NetApp & NVIDIA join forces to streamline AI data management

NetApp has announced a partnership with NVIDIA to integrate the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design into its AIPod solution.

The collaboration aims to help organisations build secure, governed, and scalable AI data pipelines for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and AI inferencing. This will enable businesses to further leverage AI as they address increasingly complex business challenges.

According to NetApp's 2025 Data Complexity Report, 79% of technology and business leaders agree that unifying data estates is critical for achieving successful AI outcomes.

NetApp AIPod deployments that are built on the NVIDIA AI Data Platform will utilise NetApp's ONTAP data management capabilities. This combination is intended to support the development of high-performance AI systems that can access data without the issues caused by siloed storage.

NetApp is recognised as an NVIDIA-Certified Storage partner, which equips AIPod users with data infrastructure designed for enterprise needs and scalable multi-tenancy. This infrastructure is aimed at enabling the deployment of agentic AI, which can be used to address real-world business problems.

Sandeep Singh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Storage at NetApp, commented on the importance of a unified approach to data management for AI applications. "A unified and comprehensive understanding of business data is the vehicle that will help companies drive competitive advantage in the era of intelligence, and AI inferencing is the key," he said.

Singh added, "We have always believed that a unified approach to data storage is essential for businesses to get the most out of their data. The rise of agentic AI has only reinforced that truly unified data storage goes beyond just multi-protocol storage. Businesses need to eliminate silos throughout their entire IT environment, whether on-premises and in the cloud, and across every business function, and we are working with NVIDIA to deliver connected storage for the unique demands of AI."

The NetApp AIPod solution with the NVIDIA AI Data Platform incorporates NVIDIA accelerated computing and NVIDIA NeMo Retriever microservices, linking these resources to scalable storage. This architecture allows for the real-time scanning, indexing, classification, and retrieval of large stores of both private and public documents, with the intention of augmenting AI agents in their reasoning and problem-solving abilities.

Rob Davis, Vice President of Storage Technology at NVIDIA, highlighted the importance of fast, quality data access for AI applications. "Agentic AI enables businesses to solve complex problems with superhuman efficiency and accuracy, but only as long as agents and reasoning models have fast access to high-quality data," he said.

Davis continued, "The NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design and NetApp's high-powered storage and mature data management capabilities bring AI directly to business data and drive unprecedented productivity."

The integration of the NVIDIA AI Data Platform is aligned with NetApp's vision to enhance data management capabilities for AI projects. The platform's use of continuously updated metadata and vectorisation is specifically designed to accelerate AI pipelines by enabling more timely, relevant, and accurate queries.