NetApp Partners With Google Cloud to Simplify Scaling High-Performance Workloads in the Cloud

Rhea-AI Summary

NetApp (NTAP) and Google Cloud have announced enhanced capabilities for Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, their fully managed file storage service. The improvements focus on scaling high-performance workloads and supporting large-scale datasets in the cloud.

Key enhancements include:

• Integration with Google Cloud's Vertex AI Platform for building custom agents and managing data pipelines
• Performance improvements for Premium and Extreme service levels, allowing single volume scaling from 15TiB to 1PiB with up to 30 GiB/s throughput
• Preview of independent scaling for capacity and performance in Flex service level
• Upcoming support for Google Cloud Assured Workloads framework for compliance requirements

These improvements aim to help customers manage petabyte-scale datasets for electronic design automation (EDA), AI applications, and content data repositories more efficiently while maintaining seamless integration with Google Cloud's ecosystem.

Positive

• Enhanced storage scalability up to 1PiB with 30 GiB/s throughput
• New Vertex AI integration expanding AI capabilities
• Improved performance flexibility with independent scaling of capacity and performance
• Extended regional compliance support through Assured Workloads framework

Negative

• Some key features like Vertex AI integration and Assured Workloads support are not yet available
• Flex service level improvements are still in preview phase

Insights

Cloud Infrastructure Analyst

NetApp's enhanced partnership with Google Cloud represents a strategic expansion of their enterprise storage capabilities specifically targeting high-performance AI workloads. The ability to provision single volumes up to 1 petabyte with 30 GiB/s throughput addresses a critical bottleneck in cloud deployments of data-intensive applications.

What's particularly valuable here is the independent scaling of capacity and performance in the Flex service level, eliminating the common problem of overprovisioning storage to meet performance requirements. This directly addresses cost optimization concerns that often challenge cloud adoption for storage-intensive workloads.

The integration with Google Cloud Assured Workloads framework adds regulatory compliance capabilities, removing another significant barrier for regulated industries considering cloud migration. This combination of performance scaling, cost optimization, and compliance support strengthens NetApp's competitive position against pure cloud storage solutions.

NetApp is executing a clear strategic shift from traditional storage provider to intelligent data infrastructure company. This partnership strengthens their hybrid cloud value proposition by ensuring consistent data management experiences across on-premises ONTAP environments and Google Cloud, particularly benefiting enterprises maintaining hybrid architectures while pursuing AI initiatives.

AI Implementation Strategist

The integration with Google's Vertex AI platform transforms NetApp Volumes from mere storage into a strategic AI enablement layer. By allowing data stored in NetApp Volumes to connect directly to Vertex AI, enterprises gain a simplified path to building custom agents and RAG applications without constructing complex data pipelines.

This solves a fundamental AI implementation challenge – seamlessly connecting existing enterprise data to AI systems. Organizations can now leverage their structured and unstructured data repositories for AI without wholesale migration to new platforms. The performance improvements enabling petabyte-scale datasets in single volumes align perfectly with training large language models and running inference at scale.

Enterprises face three key obstacles in AI implementation: data accessibility, performance bottlenecks, and governance requirements. This partnership addresses all three simultaneously through direct Vertex AI integration, performance scaling, and compliance framework support.

For existing NetApp customers, this creates an accelerated path to AI implementation while maintaining their current data infrastructure investments. NetApp's emphasis on hybrid capabilities ensures enterprises can build AI systems that span on-premises and cloud environments – critical for organizations with data residency requirements or existing on-premises ONTAP deployments.

New features for Google Cloud NetApp Volumes improve support for large workloads, including Vertex AI

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP), the intelligent data infrastructure company, and Google Cloud today announced new capabilities for Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, a fully managed file storage service, that reduce complexity and increase performance for cloud storage workloads, while fully integrating into the Google Cloud service ecosystem. Customers will be able to effortlessly scale high-performance enterprise apps and databases, including workloads with petabyte-scale datasets, such as electronic design automation (EDA), AI applications, and content data repositories.

As businesses navigate the era of intelligence, managing data across on-premises systems and the cloud is a critical capability. Intelligent data infrastructure breaks down silos and enables seamless, real-time integration across hybrid-cloud environments, turning raw data into actionable insights. By collaborating with Google Cloud, NetApp is empowering businesses to harness the power of AI, driving greater agility and innovation at scale.

