This blog post covers NetApp’s new updates and product announcements around AI and Cyber Resiliency that can help you to maximize the potential of AI and protect your data against cyberattacks.
What’s been announced?
AI Updates
⭐️ NetApp AIPod
⭐️ NetApp FlexPod AI
⭐️ Amazon FSx Updates
Ransomware Resiliency Updates
⭐️ Autonomous Ransomware Protection
⭐️ BlueXP Ransomware Protection
⭐️ SnapCenter 5.0 Cyber Resiliency
⭐️ Improved Cyber Resilience in Azure NetApp Files (ANF)
⭐️ Ransomware Recovery Guarantee for Keystone
Other Updates
⭐️ BlueXP Disaster Recovery now GA
⭐️ StorageGRID 11.8 Update
What’s been announced?
AI Updates
⭐️ NetApp AIPod
⭐️ NetApp FlexPod AI
⭐️ Amazon FSx Updates
Ransomware Resiliency Updates
⭐️ Autonomous Ransomware Protection
⭐️ BlueXP Ransomware Protection
⭐️ SnapCenter 5.0 Cyber Resiliency
⭐️ Improved Cyber Resilience in Azure NetApp Files (ANF)
⭐️ Ransomware Recovery Guarantee for Keystone
Other Updates
⭐️ BlueXP Disaster Recovery now GA
⭐️ StorageGRID 11.8 Update
AI Updates
AI is everywhere and is not only transforming industries but also shaping the future of work, the economy, and society at large. The data AI generates is growing exponentially and is becoming more demanding on a robust intelligent data infrastructure. Data can be often spread across many data silos, subject to performance bottlenecks, and constant threats from ransomware and cyber-attacks, making it difficult to adopt AI effectively.
NetApp AIPod - Intelligent Data Infrastructure
Although NetApp doesn’t offer any AI software, they can help you maximize the potential of AI through their NetApp AIPod, an intelligent data infrastructure which allows you to optimize your data pipeline and remove AI infrastructure obstacles, and provide efficient data collection, accelerated AI workloads, and smoother cloud integration.
NetApp AIPod is one of the first converged infrastructure stacks to incorporate NVIDIA DGX H100, the world’s first 5-petaflop AI system, and NVIDIA Mellanox® high-performance Ethernet switches. You get unified AI workloads, simplified deployment, and fast return on investment.
Although NetApp doesn’t offer any AI software, they can help you maximize the potential of AI through their NetApp AIPod, an intelligent data infrastructure which allows you to optimize your data pipeline and remove AI infrastructure obstacles, and provide efficient data collection, accelerated AI workloads, and smoother cloud integration.
NetApp AIPod is one of the first converged infrastructure stacks to incorporate NVIDIA DGX H100, the world’s first 5-petaflop AI system, and NVIDIA Mellanox® high-performance Ethernet switches. You get unified AI workloads, simplified deployment, and fast return on investment.
NetApp AIPod is silo-less, optimized for AI and GenAI, and can deliver agility for a rapidly changing landscape through:
- Optimized data provisioning, efficient data cloning, and optimized hybrid multi-cloud.
- High-performance all-flash storage to accelerate performance and eliminate data and application silos.
- Built-in cybersecurity protection with model traceability and sensitive data detection.
NetApp AIPod is also currently the first primary storage vendor to be certified with NVIDIA’s new OVX platform, providing unparalleled performance and scalability. This will enable you to adopt AI beyond dedicated, large-scale AI training use cases, and use Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to bring enterprise data to LLM models and help build AI use cases like chatbots, knowledge management, object recognition, and various inferencing use cases.
NetApp FlexPod for AI Reference Architectures
NetApp is extending their leading converged infrastructure solution to support several new FlexPod AI architectures. New scaling and benchmarking have been added to support increasingly GPU Intensive Applications. FlexPod for AI supports the NVIDIA AI Enterprise (NVAIE) software platform including support for Red Hat OpenShift and Suse Rancher.
These reference architecture solutions are designed for AI use cases which reduce complexity, leverage Ansible automation to save time and reduce risk, and are a secure by-design, zero-trust solution, making FlexPod AI the gold standard in platform validation for AI uses cases.
