NetApp partners with Google Cloud to maximize flexibility in cloud data storage

Data infrastructure company NetApp has expanded its partnership with Google Cloud to make it easier for organizations to use their data for generating artificial intelligence (GenAI) and other hybrid cloud workloads.

NetApp and Google Cloud announced the Flex service level of Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, which supports storage volumes of virtually any size. NetApp also released a preview version of the GenAI toolkit reference architecture for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) operations using the Google Cloud Vertex AI platform.

More flexible data storage options for Google Cloud NetApp volumes

Google Cloud and NetApp announced a new service level for NetApp Volumes called Flex, giving customers more granular control to tune their storage and performance to meet the exact needs of their cloud workloads.

“The growing demand for data-intensive applications and insights requires a new unified approach to data storage that gives organizations the flexibility to move and store data anytime, anywhere,” said Pravjit Tiwana, senior vice president, NetApp general manager of cloud storage. . “By extending our partnership with Google Cloud, we are delivering a flexible form factor that can run on the existing infrastructure of Google Cloud systems without sacrificing enterprise data management capabilities.”

With the addition of Flex, NetApp Volumes customers can choose from four service tiers to take advantage of fully managed archive services built on NetApp ONTAP^{TM value} Operated by Google Cloud, includes:

• standard: Highly available general-purpose storage with advanced data management capabilities and 16MiB/second per TiB performance. It is recommended to support workloads such as file sharing, virtual machines (VMs), and development and test environments.
• High quality: Highly available, high-performance storage with advanced data management capabilities and 64MiB/second per TiB performance, recommended for file sharing, virtual machines, and databases.
• extreme: Highly available, low-latency, high-throughput storage with advanced data management capabilities and 128MiB/second per TiB performance, recommended for online transaction processing (OLTP) high-performance databases and low-latency applications.
• Flexibility: Highly available storage volumes with scalability from 1 GiB to 100TiB and performance up to 1 GiB/s, depending on the size of the underlying storage pool. This adaptable service level can support a variety of use cases, including artificial intelligence.

“Google Cloud NetApp Volumes remains a critical component of every enterprise’s digital transformation strategy,” said Sameet Agarwal, general manager/vice president of Google Cloud Storage at Google Cloud. “Leveraging Google Cloud technology, NetApp Volumes will deliver new capabilities that improve the way businesses operate and create real-world value for their organizations.”

Flex service tiers will be generally available in 15 Google Cloud regions in the second quarter of 2024 and expand to other Google Cloud regions by the end of 2024.

Unlock enterprise profiles in Google Cloud for generative AI

NetApp also released a preview version of the GenAI toolkit supporting NetApp Volumes. The product and accompanying reference architecture accelerate the implementation of RAG operations while enabling secure, consistent and automated workflows to securely connect data stored in NetApp Volumes to the Google Cloud Vertex AI platform. The result is a greater ability to generate unique, high-quality and highly relevant insights and automation.

“As a smart data infrastructure company, we have unparalleled capabilities to support data classification, tagging, mobility and cloning no matter where the data resides so that our customers can operate efficiently and securely,” said Pravjit Tiwana, senior vice president and general manager. AI Data Pipeline. “Building on our partnership with Google Cloud, Simplifying RAG enables customers to leverage market-leading AI services and models, resulting in a unique competitive advantage. “

The NetApp GenAI toolkit helps optimize the RAG process through unique capabilities, including:

• Ubiquitous universal data footprint: NetApp ONTAP makes it easy for customers to include data from any environment, supporting RAG efforts through common operational processes while reducing risk, cost and time to results.
• Automatic classification and tagging: NetApp’s BlueXP classification service automatically labels data to support simplified data cleansing during the ingestion and inference stages of the data pipeline, ensuring that the correct data is used for queries and that sensitive data is not exposed to models outside of policy.
• Fast, scalable snapshots: ONTAP Snapshot creates space-efficient vector stores and in-place copies of databases in near-instantaneous fashion, enabling immediate rollback to a previous version if data is corrupted and forwarding if point-in-time analysis is required.
• Instant cloning at scale: ONTAP FlexClone technology creates instant clones of vector index storage to securely deliver uniquely relevant data to different users’ different queries instantly, without impacting core production data.

“GenAI is a wave of opportunity for companies that can effectively apply data to their industries,” said Miles Ward, chief technology officer of SADA (An Insight Company). “At SADA, we are passionate about combining our deep expertise with NetApp and Vertex AI to help customers accelerate their AI journey. Why engage in uninformative research when you can generate unique, specific, and relevant insights? What about chatting?

The GenAI toolkit will be available as a public preview in the second half of 2024.

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Label: Artificial intelligence, genAI, Google Cloud, NetApp, storage