Posted inEmergent Tech

Nutanix announces GPT-in-a-box 2.0 to accelerate enterprise adoption of GenAI

Nutanix’s GPT-in-a-box 2.0 is a full-stack solution purpose-built to simplify Enterprise AI adoption with tight integration with Nutanix Objects and Nutanix Files for model and data storage.

Nutanix, the hybrid multi-cloud computing company, announced Nutanix GPT-in-a-box 2.0, the new functionality of its GPT-in-a-box, at its annual NEXT Conference in Barcelona. It is a full-stack solution purpose-built to simplify Enterprise AI adoption with tight integration with Nutanix Objects and Nutanix Files for model and data storage.

It includes integrations with the Hugging Face Large Language Models (LLMs) library and NVIDIA NIM inference microservices.

It aims to deliver expanded NVIDIA accelerated computing and LLM support, simplified foundational model management, and integrations with NVIDIA NIMs microservices and the Hugging Face LLM library.

GPT-in-a-Box 2.0 will include a unified user interface for foundation model management, API endpoint creation, and end-user access key management. It will also integrate Nutanix Files and Objects and NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs.

“We saw a great response to our original launch of Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box, validating the needs of Enterprise customers for on-premises software solutions that simplify the deployment and management of AI models and inference endpoints,” said Thomas Cornely, SVP of Product Management at Nutanix. “Enterprise is the new frontier for GenAI, and we’re excited to work with our fast-growing ecosystem of partners to make it as simple as possible to run GenAI applications on premises at scale while maintaining control on privacy and cost.”

GPT-in-a-Box 2.0 will bring Nutanix simplicity to the user experience with a built-in graphical user interface, role-based access control, auditability, and dark site support, among other benefits. It will also provide a point-and-click-user interface to deploy and configure NVIDIA NIM, part of the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform for the development and deployment of production-grade AI, to easily deploy and run GenAI workloads in the Enterprise and at the Edge.

Nutanix also partnered with Hugging Face to help accelerate customers’ AI journey by providing integrated access to the Hugging Face library and execution of LLMs for Nutanix customers.

Nutanix and Hugging Face will develop a custom integration with Text Generation Inference, the popular Hugging Face open-source library for the production deployment of large language models, and enable text-generation models available on the Hugging Face Hub within Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box 2.0.

It will deliver a workflow to deploy validated AI LLMs from Hugging Face with full support from Nutanix, significantly expanding the number of supported LLMs. This will create a validated and supported workflow for Hugging Face libraries and LLMs, ensuring customers have a single management point for consistent model inference.

“We’ve partnered with Nutanix as one of our key technology partners to enable our AI ambitions while empowering a future where technology serves humanity,” said Khalid Al Kaf, COO at Yahsat. “We are not just keeping pace with the future; we’re actively shaping it, leveraging Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box, which provides us with simple, end-to-end management capabilities and ability to maintain control over our data.”

Nutanix enhanced its unstructured data platform for AI/ML and other applications with increased performance, density, and TCO. Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) now supports a new 550+ Terabytes dense low-cost all-NVMe platform and up to 10 Gigabyte/second sequential read throughput from a single node (close to line speed for a 100 Gigabit ethernet port), enabling faster data reads and more efficient use of GPU resources.

Nutanix will also support NVIDIA GPUDirect Storage to accelerate AI/ML applications further. Additionally, to protect extremely valuable and often confidential data, such as data sets used to train and process AI/ML workloads, Nutanix Data Lens extends cyber resilience value to Objects in addition to File data. A new Data Lens Frankfurt-based point of presence enables broader adoption in EU customers, meeting their compliance needs.

AI Partner Program

It also announced the Nutanix AI partner programme, which will bring together leading AI solutions and service partners to support customers looking to secure, manage, and run GenAI applications on top of the Nutanix Cloud Platform and GPT-in-a-Box.

Through the new AI Partner Program, the customers will be provided with simplified access to an expanded ecosystem of AI partners to deliver real-world GenAI solutions. Partners will help organizations build, run, manage, and secure third-party and homegrown GenAI applications on top of the Nutanix Cloud Platform and the Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box solution, targeted at prominent AI use cases.

This broad ecosystem of partners will help address diverse use cases, including operations, cybersecurity, fraud detection, and customer support, across verticals such as healthcare, financial services, and legal and professional services. Initial partners include Codeium, DataRobot, DKube, Instabase, Lamini, Neural Magic, Robust Intelligence, RunAI, and UbiOps.

Program benefits to partners include:

  • Nutanix AI Ready validation: All partners will receive Nutanix AI Ready validation to demonstrate interoperability with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, Nutanix AHV hypervisor, and Nutanix Kubernetes Platform.
  • Full-stack solutions: Partners in the program will benefit from individual solution briefs highlighting the benefits of Nutanix and partner solutions. Additionally, select partners will receive a tech note, best practice guide, or reference architecture to simplify implementation with joint customers.
  • Promotional and go-to-market alignment: Partners will benefit from go-to-market and demand-generation activities centred around the AI use case for enterprises. They will be provided access to promotional and go-to-market opportunities, including content creation, blog posts, webinars, podcasts, and other events, to help drive awareness and demand for key use cases.

Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box 2.0 is expected to be available in the second half of 2024. Support for NVIDIA GPU Direct and NX-9151 are currently under development.