NetApp is extending their leading converged infrastructure solution to support several new FlexPod AI architectures. New scaling and benchmarking have been added to support increasingly GPU Intensive Applications. FlexPod for AI supports the NVIDIA AI Enterprise (NVAIE) software platform including support for Red Hat OpenShift and Suse Rancher.
These reference architecture solutions are designed for AI use cases which reduce complexity, leverage Ansible automation to save time and reduce risk, and are a secure by-design, zero-trust solution, making FlexPod AI the gold standard in platform validation for AI uses cases.
Amazon FSx Updates
NetApp has doubled the performance of Amazon FSx for GenAI workloads and is now validated with Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker, making it perfect for processing and analysing large volumes of AI data. This ultimately means faster utilisation of retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to securely blend proprietary data with public models.
Note: Amazon FSx seamlessly scales-out to 12 HAS pairs of file servers with a 1 petabyte-scale namespace.
NetApp has doubled the performance of Amazon FSx for GenAI workloads and is now validated with Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker, making it perfect for processing and analysing large volumes of AI data. This ultimately means faster utilisation of retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to securely blend proprietary data with public models.
Note: Amazon FSx seamlessly scales-out to 12 HAS pairs of file servers with a 1 petabyte-scale namespace.
Cyber Resiliency Updates
Ransomware attacks and other threats by malicious actors are on the increase, and simple endpoint and perimeter protection against hackers and threats are no longer sufficient. A multi-layered data-centric approach, that goes beyond perimeter security, is now required, and using a Zero Trust architecture by creating microperimeters is the best practice to mitigate damage or loss of valuable data.
NetApp has been helping customers to protect against cyberattacks since 2021 with their ML-based autonomous ransomware protection built in to ONTAP for their all-flash and hybrid storage offerings.
NetApp has been helping customers to protect against cyberattacks since 2021 with their ML-based autonomous ransomware protection built in to ONTAP for their all-flash and hybrid storage offerings.
Autonomous Ransomware Protection (Preview)
NetApp's portfolio of intelligent data services continues to grow, leading the industry in ransomware protection. Today, NetApp announced their newest generation of real-time AI-powered ransomware detection.
Embedded into their enterprise storage arrays, autonomous ransomware protection is the first AI-powered ransomware detection for enterprise storage. By using AIOps to deliver greater than 99% precision and recall, NetApp’s autonomous ransomware protection can detect more sophisticated and evolving cyber threats, and when used in a “protect, detect and repair” methodology alongside immutable snapshots, SnapCenter 5.0 (see below), and NetApp's BlueXP ransomware protection data service (see below), you’ll always have the best protection against ransomware.
Note: NetApp aims to release a technology preview of this capability to select customers in the next quarter.
NetApp's portfolio of intelligent data services continues to grow, leading the industry in ransomware protection. Today, NetApp announced their newest generation of real-time AI-powered ransomware detection.
Embedded into their enterprise storage arrays, autonomous ransomware protection is the first AI-powered ransomware detection for enterprise storage. By using AIOps to deliver greater than 99% precision and recall, NetApp’s autonomous ransomware protection can detect more sophisticated and evolving cyber threats, and when used in a “protect, detect and repair” methodology alongside immutable snapshots, SnapCenter 5.0 (see below), and NetApp's BlueXP ransomware protection data service (see below), you’ll always have the best protection against ransomware.
Note: NetApp aims to release a technology preview of this capability to select customers in the next quarter.
BlueXP Ransomware Protection (Preview)
BlueXP ransomware protection is a new optional workload-centric service from NetApp that pulls together all the different ransomware features and consolidates all the alerts across your NetApp estate into a unified control plane. Through intelligent orchestration, BlueXP ransomware protection will recommend and apply protection policies at the storage layer to protect your data from ransomware attacks.
Product Highlights:
BlueXP ransomware protection is a new optional workload-centric service from NetApp that pulls together all the different ransomware features and consolidates all the alerts across your NetApp estate into a unified control plane. Through intelligent orchestration, BlueXP ransomware protection will recommend and apply protection policies at the storage layer to protect your data from ransomware attacks.
Product Highlights:
- Automatically identifies and analyses workloads at risk
- Recommends and applies protection policies
- Uses ML to detect potential attacks in near real-time
- Automatically responds when an attack is suspected
- Validates backup integrity and rapidly recovers workloads
SnapCenter 5.0 Cyber Resiliency
SnapCenter is a simplified backup, restore, and clone management system for disparate applications, databases, and file systems under a single tool. SnapCenter integrates with cloud and 1st party services such as ANF to provide backup, restore, and cloning operations across on-prem, hybrid and public cloud environments.
