NetApp enters air-gapped Google Distributed Cloud

NetApp has boosted its Google Cloud partnership with a four-year enterprise agreement to accelerate the deployment of NetApp storage within the sovereign Google Distributed Cloud.

Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) is an air-gapped, private cloud offering delivered by World Wide Technology (WWT). GDC was launched in 2021 while air-gapped GDC was announced in 2023. Basically, it's the on-prem version of Google's public cloud. Google started providing its fully managed NetApp Volumes service – ONTAP running in the Google Cloud – in 2023. Now NetApp is supplying AFF, StorageGRID, and Trident, a free, open source, fully supported, CSI-compliant storage orchestrator designed for Kubernetes, to GDC. WWT operates internationally and is a premier Google Cloud partner. It was the first partner approved by Google Cloud to operate GDC Hosted sovereign clouds in the United States as a Managed GDC Provider, announced March 2024.

NetApp president Cesar Cernuda said: "For government agencies and defense organizations, sensitive and classified data can't leave controlled environments, but that data is also critical to AI‑driven decision‑making. … Now, public sector customers can modernize operations, accelerate insight, and innovate responsibly without compromising security, compliance, or national sovereignty."

Google said: "Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) air-gapped appliance is a new configuration of Google Distributed Cloud that brings Google's cloud and AI capabilities to tactical edge environments. The GDC air-gapped appliance uses software-defined storage to create a storage pool with the disks in the compute nodes to offer object and block storage."

GDC is available in appliance and rack configurations, and Google has validated several GDC storage suppliers, including Dell (PowerStore, PowerFlex), Hitachi Vantara, Everpure (Portworx), Ronin.io,  and VMware, as well as NetApp for GDC in general. See a list here. 

We're told Google Cloud has extended its AI capabilities for regulated use cases. Google's Gemini models are available on GDC to unlock generative AI capabilities such as automation, content generation, discovery, and summarization on-premises. Customers can operate fully disconnected, while still integrating Google's AI capabilities, enabling innovation while meeting strict security and compliance requirements. 

This means customers can point Gemini to data stored on NetApp systems (and on systems from other validated suppliers) in GDC datacenters. Find out more about GDC here.