StorageReview's roundup of the fastest storage arrays of 2026 focuses on AI storage leaders and audited benchmark results (SPC/MLPerf-style audited numbers), with NetApp's all-flash ONTAP platforms (AFF/AFX + AI Data Engine) featured among the top performers for AI training/inference throughput. Reinforces NetApp's position against VAST, Pure, and DDN in the audited-performance arms race for AI data platforms.
Source: Stock Titan (via Google News) — https://news.google.com/rss/search?q=Cisco+AI+racks+trillion-parameter
Cisco announced it will offer integrated AI racks aimed at trillion-parameter model training, deepening its push into full-stack AI infrastructure. Notable for NetApp watchers: Cisco is NetApp's FlexPod AI and ONTAP AI partner, so Cisco's rack-scale AI ambitions cut both ways — expanding the joint go-to-market while raising the possibility of Cisco favoring in-house storage alternatives at the very top end of the training market.
AiThority coverage of NetApp's VCF 9.1 announcement (Sept 3, 2026). NetApp's first-party cloud storage services (FSx for NetApp ONTAP, Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, Azure NetApp Files) are positioned as the only external enterprise storage certified across the major hyperscalers for VMware Cloud Foundation environments — so VCF customers can run VMware workloads in the cloud without refactoring via VCF license portability. Quoted: Alvaro Celis, Chief Partner and Ecosystem Officer at NetApp: "NetApp continues to innovate to ensure VCF customers can operate consistently and without disruption across cloud environments. Together with Broadcom, we are giving organizations the autonomy to optimize, protect, and scale their virtualized environments across any cloud on their own terms." VCF 9.1 highlights cited: density gains for VMs and containerized AI workloads, automated resource management, integration with ONTAP for cost-effective enterprise-grade storage. Why it matters: this is NetApp's play to remain the default external data plane for VMware estates during the Broadcom-era VCF transition — both for traditional VMs and for AI/containerized workloads running in VCF.
Nutanix closed fiscal 2026 (ended July 31, 2026) with Q4 revenue of $757.1M, up 7.7% sequentially and 16% YoY, approaching ~$3B in annual revenue, with FY26 ARR up 16% and CFO Rukmini Sivaraman highlighting "good balance of top and bottom line performance" plus strong free cash flow. Operating margin nearly doubled to 9.2% (per Pulse 2.0's coverage). Competitive read for NetApp: the HCI/AI-bundle rival enters NetApp's fiscal Q1 FY2027 earnings window with double-digit growth and improving profitability, keeping pricing and AI-infrastructure pressure on NetApp's AFX/AIPod motions — NetApp's counter remains owning the data layer (ONTAP, AI Data Engine, StorageGRID) beneath the compute stack.
Source: NetApp Community (DianePatton) · **Date:** 2026-08-26 · **Category:** product
NetApp Trident 26.06.1 is available in Preview for Google Cloud NetApp Volumes (GCNV) ONTAP-mode, letting Kubernetes admins provision and manage GCNV-backed persistent volumes through the standard CSI workflow. This closes a gap versus AWS FSx for ONTAP / Azure NetApp Files Astra-style integrations — worth tracking for GKE teams that need ONTAP-class snapshots, QoS, or NAS features behind native cloud volumes.
Blocks & Files analyzes the new Forrester Wave for object storage, which evaluated a limited field of vendors and excluded Cloudian, MinIO, and others. NetApp's StorageGRID is discussed among the established object storage platforms as enterprise buyers consolidate around hyperscaler-adjacent offerings.
Blocks & Files details NetApp federating multiple performance-tuned StorageGRID systems into one global namespace for greater scale — letting organizations grow object storage capacity and throughput across sites while presenting a single S3 endpoint. Relevant for FabricPool tiering and large AI data lakes built on object storage.
NetApp distinguishes classic ASA from ASA r2: classic ASA is a SAN-only AFF-derived system with symmetric active-active multipathing, while ASA r2 (beginning with the A1K/A70/A90 generation and expanded since) presents a simplified storage-unit-oriented ONTAP experience. That distinction affects provisioning concepts, supported commands, REST endpoints, and which documentation applies.
Nutanix and NetApp Announce Integration to Align ONTAP with Nutanix Cloud Platform
Source: StorageReview.com
NetApp and Nutanix announced a strategic integration aligning ONTAP with the Nutanix Cloud Platform, enabling VM migration between platforms in minutes rather than days and letting Nutanix clusters consume ONTAP-backed storage. The alliance targets hybrid IT modernization and cyber-resilient infrastructure joint customers.
Source: SDxCentral via Google News — https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMivwFBVV95cUxPRkZNX0xkRHBjX3RLSFpmNnQxMm5TTEtxLWdfNGcyMGZwempHMkRHalNsWi1kd2gtQXQ2VVRRNUp6cWU5ZGMtcW51RjlydUlLMUp1MzNGcFc5UmFzUGk3V0NMbU56X0tfWHMwYmdhYTBuNkxXUF9mSDRCODFWWW1uVWZfeDNkMndMdVFHbmJuaE96b0V4aXBhZ0dTbm5sZGhxX0JVWkRRcGJTcXBvdlA1QVI2RU9wSW1MdlE5b2NRaw?oc=5
SDxCentral's coverage of NetApp's next-generation EF-Series flash arrays alongside the AI data platform push (AI Data Engine / AFX era) — positioning both HPC-oriented EF bandwidth and ONTAP-based data activation as answers to enterprise AI data bottlenecks.
Source: SDxCentral (via Google News) — https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMivwFBVV95cUxPRkZNX0xkRHBjX3RLSFpmNnQxMm5TTEtxLWdfN?oc=5
SDxCentral covered NetApp's launch of next-generation EF-Series all-flash arrays alongside its AI data platform push (AI Data Engine), positioning the pair as a fix for enterprise AI data bottlenecks — high-performance SAN storage for training/inference plus a data orchestration layer above it.
