How to Streamline the Path to an AI Infrastructure

NetApp and NVIDIA help business avoid potential pitfalls when adopting AI.
by Chris Kawalek

Organizations are looking to AI to improve processes, reduce costs and achieve better results. However, AI workloads pose a different set of challenges than business workloads supported by corporate IT.

If businesses don’t pay attention to the unique requirements of AI infrastructure, they can be faced with increased deployment time, higher costs and delayed insights.

NetApp and NVIDIA are helping organizations avoid these pitfalls with a new suite of solutions that make accessing and acquiring AI-ready infrastructure easier than ever – the ONTAP AI-Ready Data Center.

Significant portions of AI budgets are allocated to solving two problems: designing a well-functioning system and outfitting a data center to house it. Because of this, investment in AI infrastructure can be daunting.

The key to deploying faster and at lower costs is to simply eliminate these factors.

NetApp ONTAP AI is fully optimized and tested infrastructure for AI workloads. It’s powered by the revolutionary NVIDIA DGX-1 and DGX-2 AI systems paired with NetApp cloud-connected all-flash storage. With ONTAP AI, users get a complete AI infrastructure that is highly performant and ready-to-run.

Optimized Infrastructure Without the Overhead 

With the ONTAP AI-Ready Data Center from our network of world-class colocation services partners, every organization can get access to AI-ready infrastructure without the overhead of designing a system from off-the-shelf components.

As a full-stack solution composed of data center hardware and software from NVIDIA and NetApp, ONTAP AI-Ready Data Center is optimized and ready to use, providing results that are predictable and scalable without tying up valuable IT and AI resources in design and implementation.

The offering gives users flexibility in how they consume AI infrastructure and resources. They can choose to deploy ONTAP AI with colocation partners in two ways:

  • ONTAP AI-Ready Data Center — Customer-owned infrastructure deployed in state-of-the art colocation facilities that eliminates the burden of creating and maintaining an AI-ready data center.
  • ONTAP AI Test Drive — Try out ONTAP AI from select providers without the overhead of shipping or installation. Run benchmarks, test with public datasets or run your own workloads before purchasing.

Colocated AI infrastructure offers a cost-effective financial model. Users can deploy faster, quicken the pace of insights and increase return on investment without funding large-scale capital investments for their own data centers.

For organizations that already house their business infrastructure at colocation facilities, bringing the AI infrastructure to where the data resides improves performance and reduces wasted time and costs migrating data between sites.

The recently announced ONTAP AI offering from Flexential is a prime example of this powerful new approach to deploying AI infrastructure.

Cost-Effective, Optimized and Supported

Going forward, leading any industry will require AI leadership. To achieve this, organizations must have a solid plan for AI infrastructure and avoid getting mired in DIY solutions that are difficult to manage, even harder to support and aren’t optimized between components or across the data center.

ONTAP AI-Ready Data Center solves AI infrastructure problems fully and cost-effectively today. It allows organizations to provide infrastructure that is purpose-built for AI and to break the barriers of enterprise IT. Expect to see additional offerings to further the vision of “AI infrastructure as a service,” making consumption even easier.

If you’re attending NetApp Insight in Las Vegas this week, stop by and chat with the NVIDIA team at booth 706 and learn more about accelerated computing with NVIDIA DGX systems and NetApp ONTAP AI. You can read about the full NVIDIA presence at the show in this blog.

To learn more about ONTAP AI Test Drive, contact us.