Embrace the AI era with the new NetApp AFF A-Series storage systems

Within the enterprise, data storage demands have not just evolved in recent years, they’ve expanded dramatically. Rising costs and sophisticated security threats are matched by growing IT complexity, highlighting the need for efficiency and productivity, and raising urgent sustainability concerns.

However, the emergence of AI and GenAI technologies presents a unique opportunity for business and IT leaders, offering powerful avenues to streamline operations and speed up innovation.

NetApp, with its three-decade record of innovative leadership in enterprise storage, continues to invest in intelligent data infrastructure that solves customers’ challenges. Recent innovations include the NetApp^® AFF C-Series storage systems, which offer all-flash speed at the cost of hybrid storage, and the ASA A- and C-Series systems, which provide block-optimized storage with unmatched savings and sustainability. Additionally, there has been a significant advancement in data management software with the introduction of the next-generation built-in Autonomous Ransomware Protection, capable of near-real-time detection of cyberattacks. And we were just getting started. 

Today, we announced new NetApp AFF A-Series systems: all-flash, unified data storage that eliminates complexity by using advanced data management while powering all your most demanding workloads like AI, VMware, databases, media & entertainment, and more with significant performance and throughput increases, improved efficiency, and minimized maintenance and downtime.

By powering new and demanding AI and GenAI workloads while accelerating existing mission-critical apps, our new AFF A70, A90, and A1K storage systems give you a data foundation for enterprise AI. That means you can build your AI-ready ecosystem alongside everything you’re running today.

These all-flash, high-performance systems are designed for next-generation workloads with different needs:

• The AFF A70 is our integrated midrange platform, optimized to strike the perfect balance between price and performance.
• The AFF A90 is our integrated high-end platform, ideal for mission-critical workloads.
• The AFF A1K is our highest-end modular platform, designed to handle the most demanding workloads.

The new AFF A-Series offers up to 2X better performance over the previous generation. The systems are packed with innovations, but they deliver the same NetApp simplicity and reliability trusted for years by tens of thousands of organizations of every size, in every industry, around the globe.

It’s been exciting for me to talk about our new systems with customers and to share some of their key advantages and innovations. Let’s look at some of those benefits.

• AFF A-Series systems are super powerful and capable of massive scale. With up to 40M IOPs and up to 1TB/s throughput in a cluster, and proven six-nines data availability, they have more than enough performance and resilience for all your critical workloads.
• These systems come with faster front-end 200Gb Ethernet and 64Gb Fibre Channel (FC) networking connectivity for rapid data access and improved system performance.
• The increased bandwidth provided by PCIe 5.0 and the DDR5 memory significantly improves the speed at which data can be read from and written to storage devices and network, delivering faster data transfer rates.

With the new AFF A70, A90, and A1K systems, you’ll never need to choose between performance and efficiency. Improved data reduction with inline compression and deduplication is always on, with no performance impact, thanks to Intel Quick Assist Technology (Intel QAT) integrated in Intel’s 4th Generation Xeon processors, which accelerates both compression and decompression processes. This enables exceptional storage efficiency while delivering the consistent high performance needed for mission-critical workloads. In testing, we’ve measured database applications running 44% faster, while increasing storage efficiency by 71%.

The new AFF A-Series systems are engineered to be hyperefficient. They reduce data center space, power, and cooling through dense storage and the use of the latest titanium power supplies. This maximizes energy efficiency, leading to substantial savings. And all of the new systems will be shipped in ecofriendly packaging—good news for both the IT budget and the environment.

With intelligence built into the AFF A-Series and leveraging a single storage operating system (ONTAP), you can easily manage, protect, and mobilize data across your hybrid cloud at the lowest cost. In fact, you can accelerate your entire enterprise with AIOps-based automation, intuitive multicloud control, the industry’s richest data services suite, and deep integrations with NVIDIA and the entire MLOps ecosystem.

Finally, at NetApp, the industry’s most secure storage is getting even stronger. To help customers protect, detect in real time, and rapidly recover from ransomware attacks, NetApp AFF A-Series systems deliver multilayered protection, real-time detection with 99%+ accuracy, a recovery guarantee, and a cyber vault with immutable backups.

In addition, the new systems are ready to offer the encryption offload capability for IPsec or TLS 1.3. This feature will be enabled automatically in upcoming ONTAP software releases to provide robust end-to-end data encryption with no performance impact.

Master the challenge of enterprise AI with unified data storage built for the AI era. Drive any workload—including VMware, database, and AI—across hybrid cloud while simplifying data storage at scale with a single data management experience. No more silos, no more storage complexity—just powerful, intelligent, secure storage to accelerate your business.

The new AFF A-Series systems start shipping at the end of June and will be available through traditional capex or as a service with NetApp Keystone^®, enabling organizations to align IT expenditure to specific business needs.

Learn more about the new AFF A-Series systems.