Bring AI to your data, not the other way around

For AI and data governance stakeholders in Azure-first organizations, the Cloud Volumes ONTAP and Microsoft OneLake integration public preview enables hybrid cloud data management by accelerating AI-driven insights through S3 access to existing NAS data without the need for replication, enabling enterprises to unlock the full value of their data across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Available now in Azure, this eliminates costly data transfers and duplication while allowing enterprises to leverage Azure’s advanced AI, analytics, and machine learning services.

While enterprises are currently investing heavily in AI and analytics, many struggle to unlock value from critical data due to data accessibility issues.

While Microsoft Fabric promises a unified foundation for analytics and AI, 80 to 90% of enterprise data is unstructured, and the majority of it still lives in NFS and SMB file systems. This typically includes customer records, contracts, research data, engineering files, and policies stored on NAS platforms. Traditionally, making this data available to Microsoft OneLake has required costly, time‑consuming migration to object storage, introducing duplication, data governance risk, and operational disruption.

A better approach now exists. With NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and Microsoft OneLake, enterprises can make existing file data available to OneLake in place without re‑architecting storage or moving petabytes of data.

With this launch, customers can accelerate AI and analytics while keeping their data exactly where it is without adding complexity or cost.

Lower cost, no migration tax: Run AI, analytics, and machine learning on existing NAS datasets using S3, eliminating costly replication and delays.

Faster Time to Value: Connect enterprise file data to Microsoft Fabric in minutes, not months, eliminating long migration projects and accelerating analytics and AI initiatives.

Consistent data management across hybrid and multi‑cloud: Use ONTAP and Cloud Volumes ONTAP to manage data across on‑premises and cloud environments with consistent security, governance, and control.

Faster performance with FlexCache: Reduce latency by caching frequently accessed data closer to compute resources, accelerating AI training, analytics, and testing workloads.

Built‑in enterprise protection and governance: Protect data with ONTAP capabilities like Snapshot copies, SnapMirror replication, and encryption for resilient recovery and compliance‑ready governance.

Lower TCO with storage efficiency: Reduce costs through deduplication, compression, thin provisioning, and tiering cold data to object storage for efficient backup and disaster recovery.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP purchased through Azure Marketplace also contributes toward Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitments (MACC), aligning technical value with commercial benefits.

This integration is ideal for data engineering leads, ML engineers, and data scientists, and security, governance, and compliance leaders in Azure‑first enterprises using Cloud Volumes ONTAP. Target industries include financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing organizations where strong data governance and residency requirements are essential.

These capabilities come together to enable a broad range of high-value, AI-driven data and search scenarios across Cloud Volumes ONTAP and Microsoft OneLake:

• Enterprise document retrieval over governed content: Use OneLake S3-compatible shortcuts to reference Cloud Volumes ONTAP (ONTAP S3) data in place (no copies) and make them searchable with Azure AI Search for Copilot/RAG.
• AI-powered enterprise search on existing Cloud Volumes ONTAP data: Enable Azure AI Search to index and retrieve insights from files already in Cloud Volumes ONTAP – no migration or restructuring required.
• Zero-copy data federation across clouds and business units: Unify data from Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other S3‑ or ADLS‑compatible sources in a single lakehouse, using OneLake shortcuts to analyze and search files without replication.
• Secure, read-only knowledge hubs for field and ops teams: Distribute curated, operational content through read-only S3/S3-compatible shortcuts and workspace permissions, then add AI Search for fast retrieval; indexes are kept current via schedules.
• Fast AI pilots that seamlessly scale to production: Accelerate value creation with rapid proofs of concept on existing data and scale into production without re-architecture or data movement.

This integration combines ONTAP and Microsoft Fabric capabilities to connect enterprise file data to AI and analytics without migration, duplication, or excessive cost.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP continues to store and manage NFS and SMB file data, while Microsoft OneLake provides a unified access layer for analytics and AI.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP is one of the only OneLake integrations that delivers native enterprise storage efficiencies, such as deduplication, compression, compaction, thin provisioning and tiering at the storage layer.

Cloud Volumes ONTAP and OneLake provides a modern, governed, and cost‑effective path to connect existing enterprise data to the analytics and AI platforms driving the future. Your data is already valuable, and this integration makes that value easier to access.

To learn more