economic realities with regards to virtualised environments, and we all need to move quickly to address recent industry shifts. Optimising the cost versus performance equation of VMware workloads has become a primary initiative.”