“For many organizations, the cloud is the fastest and simplest path to using AI to uncover data-driven insights,” said Pravjit Tiwana, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cloud Storage at NetApp. "Our collaboration with Google Cloud is accelerating generative AI data pipelines by seamlessly integrating the latest AI innovations with the robust data management capabilities of NetApp ONTAP®. The new capabilities of NetApp Volumes help customers scale their cloud storage to meet the demands of the modern, high-performance applications and datasets that drive meaningful business outcomes.”

Google Cloud and NetApp are introducing new capabilities in NetApp Volumes to enhance the scalability and performance of enterprise applications and databases with new capabilities including:

• Integration with Google Cloud’s Vertex AI Platform: Customers will soon be able to use their data stored in NetApp Volumes directly in the Vertex AI platform. By leveraging the broader capabilities of Vertex AI, customers will be able to build custom agents without needing to build their own solutions to manage data pipelines for retrieval augmented generation (RAG) applications.
• Improvements for Premium and Extreme Service Levels: Performance improvements to Google Cloud NetApp Volumes large capacity volumes are now generally available in all 14 regions where the Premium and Extreme service levels are offered. With these improvements to large capacity volumes, customers can provision a single volume starting at 15TiB that can be scaled up to 1PiB with up to 30 GiB/s of throughput, allowing customers to move petabyte-scale datasets for large workloads like EDA, AI applications, and content data repositories to NetApp Volumes without partitioning data across multiple volumes.
• Improvements for Flex Service Level: Customers can now preview independent scaling of capacity and performance to avoid overprovisioning of capacity to meet their performance needs with the NetApp Volumes Flex service level. This will enable users to create storage pools by individually selecting capacity, throughput and IOPS with the ability to scale throughput up to 5 GiB/s and IOPS up to 160K to right-size their storage and optimize costs.
• Google Cloud Assured Workloads Onboarding: NetApp Volumes will soon support the Assured Workloads framework that Google Cloud customers use to easily configure and maintain controlled environments that operate within the parameters of a specific compliance regime. Customers using NetApp Volumes under Assured Workloads will meet the data residency, transparent access control, and cloud key management solution compliance requirements specific to their region.

“Simplified access to AI is a democratizing force enabling organizations to leverage their most critical asset—data—for a competitive edge,” said Sameet Agarwal, vice president and general manager, Google’s Cloud Storage. “Organizations can leverage their NetApp ONTAP on-premises data and hybrid cloud environments. By combining the capabilities of Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform with Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, we’re delivering a powerful solution to help customers accelerate digital transformation and position themselves for long-term success.”

To learn more about Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, visit the NetApp booth #3130 at Google Cloud Next 25, April 9-11 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

Statements by NetApp about unreleased offerings and future plans are for informational purposes only, are subject to change without notice, and should not be relied upon for purchasing or other decisions. Such statements do not constitute a commitment, obligation, guarantee, or warranty of any kind by NetApp, including about availability, functionality, pricing, or timing.

Additional Resources

• Unlock the Next Level with Google Cloud NetApp Volumes
• Google Cloud NetApp Volumes
• NetApp Wins 2025 Google Cloud Infrastructure Modernization Partner of the Year for Storage

About NetApp

NetApp is the intelligent data infrastructure company, combining unified data storage, integrated data, operational and workload services 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 operational and workload services provide continuous optimization of performance and efficiency for infrastructure and workloads 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/20250409633744/en/

Media Contact:

Kenya Hayes

NetApp

kenya.hayes@netapp.com

Investor Contact:

Kris Newton

NetApp

kris.newton@netapp.com

Source: NetApp

FAQ

What are the new storage capacity limits for Google Cloud NetApp Volumes Premium and Extreme service levels?

Single volumes can now scale from 15TiB up to 1PiB with throughput up to 30 GiB/s, supporting petabyte-scale datasets.

How does NTAP's integration with Vertex AI platform benefit customers?

Customers can use data stored in NetApp Volumes directly with Vertex AI to build custom agents for RAG applications without managing separate data pipelines.

What performance improvements does NTAP's Flex service level preview offer?

Flex service level allows independent scaling of capacity and performance, with throughput up to 5 GiB/s and IOPS up to 160K.

What compliance features are coming to NetApp Volumes through Google Cloud Assured Workloads?

The integration will support data residency, transparent access control, and cloud key management solution compliance requirements specific to each region.