NetApp ONTAP AI Storage Arrays
AFF A-Series Storage Arrays
ONTAP AI is a reference architecture design from NetApp combining AFF A-series storage arrays, NVIDIA DGX A100 Universal AI appliances and NVIDIA Mellanox Ethernet switches for fast connectivity. These elements have been tested and optimised together ensuring a seamless AI training experience, and offers a host of advantages including the following.
Thoroughly tested
Accelerates time to results
Allows independent scaling of compute and storage
Minimizes deployment risks
Eliminates design complexities
Provides a range of storage options for various performance and cost points
The ONTAP AI Solution
NetApp AFF A-series systems keep data flowing to DL processes with the industry’s fastest and most flexible all-flash storage, featuring the world’s first end-to-end NVMe technologies. The AFF A800 is capable of feeding data to DGX systems up to 4 times faster than competing solutions. The solution comes integrated with Mellanox Spectrum Ethernet switches, which provide the low latency, high density, high performance, and power efficiency demanded by AI environments.
ONTAP AI & DGX A100
At the heart of ONTAP AI is NVIDIA DGX A100, a universal building block for datacentre AI, supporting DL training, inferencing, data science, and other high-performance workloads from a single platform. Each DGX A100 system is powered by eight NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs and integrates the latest high-speed NVIDIA Mellanox interconnects.
The solution comes integrated with Mellanox Spectrum Ethernet switches, which provide the low latency, high density, high performance, and power efficiency demanded by AI environments.
AFF A-Series Storage Arrays
ONTAP AI is a reference architecture design from NetApp combining AFF A-series storage arrays, NVIDIA DGX A100 Universal AI appliances and NVIDIA Mellanox Ethernet switches for fast connectivity. These elements have been tested and optimised together ensuring a seamless AI training experience, and offers a host of advantages including the following.
- A massive throughput of up to 300Gbps and 11.4 million IOPS in a 24-node cluster
- 30TB solid-state drives (SSDs) with multi-stream write (MSW)
- 100Gb Ethernet together with 32Gb FC connectivity
- High density with 2PB in a 2U drive shelf
- Scaling from 364TB (2 nodes) to 74PB (24 nodes)
- ONTAP 9.7, with a complete suite of data protection and replication features
AFF A-Series systems, from entry-level to high- end, support end-to-end NVMe technologies, from NVMe-attached SSDs to front-end NVMe over Fibre Channel (NVMe/FC) host connectivity. These systems deliver the industry’s lowest latency for an enterprise all-flash array, making them a superior choice for driving the most demanding workloads and applications. With a simple software upgrade to the modern NVMe/FC SAN infrastructure, you can drive more workloads with faster response times, without disruption or data migration.
AFF A-SERIES SYSTEMS |
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| Feature | AFF A800 | AFF A700 | AFF A400 | AFF A250 |
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| Best For | Most demanding workloads requiring ultra-low latency | Performance-driven workloads & mission-critical applications requiring high resiliency | Most enterprise applications that require best balance of performance and cost | Mid-size business and small enterprises that require simplicity and best value |
| Maximum Scale Out | 24 nodes | 24 nodes | 24 nodes | 24 nodes |
| Maximum SSDs | 2880 | 5760 | 5760 | 576 |
| Maximum Effective Capacity | 316.3PB | 702.7PB | 702.7PB | 35PB |
| Controller Chassis Form Factor | 4U | 8U | 4U | 2U |