In a wide-ranging announcement, NetApp unveiled new all-flash performance storage, new capacity-optimized flash object storage, and a new converged AI solution, co-engineered with Lenovo, geared towards the practical deployment of generative AI in the enterprise. The announcements set a high bar for what is expected to be a busy couple of months of industry-wide storage updates.
While NetApp announced significant updates across a range of products, let’s look at what the company delivers for performance storage and AI-focused solutions. Readers interested in the full range of announcements are encouraged to read NetApp’s umbrella release describing the new offerings.
Powering Performance with AFF A-Series
NetApp’s new AFF A-Series is the company’s latest enterprise all-flash storage system. The new arrays enhance NetApp’s portfolio with increased performance, efficiency, and robust security features.
The cornerstone of the A-Series—comprising models AFF A1K, A90, and A70—focuses on delivering superior performance. The new models promise up to twice the performance of previous generations, delivering up to 40 million IOPS and 1 TB/s of throughput. NetApp’s A-Series delivers high reliability, with NetApp promising 99.9999% data availability.
Beyond performance, the A-Series aims to address economic efficiency. The systems feature always-on data reduction and a 4:1 Storage Efficiency Guarantee, designed to optimize storage utilization and reduce the overall cost of ownership.
In response to the escalating cyber threats, the AFF A-Series incorporates advanced security measures, including NetApp’s integrated real-time ransomware detection. NetApp promises 99% detection accuracy and offers a Ransomware Recovery Guarantee. NetApp and IBM are the only enterprise storage vendors offering real-time malware detection, making this feature a compelling differentiator.
NetApp AIPod with Lenovo
NetApp and Lenovo are jointly delivering a converged infrastructure solution designed to streamline the adoption and management needed to deploy enterprise generative AI workloads.
The new NetApp AIPod with Lenovo combines NetApp’s advanced storage systems and data management expertise with the high-performance capabilities of Lenovo’s AMD-powered ThinkSystem SR675 V3 servers. These servers are noted for reliability and performance and come equipped with NVIDIA L40S GPUs. The servers are also NVIDIA-OVX Certified.
Additionally, the AIPod includes NVIDIA Spectrum-X Networking to ensure fast, reliable data connectivity for AI operations. This pre-integrated setup simplifies the deployment and scaling of AI workloads, supporting activities like retrieval-augmented generation and inferencing.
By combining robust hardware with intelligent software, the NetApp AIPod with Lenovo minimizes the complexity traditionally associated with implementing AI solutions, enabling organizations to focus on extracting value and insights from their data efficiently.
Analysis
NetApp’s new A-Series brings the right capabilities to the performance flash storage market. As we’ve seen from other vendors since AMD and Intel each released their fourth-generation server processors last year, the move to PCI gen5 is really what’s behind many of the performance improvements we’ve seen in platform refreshes across the industry. But the A-Series is about more than performance.
Combining the new arrays’ performance with everything else NetApp offers in these products (ONTAP’s converged block/file/object capabilities, industry-leading flash capacity, and real-time malware detection) makes the new A-series the current product to beat for all-flash converged storage.
NetApp’s focus on the critical all-flash market over the past two years has been impressive. The team shows renewed vigor under enterprise storage general manager Sandeep Singh, who joined NetApp from HPE in 2022. This is a company that’s building precisely what it needs to make in this enterprise storage space and doing so with an admirable level of differentiation.
Lenovo and NetApp have had a long and fruitful collaboration that takes a step forward with the new AIPod offering. The product is an acknowledgment that AI training is often a cloud-first endeavor and that the near-term focus for many enterprises is operationalizing generative AI – precisely what the NetApp AIPod with Lenovo is designed to do.
Building a high-performance GPU-powered system for AI is still out of the comfort zone for many IT workers. This isn’t technology that looks like traditional IT gear. The AIPod takes much of the guesswork out of the equation as NVIDIA’s DGX does for training. This is a much-needed solution that’s going to see a positive market response.
Lenovo has some expertise in this area. The company has surprised many with its competitive and often leading AI-focused products, including its recently released ThinkSystem SR685a V3 8GPU.
With these announcements, NetApp addresses the immediate needs of its customers while reaffirming its position as one of the industry’s leading enterprise storage technology providers. NetApp’s focus on integrating advanced AI capabilities, enhancing cybersecurity measures, and reducing environmental impact brings a comprehensive approach to solving the data challenges facing the modern enterprise.
Disclosure: Steve McDowell is an industry analyst, and NAND Research is an industry analyst firm that engages in, or has engaged in, research, analysis and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. Mr. McDowell does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
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