New storage systems from Netapp to make you fit for AI

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It has become widely known that AI is only as good as the data provided. This applies not only to data quality, but also to the quantity of data and the organization of data access –, i.e. the form of storage and data management. According to a Gartner study: "Generative AI (GenKI) applications require certain advanced features in the underlying storage infrastructure." The large GenKI solutions in particular would require different performance and data management functions for the data acquisition, training, inference and archiving phases of the GenKI workflow, according to the research note.

However, according to Gartner, those who only carry out fine-tuning or get by with the use of small-language models (SLM) can get by with existing storage platforms such as storage area networks (SAN), network-attached storage (NAS), object storage or hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). However, these usually need to be expanded and should also correspond to the latest performance classes.

NetApp wants to meet new demand

Many storage providers are responding to this with a variety of new high-performance systems, better management and additional features such as security and fast encryption. The latest announcements in this regard come from NetApp. According to the IDC Storage Tracker for the second quarter of 2024, the company is the market leader in Germany in the areas of all-flash NAS (59.3 percent market share), all-flash SAN&NAS (31.9 percent) and all storage types SAN&NAS (27 percent).

The provider is presenting new products in its AFF A and C series. The A-series is designed as an entry and mid-range series, whereas the C-series is aimed at the high-end market. The new AFF A20, A30 and A50 offer a latency of less than one millisecond and around 2.5 times the performance of the previous models. Capacity starts at 15.35 TB (A20) and can be scaled up to one petabyte of physical storage.

The AFF C series brings improvements in the capacity of the flash memory, which is optimized for general workloads. Here they offer workload consolidation in the file, block and object storage environment thanks to maximum density and efficiency as well as high scaling. The AFF C30, C60 and C80 offer a capacity of up to 1.5 PB in two racks. According to Netapp, this can lead to space savings of up to 95 percent and power savings of up to 97 percent, thus reducing the total cost of ownership. Other technical features include PCIe Gen 5, DDR-5 RAM and the latest Intel CPUs.

Improved data infrastructure

Both series are based on the Ontap data infrastructure. This is a scalable platform for data management of business-critical applications and for standard workloads, for example to move data to more cost-effective systems. NetApp refers to Ontap as an "intelligent" infrastructure, as the data management also includes AI components. Part of this is an improved StorageGrid. This affects the density and performance of object storage and its scalability. Ontap offers more flexibility and performance for workloads with smaller objects and mixed media grids through pure metadata nodes or pure data nodes.

NetApp is also expanding the StorageGRID SGF6112 storage system to include support for flash drives with a capacity of 60 TB. This doubles the density in the object environment. In this way, the required rack space is reduced and the costs for power and cooling fall accordingly. Data encryption is also an integral part of Ontap. SMB, Kerberos (NFS) and IPsec are used for transfers from the client to Ontap, while TLS is used for transfers within Ontap.

NetApp is also focusing on optimizing storage costs. The company points out that only 32 percent of all stored data is ever used again, which means that an optimized storage concept can result in many savings. Cost management can be supported with technologies such as fast and efficient data compression. According to NetApp, data reductions of 4:1 can be achieved with the C60 model using Intel's QAT technology and a higher block size of 32 KB.

Fending off ransomware attacks

Modern storage systems are also increasingly taking on classic IT tasks – in the area of security, for example. Here NetApp offers BlueXP, which has now also been improved in some respects. The centerpiece is protection against ransomware attacks. It is based on the fact that the system continuously monitors whether and how data is encrypted. As most ransomware encryptions follow a similar pattern, anomalies can be detected quickly.

Netapp claims that BlueXP can now detect around 99 percent of all attacks. In this context, however, the provider emphasizes that this is the last level of defence and should not be used as a substitute for further measures. A total of six security levels are recommended: Identity, perimeter, network, end devices, applications/data and only then storage security. The in-house lawyers also gave the important advice: "No ransomware detection or recovery system can guarantee complete protection against a ransomware attack."

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