NetApp Partners with Google Cloud to Maximize Flexibility for Cloud Data Storage

NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP), the intelligent data infrastructure company, today announced an expansion of its partnership with Google Cloud to make it easier for organizations to leverage their data for generative AI (GenAI) and other hybrid cloud workloads. NetApp and Google Cloud are announcing the Flex service level for Google Cloud NetApp Volumes which supports storage volumes of nearly any size. NetApp is also releasing a preview of its GenAI toolkit reference architecture for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) operations using Google Cloud Vertex AI platform.

More Flexible Data Storage Options for Google Cloud NetApp Volumes

Google Cloud and NetApp are announcing a new service level for NetApp Volumes called Flex that gives customers more granular control to adapt their storage and performance to match the exact needs of their cloud workloads.

“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,” said Pravjit Tiwana, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cloud Storage at NetApp. “By extending our collaboration with Google Cloud, we’re delivering a flexible form factor that can be run on existing infrastructure across Google Cloud system without any tradeoffs to enterprise data management capabilities.”

With the addition of Flex, NetApp Volumes customers can choose from four service levels to leverage a fully managed file service built on NetApp ONTAP^TM and operated by Google Cloud, including:

• Standard: highly available, general-purpose storage with advanced data management capabilities and 16MiB/sec per TiB of performance, which is recommended to support workloads such as file shares, virtual machines (VMs), and DevTest environments.
• Premium: highly available, high-performance storage with advanced data management capabilities and 64MiB/sec per TiB of performance, which is recommended for file shares, VMs, and databases.
• Extreme: highly available, low-latency, high-throughput storage with advanced data management capabilities and 128MiB/sec per TiB of performance, which is recommended for Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) high-performance databases and low-latency applications.
• Flex: highly available storage volumes with scalability from one GiB to 100TiB and up to one GiB/s of performance depending on the size of the underlying storage pool. This adaptable service level can support a wide variety of use cases, including AI.

“Google Cloud NetApp Volumes remains a critical component of every enterprise’s digital transformation strategy,” said Sameet Agarwal, GM/VP, Google Cloud Storage at Google Cloud. “Utilizing Google Cloud technologies, NetApp Volumes will power new capabilities that can improve how businesses operate and create real-world value for their organizations.”