In a step to enable organizations to manage their own cloud data storage better with control and agility, NetApp, a leading data infrastructure company, has announced an extension of its strategic partnership with Google Cloud. The collaboration will bring into play opportunities, which hitherto were open to a select few, for enterprises looking to use their data for various kinds of GenAI and other hybrid cloud applications.
Adjoining the whole essence of this partnership is the incorporation of the Flex service class for the Google Cloud NetApp Volumes. This innovative launch combines the best of cloud services with granular allocation of storage and performance which meets the exigencies of fluctuating requirements of cloud workloads. Pravjit Tiwana, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cloud Storage at NetApp, underscored the significance of this development, stating, “Increasing demand for data-intensive applications and insights has reinforced the need for a new approach to unified data storage that gives organizations the agility to move and store data wherever it is needed at any point in time.”
With the addition of Flex, NetApp Volumes customers now have access to four distinct service levels, each tailored to specific use cases. These include:
- Standard: Highly available, general-purpose storage with advanced data management capabilities for workloads like file shares, virtual machines (VMs), and DevTest environments.
- Premium: High-performance storage optimized for file shares, VMs, and databases.
- Extreme: Low-latency, high-throughput storage ideal for Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) high-performance databases and low-latency applications.
- Flex: Highly scalable storage volumes ranging from one GiB to 100TiB, with performance up to one GiB/s, designed to support a wide variety of use cases, including AI.
Sameet Agarwal, GM/VP, Google Cloud Storage at Google Cloud, highlighted the strategic importance of this collaboration, stating, “Google Cloud NetApp Volumes remains a critical component of every enterprise’s digital transformation strategy. Utilizing Google Cloud technologies, NetApp Volumes will power new capabilities that can improve how businesses operate and create real-world value for their organizations.”
In addition to the Flex service level, NetApp is also releasing a preview of its GenAI toolkit with support for NetApp Volumes. This innovative offering, accompanied by a reference architecture, aims to accelerate the implementation of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) operations. By enabling secure, consistent, and automated workflows that seamlessly connect data stored in NetApp Volumes with the Google Cloud Vertex AI platform, enterprises can unlock their potential to generate unique, high-quality, and ultra-relevant insights and automations.
Tiwana emphasized NetApp’s unique capabilities in supporting data classification, tagging, mobility, and cloning, saying, “As the intelligent data infrastructure company, we have unmatched capabilities to support data classification, tagging, mobility, and cloning for data wherever it lives so our customers can run efficient and secure AI data pipelines.”
The GenAI toolkit boasts several key features that optimize RAG processes, including:
- Common data footprint everywhere: NetApp ONTAP allows customers to easily include data from any environment, reducing risk, cost, and time to results.
- Automated classification and tagging: NetApp’s BlueXP classification service automatically tags data, ensuring that the right data is used for queries and that sensitive data is not exposed out of policy.
- Fast, scalable snapshots: ONTAP Snapshot delivers near-instant creation of space-efficient copies of vector stores and databases, allowing immediate rollback or point-in-time analysis.
- Real-time cloning at scale: ONTAP FlexClone technology can create instant clones of vector index stores, making uniquely relevant data available for different queries without impacting the core production data.
As the demand for data-driven insights and generative AI capabilities continues to soar, the collaboration between NetApp and Google Cloud positions enterprises to harness the full potential of their data. With flexible storage options, optimized AI data pipelines, and advanced data management capabilities, this partnership empowers organizations to navigate the complexities of the modern business landscape with agility and precision.