NetApp Expands Intelligent Data Infrastructure Capabilities to Power Strategic Cloud Workloads

Rhea-AI Summary

NetApp has introduced new capabilities aimed at empowering customers to manage data-intensive workloads like GenAI and VMware environments more efficiently. Enhancements to NetApp's data and storage services aim to reduce resources and risks for managing these workloads across complex hybrid multicloud environments.

The launch includes the NetApp BlueXP Workload Factory for AWS, automating cloud resource management using industry best practices. The NetApp GenAI Toolkit integrates with Azure NetApp Files, facilitating secure retrieval-augmented generation workflows. Additionally, a joint reference architecture with Amazon Bedrock and Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP offers developers guidance on utilizing proprietary data in GenAI data pipelines.

Further updates feature enhanced Amazon FSx for ONTAP cloud storage, offering significant performance boosts, and expanded NetApp BlueXP disaster recovery support for VMFS datastores. These improvements aim to help users optimize deployment time, cost, performance, and data protection for strategic workloads.

Positive

• NetApp introduced capabilities to reduce resource needs and risks in managing strategic workloads.
• New features include the NetApp BlueXP Workload Factory, automating cloud resource management.
• Integration of the NetApp GenAI Toolkit with Azure NetApp Files enhances GenAI project results.
• Joint reference architecture with Amazon Bedrock and Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP for GenAI data pipelines.
• Enhanced Amazon FSx for ONTAP offers up to 72 GB per second throughput, boosting performance.
• Expanded BlueXP disaster recovery support for VMFS datastores offers better protection for VMware workloads.

Negative

• None.

Tech Expert

NetApp's recent update introduces new capabilities designed specifically for strategic cloud workloads, which include GenAI and VMware environments. These capabilities are particularly relevant for businesses handling data-intensive applications. From a technological perspective, the new tools such as the NetApp BlueXP Workload Factory and NetApp GenAI Toolkit simplify and automate complex processes. The BlueXP Workload Factory, for example, optimizes deployment time and cost, making it easier for companies to manage their cloud resources efficiently. This is vital for firms looking to maintain a competitive edge while minimizing operational expenses.

Moreover, the integration with major cloud providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure enhances the flexibility and interoperability of NetApp’s solutions. These developments are likely to appeal to IT departments that are overburdened with managing hybrid multicloud environments. By reducing complexities, these solutions enable more streamlined data operations and potentially lower the overall IT management costs.

For retail investors, this can signify NetApp’s commitment to staying relevant in the cloud infrastructure space and its ability to adapt to emerging technologies and business needs.

Financial Analyst

From a financial standpoint, NetApp's introduction of these new capabilities can have significant implications. The ability to streamline and automate cloud resource management through services like NetApp BlueXP Workload Factory and enhanced integration with cloud giants AWS and Azure could lead to an increase in customer acquisition and retention. These features address pain points for complex, high-value workloads, potentially driving higher margins and longer-term contracts.

Given the shift towards data-heavy applications like GenAI, which require robust infrastructure, NetApp's positioning to cater to these needs could translate into substantial revenue growth. Furthermore, the BlueXP disaster recovery support for VMware workloads across hybrid environments adds another layer of value, enabling clients to safeguard their virtualized environments without incurring excessive costs.

Long-term investors might see this as a positive sign of NetApp’s strategic direction, ensuring its infrastructure remains indispensable as businesses increasingly adopt cloud solutions. This adaptability can help sustain revenue streams and potentially boost the stock's attractiveness in the market.

New capabilities empower customers to run data-intensive workloads like GenAI and VMware environments more easily

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP), the intelligent data infrastructure company, today announced the introduction of new capabilities designed for strategic cloud workloads including GenAI and VMware. These enhancements to NetApp data and storage services reduce the resources and risks for customers to manage these strategic workloads across increasingly complex hybrid multicloud environments.

“Strategic workloads, including GenAI and virtualized environments, are driving business innovation and have increasingly complex and resource-intensive infrastructure requirements that are pushing IT teams to the limit,” said Pravjit Tiwana, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cloud Storage at NetApp. “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. Even when they are up against specific and nuanced technology requirements for modern workloads, NetApp gives them the tools they need to optimize and simplify their data operations in their environments across the hybrid multicloud.”

To advance intelligent data infrastructure deployments that better support strategic workloads like GenAI and VMware environments, NetApp is announcing new capabilities, including:

