NetApp AFF A1K, AFF A90, and AFF A70 Unified Storage Systems Built for AI Era

NetApp, Inc. announced AFF A-Series systems that can power the most demanding IT workloads customers face, including GenAI, VMware, and enterprise databases.

The company also released expanded capabilities across its portfolio to help customers operate more efficiently as they leverage their data to drive innovation.

In the AI era, organizations are feeling pressure to accelerate innovation, unlock new customer experiences, outsmart cyber threats, and gain ever greater productivity. Many organizations see AI as a critical tool to help them achieve those goals. According to the 2024 NetApp Cloud Complexity report, organizations realize that achieving business success with AI hinges on two critical factors, data (74%) and IT infrastructure (71%). With today’s announcements, the company is helping organizations excel at both factors and drive competitive success by offering innovative intelligent data infrastructure that empowers customers to unlock the value of their data with AI.

The new AFF A-Series systems continue the firm’s leadership in unified data storage for the next-gen of workloads. Leveraging the same technology relied upon by the top 3 public clouds, the AFF A-Series eliminates storage silos and storage complexity, providing powerful, intelligent, and secure storage to accelerate and optimize every workload. This includes integrated capabilities to optimize VMware storage costs today and provide unmatched flexibility for the future.

“Data is undeniably the most valuable asset for any company to outpace its competitors. Whether it’s mission critical applications or leveraging enterprise data to fuel AI, the data infrastructure a company chooses to run it on makes all the difference,” said Sandeep Singh, SVP and GM, enterprise storage. “NetApp’s extensive, unified data storage portfolio, from on-premises to the public clouds, makes it the go-to solution for enterprises looking to have the robustness for the most demanding workloads. The introduction of the new AFF A-Series Systems is a testament to our unwavering commitment to delivering the most powerful, intelligent, and secure enterprise storage in the industry.”

AFF A-Series systems to accelerate business technology operations

(1) Up to 40 million IO/s and up to 1TB/s throughput in a single cluster
(2) Check out our certifications
(3) Terms and conditions will apply. 
(4) Effective capacity based on 5:1 storage efficiency ratios with the maximum number of SSDs installed; space savings vary depending on workload and use cases.
(5) Estimate under typical customer condition – awaiting field data for the new product.

With the introduction of AFF A-Series all-flash storage systems, the company is continuing its commitment to innovation with unified storage systems designed for any data, any app, and any cloud. The AFF A-Series storage systems power the most demanding workloads – from existing mission-critical apps to GenAI workloads that will drive success into the future.

These systems are AFF A1K, AFF A90, and AFF A70, which can turbo-charge enterprise workloads by delivering:

Up to 2x better performance with unmatched 40 million IO/s, 1TB/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

The firm‘s unified storage supports block, file and object storage protocols and natively integrates with the 3 largest public cloud providers, allowing customers to consolidate workloads, lower cost of data, and operate without silos. Powered by ONTAP, these systems deliver the simplicity and reliability 10,000s of organizations have come to expect from NetApp.

“As we’ve ramped up our investments in AI projects to help accelerate our business, we needed to grow our data infrastructure to deliver ever greater performance for those workloads,” Christian Klie, tribe cluster lead, T-Systems. “We rely on intelligent data infrastructure delivered by NetApp to power our most critical workloads, and the increased power of the new AFF A-Series systems, paired with their integrated anti-ransomware features and hybrid cloud capabilities, will help position us for success now and in the future.”

“AI is creating the biggest business transformation opportunity we’ve seen in decades, allowing enterprises to unlock new sources of value from their data,” said Justin Hotard, EVP and GM, data center and AI group, Intel Corp. “NetApp AFF A-Series systems utilizing Intel Xeon processors provide the performance and features to help businesses accelerate their enterprise AI adoption.”

Providing powerful, intelligent and secure enterprise data infrastructure
To continue its innovation as the intelligent data infrastructure company, the company released additional capabilities to provide customers with the advanced data management, ransomware protection, and cloud integration that modern workloads like GenAI demand.

Features and capabilities in NetApp’s data management and integrated services include:

New StorageGRID models: The firm has introduced 6 new StorageGRID models that enhance the value of large, unstructured data while reducing total cost of ownership. StorageGRID can 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 competitive price/GB, up to a 3x performance increase, 80% footprint reduction, and power consumption savings as high as 70%.
Cyber Vault reference architecture: The company announced a new cyber vault reference architecture that extends the firm’s 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 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 RW data, granting local teams greater control while maintaining data consistency with the core data center.
NetApp AIPod with Lenovo: NetApp and Lenovo are collaborating on a new converged infrastructure solution designed for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and inferencing use cases for GenAI, with Lenovo ThinkSystem servers utilizing 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, categorize, 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 AIOs 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.

“AI is a massive opportunity for companies to leverage their data in new ways to unlock competitive advantages,” Ashish Nadkarni, group VP and GM, infrastructure systems, platforms and technologies and BuyerView Research, IDC. “However, as the AI market develops, how organizations approach AI may change. They need storage infrastructure that gives them the flexibility to combine their on-premises data storage with cloud environments. NetApp’s strategy of delivering powerful unified data storage that works with any data protocol, in any environment, to run any workload gives its customers the power and flexibility they need to face whatever challenges come their way.”

Resources:
NetApp AFF A-Series: High-Performing Unified Storage
Unified Data Storage for the AI Era
Embrace the AI Era with the New NetApp AFF A-Series Storage Systems
The Leader in Object Storage Just Keeps Getting Better with New StorageGRID Systems and Capacity Flash
ONTAP: Data Management Software for a Better Hybrid Cloud Experience
StorageGRID: Smart, Fast, Future-Proof Object Storage