SnapCenter 5.0 brings several key benefits around app-aware ransomware protection including:
SnapCenter is a simplified backup, restore, and clone management system for disparate applications, databases, and file systems under a single tool. SnapCenter integrates with cloud and 1st party services such as ANF to provide backup, restore, and cloning operations across on-prem, hybrid and public cloud environments.
SnapCenter 5.0 brings several key benefits around app-aware ransomware protection including:
- SnapLock and Snapshot copy locking: ensures snapshots are tamper-proof and can't be deleted or changed by attackers.
- SnapMirror Business Continuity: enable more robust data protection for applications and virtual machines.
- Data protection for apps in the cloud: extend protection into first-party services (AWS, Azure).
- Tag-based protection: accelerate and simplify backup management in complex environments, especially those with many virtual machines.
- Linux files systems: safeguard critical Linux data using the robust capabilities of SnapCenter.
Improved Cyber Resiliency in Azure NetApp Files (ANF)
Cyber security in the public cloud is just as important as securing your on-prem workloads. NetApp have also announced some enhancements to Microsoft Azure NetApp Files.
Cyber security in the public cloud is just as important as securing your on-prem workloads. NetApp have also announced some enhancements to Microsoft Azure NetApp Files.
Ransomware Recovery Guarantee for Keystone
Keystone is NetApp’s single subscription, pay-as-you-grow storage-as-a-service offering for hybrid cloud data service. With Keystone you can now enjoy the same ransomware recovery guarantee that applies to AFF and FAS systems where NetApp will guarantee they will be able to recover your protected NetApp Snapshot copies, and if they can't they will compensate you organisation.
Note: Users must also purchase the Ransomware Recovery Assurance Service to qualify for the guarantee. Terms and conditions apply.
Keystone is NetApp’s single subscription, pay-as-you-grow storage-as-a-service offering for hybrid cloud data service. With Keystone you can now enjoy the same ransomware recovery guarantee that applies to AFF and FAS systems where NetApp will guarantee they will be able to recover your protected NetApp Snapshot copies, and if they can't they will compensate you organisation.
Note: Users must also purchase the Ransomware Recovery Assurance Service to qualify for the guarantee. Terms and conditions apply.
BlueXP Disaster Recovery Now GA
BlueXP disaster recovery is a simple, low-cost disaster protection system for enterprise workloads running on VMware. NetApp first announced BlueXP disaster recovery at Insight 2023. BlueXP disaster recovery is now GA.
BlueXP Features Overview:
BlueXP Features Overview:
- Simplified deployment, protection, and administration
- Lower cost without the need for a full capacity secondary data center
- Less disruption with a consistent VMware environment at recovery target if disaster strikes - same rebooks, same processes
- Higher confidence of successful recovery from failure
- Hager performance with proven SnapMirror technology
StorageGRID Updates
NetApp StorageGRID is a software-defined object storage suite that supports a wide range of use cases across public, private, and hybrid multicloud environments. StorageGRID offers native support for the Amazon S3 API and delivers industry-leading innovations such as automated lifecycle management to store, secure, protect, and preserve unstructured data cost effectively over long periods.
StorageGRID 11.8 - brings enhancements around security, manageability and simplicity to further improve usability, information lifecycle management, and configuration with improved mixed nodes functionality that allows to mix SSD and HDD node in a single site.
StorageGRID 11.8 - brings enhancements around security, manageability and simplicity to further improve usability, information lifecycle management, and configuration with improved mixed nodes functionality that allows to mix SSD and HDD node in a single site.
In Summary
Only NetApp solves the challenges with AI and cyber resiliency through:
- Data management simplicity
- Highest performing data
- Trusted secure data
- NVIDIA-certified, AI turnkey solutions
- Automated ransomware protection and recovery guarantees
- Partnering with the world's largest clouds to enhance customer protection
- Streamlining protection from disaster with lower cost and burden than alternatives
Contact Softcat sales for more information on +44 330 912 1682 available Monday - Friday 9.00 am to 5.00 pm (GMT).
Author
David Brown - Softcat Solutions Architect and member of the NetApp A-Team