• NetApp BlueXP Workload Factory – for AWS: This intelligent data infrastructure service uses defined industry best-practices to automate the planning, provisioning, and management of cloud resources and services for key workloads, including GenAI, VMware cloud environments, and enterprise databases. Customers can use BlueXP workload factory to optimize deployment time, cost, performance, and protection of resources for strategic workloads as well as their associated data. To simplify workload migrations to the cloud, BlueXP workload factory allows users to profile infrastructure requirements for target workloads and compare different resource options for cost and performance needs. Then, the service can provision the selected resources, move any existing workload data to these newly provisioned cloud deployments, and continually optimize the entire environment to ensure the required cost and performance targets. AWS users can read guidance on how to deploy this capability on the AWS Solutions Library.
• NetApp GenAI Toolkit – Microsoft Azure NetApp Files Version: Customers can now include private enterprise data stored in Azure NetApp Files in their retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workflows in a secure, programmatic manner. The result is an enhanced ability to generate unique, high-quality, and ultra-relevant results from GenAI projects by combining their proprietary data with pre-trained, foundational models (FMs). The integration of the NetApp GenAI Toolkit with Azure NetApp Files represents a powerful synergy that empowers customers to harness advanced language generation capabilities.
• Amazon Bedrock with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP Reference Architecture: Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) and NetApp have released a joint reference architecture which provides guidance for customers on implementing RAG-enabled workflows that bring proprietary data stored on Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP into their GenAI data pipelines. Amazon FSx makes it easy and cost effective to launch, run, and scale feature-rich, high-performance file systems in the cloud. The reference architecture allows developers to use APIs for Amazon Bedrock to connect with Amazon FSx for ONTAP data stores, enabling the secure use of proprietary data with a choice of high-performing FMs that can be customized to unlock new insights and capabilities.
• Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP Enhancements: AWS announced the next-generation Amazon FSx for ONTAP cloud storage service with enhanced capabilities to boost scalability and flexibility to provide up to 6 GB per second of throughput for a single highly-available (HA) pair from 512 TiB of SSD storage. Next-gen file systems offer virtualized workloads more room to grow with a 300 percent increase in network burst throughput and a 150 percent boost in disk burst throughput. For large-scale, high-performance workloads like GenAI, second-generation Amazon FSx for ONTAP systems support dynamic scalability by adding HA pairs as needed, up to 24 nodes. This delivers up to 72 GB per second of throughput from 1 PiB of SSD storage, providing greater flexibility and performance for evolving business needs.
• NetApp BlueXP Disaster Recovery Support for VMFS: The BlueXP disaster recovery service, which provides guided workflows to design and execute automated disaster recovery plans for VMware workloads across both on-premises and cloud environments, has been expanded to support VMFS datastores for on-premises to on-premises disaster recovery.

These updates build on NetApp’s existing offerings that support storage and data operations for customers that need to implement and manage high-powered, strategic workloads such as GenAI and VMware environments. For example, NetApp recently announced that its unique BlueXP data classification capability, which automatically classifies and categorizes data for enhanced governance and secure ingest into GenAI and RAG data pipelines, has become a core control plane capability now available free of charge to all NetApp customers.

“When it comes to GenAI, the prime focus for organizations is to adapt their data strategies to ensure they can balance data security, cost efficiency and innovation as they leverage pre-built LLMs to surface relevant, useful insights from their proprietary, business-relevant data,” said Archana Venkatraman, Senior Research Director, Cloud Data Management at IDC. “NetApp’s intelligent data infrastructure capabilities can help customers overcome the data challenges and offer specific guidance to automate workflows that can securely feed private data directly into public cloud providers’ LLMs. In addition, NetApp’s BlueXP data classification capability has the potential to mitigate the risks in data operations for AI because it allows users to discover and categorize data so that the right data is fed into the right model without exposing confidential, personal or restricted information.”

“Organizations are now facing different economic realities with regards to virtualized environments, and we all need to move quickly to address recent industry shifts,” said Derek Elbert, Solutions Architect at WWT. “Optimizing the cost versus performance equation of VMware workloads has become a primary initiative for us, with the objective of continuing to provide scalability and performance while reducing unnecessary system and software resources. NetApp’s offerings, such as the BlueXP disaster recovery service and the optimization metrics from Cloud Insights, help us better ensure the right levels of resource allocation and protection schemes for virtual environments, allowing us to focus on putting our infrastructure to work without killing the FinOps metrics.”

Additional Resources

• When You Realize It’s More About Data Than About Storage
• Big News For All NetApp Customers: Classify Your Data with an Industry-Leading Solution at No Cost
• Power Your Generative AI on AWS

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 optimization 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 realize 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.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240710415938/en/

Media Contact:

Kenya Hayes

NetApp

kenya.hayes@netapp.com

Investor Contact:

Kris Newton

NetApp

kris.newton@netapp.com

Source: NetApp, Inc.

FAQ

What new capabilities did NetApp introduce for strategic workloads?

NetApp introduced enhancements like the BlueXP Workload Factory for AWS, NetApp GenAI Toolkit, and a joint reference architecture with Amazon Bedrock and FSx for ONTAP.

How does the NetApp BlueXP Workload Factory benefit AWS users?

The BlueXP Workload Factory automates cloud resource management, optimizing deployment time, cost, performance, and data protection for strategic workloads like GenAI and VMware.

What is the NetApp GenAI Toolkit?

The NetApp GenAI Toolkit integrates with Azure NetApp Files to enhance retrieval-augmented generation workflows, combining private enterprise data with pre-trained models for high-quality results.

What performance improvements come with the enhanced Amazon FSx for ONTAP?

The enhanced Amazon FSx for ONTAP offers up to 72 GB per second throughput, with significant increases in network and disk burst throughput, supporting large-scale, high-performance workloads.

What is the significance of the new reference architecture with Amazon Bedrock?

The joint reference architecture with Amazon Bedrock and Amazon FSx for ONTAP provides guidance for implementing GenAI data pipelines using proprietary data, enhancing insights and capabilities.

How does NetApp's BlueXP disaster recovery support VMware workloads?

The expanded BlueXP disaster recovery support for VMFS datastores provides guided workflows for automated disaster recovery of VMware workloads across on-premises and cloud environments.