NetApp announced the release of the next-generation NetApp EF-Series storage systems, built to power the most performance‑intensive workloads at scale. The introduction of EF50 and EF80 helps enterprises and neoclouds meet the growing demands of AI, high-performance computing (HPC), and transactional databases, including in emerging use cases like sovereign AI clouds and AI-powered manufacturing.
“Data is the key component to delivering business value for enterprises, underpinning performance hungry workloads like AI or databases,” said Sandeep Singh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Storage at NetApp. “As businesses contend with ever-increasing data volumes and performance-intensive applications such as AI model training, AI inferencing and high-performance computing, they need infrastructure that delivers speed, scalability and efficiency without added complexity. NetApp delivers a comprehensive portfolio that addresses every stage of the AI data pipeline from collecting and preparing data to feeding it to GenAI models that produce business insights. With the new EF-Series systems, purpose-built for extreme performance, we’re enabling customers to deploy and scale high-throughput, low-latency workloads quickly and efficiently, while reducing data centre footprint and operational overhead.”
Coupled with high-performance parallel file systems like Lustre or BeeGFS, the new EF50 and EF80 systems accelerate HPC simulations and keep GPUs fully utilised with high-performance scratch space, helping organisations unlock new value and competitive advantage at the right price. Customers ranging from neocloud providers driving AI innovation to movie studios managing massive media libraries will benefit from not only performance and scalability but also robust security measures to safeguard sensitive information and prevent data loss.
The new EF-Series storage systems deliver over 110GBps of read throughput and 55GBps of write throughput, a 250 percent improvement over previous generations. With a power efficiency of 63.7GBps per KW, and 1.5PB of storage in 2U, the new systems ensure reliable, high-performance with efficient rack density and an affordable cost. With EF-Series, organisations can:
- Achieve high performance for data-intensive workloads, scaling capacity without sacrificing efficiency or latency
- Balance budget requirements with high-performance needs to make better decisions faster
- Simplify management and operational complexity with affordable block storage, streamlined deployment and support from NetApp’s technical experts.
“As we navigate the AI era, many enterprises are finding that they need to maximise their raw performance to extract the most value from their data,” said Clayton Vipond, Senior Solution Architect at CDW. “The refreshed NetApp EF-Series delivers the throughput and capacity businesses need to scale high-powered workloads that transform data into insights and outcomes.”
“NetApp’s EF-Series systems give Teradata the storage performance needed to support our most demanding workloads,” said Sumeet Arora, Chief Product Officer, Teradata. “We appreciate that NetApp continues to invest in this technology, and with the enhanced performance of the new models, we look forward to exploring opportunities to reduce infrastructure complexity and support the AI and data modernisation initiatives our customers care about.”
“By delivering a high-performance storage system that supports parallel file systems like Lustre and BeeGFS, NetApp is making its mark as emerging industries, such as neocloud, emerge to support the AI-Era,” said Simon Robinson, Principal Analyst at Omdia. “Our research validates that AI workloads require a level of raw performance unmatched by any mainstream business workload to date. With the new EF-series systems, NetApp is delivering a solution that addresses the performance needs of large-scale AI projects, whether model training or inference.”
The updated EF-Series builds on decades of durability and reliability from NetApp. With more than 1 million installations, it has a proven track record that customers can rely on.
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