NetApp AFF A-Series – Defining Storage in AI Era 

New cutting-edge AFF A-Series systems from NetApp are capable of handling the most taxing IT workloads that clients encounter, such as corporate databases, VMware, and GenAI. Additionally, NetApp has announced new capabilities throughout its portfolio to support clients in operating more effectively while utilizing data to spur innovation.

2024 NetApp Cloud Complexity Study

Organizations are under pressure to boost innovation, open up new consumer experiences, defeat cyberattacks, and increase efficiency in the AI era. AI is seen by many organizations as a vital tool for assisting them in reaching their objectives. The 2024 NetApp Cloud Complexity study states that businesses understand that data (74%) and IT infrastructure (71%) are the two most important components for using AI to achieve corporate success. With today’s announcements, NetApp is enabling businesses to succeed in both areas and gain a competitive edge by providing cutting-edge intelligent data infrastructure that enables clients to use AI to unlock the value of their data.

NetApp’s is a prominent player in unified data storage for the upcoming generation of workloads is maintained by the new AFF A-Series systems from NetApp. The NetApp AFF A-Series removes storage silos and complexity by utilizing the same technology as the top three public clouds. This results in powerful, intelligent, and secure storage that speeds up and optimizes every task. This includes integrated features that offer unparalleled flexibility in the future and optimize VMware storage expenses now.

“In today’s AI-driven landscape, data is the fuel that powers innovation. To meet the growing demands of our customers and enable them to unlock the full potential of their data in this AI era, unified storage solutions are the need of the hour”, says Puneet Gupta, Vice President and Managing Director, NetApp India/SAARC. “The new NetApp AFF A-Series brings innovation to data storage and is designed to work across environments- be it on prem or in the cloud. With the new NetApp AFF A-Series, we are committed to pioneering advancements in storage technologies and continue to build on our legacy within this space.”

New AFF A-Series Systems to Accelerate Business Technology Operations

NetApp is demonstrating its continued dedication to innovation by releasing the more potent AFF A-Series all-flash storage systems, which are unified data storage solutions made for any data, any app, and any cloud. The most demanding workloads, from mission-critical apps that are already in use to GenAI workloads that will propel success into the future, can be effortlessly powered by the new AFF A-Series storage systems.

The NetApp AFF A1K, AFF A90, and AFF A70 are these new systems, and they may significantly increase enterprise workloads by providing:

• Up to 2x better performance with unmatched 40 million IOPs, 1 TB/s throughput
• Proven 99.9999% data availability
• Leading raw-to-effective capacity, including always-on data reduction and 4:1 Storage Efficiency Guarantee
• Integrated real-time ransomware detection designed for 99%+ accuracy and Ransomware Recovery Guarantee

With native integrations to the three main public cloud providers, NetApp’s unified data storage provides block, file, and object storage protocols, enabling users to reduce data costs, streamline workloads, and do business without silos. These solutions, which are powered by NetApp ONTAP, provide the ease of use and dependability that tens of thousands of businesses have come to expect from NetApp.

Providing Powerful, Intelligent and Secure Enterprise Data Infrastructure

In order to meet the demands of modern workloads like GenAI, NetApp, the intelligent data infrastructure business, has developed new features that enable users to have superior data management, industry-leading ransomware protection, and cloud integration.

The data management and integrated services offered by NetApp now have the following additional features and capabilities:

• New StorageGRID Models: NetApp has introduced six new StorageGRID models that enhance the value of large, unstructured data while reducing total cost of ownership. StorageGRID can now leverage capacity flash to provide fast object access times at the lowest cost. Customers can experience a new level of flexibility, choice, performance, and sustainability for critical object workloads with new models that offer a very competitive price per GB, up to a 3X performance increase, 80 percent footprint reduction, and power consumption savings as high as 70 percent.
• Cyber Vault Reference Architecture: NetApp announced a new cyber vault reference architecture that extends the company’s industry-leading data protection capabilities. Combining the latest advances in secure data storage, autonomous real-time ransomware detection, and rapid data restoration, NetApp’s secure and resilient cyber vault delivers “logically air-gapped” storage based on proven NetApp ONTAP technology, for unparalleled protection of customer data against advanced cyber-threats.
• SnapMirror Active Sync: The latest version of ONTAP includes SnapMirror active sync which creates a symmetric active-active business continuity solution across two data centers. Coupled with VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) and enterprise databases from Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft, SnapMirror active sync enables ongoing business operations with no disruption during a data center outage.
• FlexCache with Writeback:The updated version of ONTAP also includes FlexCache with Writeback which creates local copies of data for distributed teams, resulting in reduced latency and uninterrupted access while reducing administrative overhead. The local copies can read and write data, granting local teams greater control while maintaining data consistency with the core data center.
• NetApp AIPod with Lenovo: NetApp and Lenovo are collaboratingon a new converged infrastructure solution designed for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and inferencing use cases for GenAI, with Lenovo high-performance ThinkSystem servers utilisng NVIDIA L40S GPUs, NVIDIA Spectrum-X networking, and NetApp AFF storage, all validated with the NVIDIA OVX architecture specification.
• BlueXP Classification: This AI/ML-driven service is now available as a BlueXP core capability at no additional charge, giving users immediate access to the ability to automatically classify, categorise, and tag data across the entire data estate to deepen data intelligence, enhancing efforts in governance, security, and compliance while enabling strategic workloads such as GenAI. With BlueXP classification, customers can now fuel GenAI and RAG innovation through the AIOps ability to securely and programmatically augment pre-trained models with auto-classified, proprietary data on demand for enhanced relevancy without sacrificing cost or data security.