Unitrends and Nutanix Implementation Guide and Architecture Overview
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SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CA - NOVEMBER 30: A UPS worker sorts packages to be loaded onto a delivery ... [+]
Getty ImagesBox culture dominates life. Humans are comfortable with boxed-up products, services and things if they can be compartmentalized and created or delivered in a form that offers a clearly defined shape. We buy shoes in box, we often buy fruit in a box and we life to talk about so-called Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products and services that may not always come in a physical box, but are nonetheless defined as a boxed-up offering.
We’ve even taken to living, working, shopping and eating in boxes - just look at the rise of ISO intermodal freight containers in the creation of what are now being called ‘containerpark’ sites everywhere from Las Vegas to London.
This process happens in technology too. We’ve seen COTS software suites offered many times over the years, particularly if we think back to pre-web CD-ROM era throughout the 1980s and 1990s. When we bought Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite or Norton Anti-Virus (other software packages are/were also available), we bought them in a box.
Part-baked & oven-ready
Not to be confused with the commoditization of software - the point at which any given IT service becomes indistinguishable from others over and above its price - the compartmentalization of software and IT services into a boxed format today is often meant to express its pre-engineered, pre-architected and pre-provisioned (possibly part-baked oven-ready) status, all of which is meant to make it easier to deploy.
With so much discussion surrounding the use of generative Artificial Intelligence (gen-AI) and the use of ChatGPT-derived (the GPT part denoting Generative Pre-trained Transformer, a type of AI that gets its intelligence from Large Language Models of human words) intelligence, it is perhaps no surprise to see this technology being compartmentalized in line with the wider trend proposed here so far. Among the firms now looking to bring this efficiency to market is hybrid multi-cloud platform company Nutanix.
By bringing forward what it calls Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box, the company says it has created a technology for organizations who want to jump-start their work with AI and Machine Learning (ML), but still retain full control over their data. This is a software-defined AI-ready platform, along with services to help organizations size and configure hardware and software infrastructure suitable to deploy a curated set of Large Language Models (LLMs) using the open source AI and MLOps frameworks on the Nutanix Cloud Platform.
In simple terms, it is built to enable organizations to purchase, position, prepare and push forward AI-ready infrastructure to fine-tune and run generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs), including LLMs. In other words, this is boxed-up cloud foundations for new-age AI.
An ‘opinionated’ AI-ready stack
“Helping customers tackle the biggest challenges they face in IT is at the core of what we do, from managing increasing multi-cloud complexity, to data protection challenges, and now adoption of generative AI solutions while keeping control over data privacy and compliance,” said Thomas Cornely, SVP of product management at Nutanix. “Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box is an opinionated AI-ready stack [i.e. one that is prealigned, provisioned and prepared] that aims to solve the key challenges with generative AI adoption and help jumpstart AI innovation.”
Cornely and team point to the reality of AI implementation in real world businesses. He suggests that many firms find it tough to know how to quickly, efficiently and securely take advantage of generative AI and AI/ML applications. This challenge is logically made even tougher when there is a question of data sovereignty and governance in the implementation.
“New use cases emerge every day as organisations look to leverage generative AI to Improve customer service, developer productivity, operational efficiency and more. From the automated transcription of internal documents, to high-speed search of multimedia content and automated analysis, many organizations see the opportunity with AI but are struggling with growing concerns regarding intellectual property leakage, compliance and privacy concerns,” details Nutanix, in a technical product statement.
ML administrators are real people
If we accept the technology proposition being put forward here by Nutanix (i.e. that the GPT end of generative AI is rarely a point-and-click plug-and-play solution and that a degree of ‘boxing’ as evidenced here can make adoption of this technology more manageable), then we can perhaps see how tough it is to deploy complex new AI & ML systems in real world environments. Not least of the challenges on the road to building an AI-ready stack is the need to support ML administrators and data scientists in the workplace. In some firms, this core human factor may be the reason why the prospect of large AI investment costs has enterprises stalled a company’s AI and ML strategy.
The Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box offering is ready-to-use customer-controlled AI infrastructure for the Internet of Things (IoT) edge, or the core datacenter. It allows our poor ML administrators and data scientists to run and fine-tune AI and GPT models with a full complement of security and data protection offerings ideal for AI data protection
According to the company, the Nutanix GPT-In-a-Box solution builds on the full stack scalability, performance, resilience and ease of use that the Nutanix Cloud Platform is known for. The team behind this new technology package claim to have expertize with scalable infrastructure across public cloud, datacenter and edge use cases. All of which combined efforts are said to deliver an environment to fine-tune and run AI applications.
Are we living in a box?
Is box-based delivery logic the way forward for all complex technologies? Yes and no. There will be organizations that have dedicated teams well-versed in AI implementations at all levels. Indeed, some organizations most adept at working with the still-nascent world of gen-AI, Large Language Models (LLMs) and GPT technologies will be active innovators and leaders in this space and may also be involved with contributing to industry standards, major scale open source projects and other initiatives in this space.
But for many - and this is presumably where Nutanix eyes the low-hanging fruit - a specialism in this zone of technology will be a big ask and more than any one IT department can quickly shoulder as it works to just ‘keep the lights on’ and run the business.
Not all technology comes in a box, but where it does, it’s not like a box of chocolates, you pretty much always know what you are going to get.
Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared on ByDanJohnson.com.
FAA proposed regulation has powerfully captured the attention of many pilots. Pilots have tons of questions. We have some answers. Everyone has a lot to read.
Overall, FAA’s Modernization of Special Airworthiness Certification (MOSAIC) regulation proposal has been warmly received as it opens the door to more capable aircraft that a sport pilot can fly. That’s good, but the document has problems, too. Following are four examples.
MOSAIC’s language invigorated many readers when the Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) expressed support for a sport pilot certificate holder to fly at night, with proper training and a logbook endorsement. Yet the proposal refers to other FAA regulations requiring BasicMed or an AvMed. If you must have a medical, you are not exercising the central privilege of a sport pilot certificate. Why suggest that a sport pilot can do things that are blocked by other regulations? This conflict should be resolved.
Another opportunity gap involves aerial work. We’re pleased the Light Aircraft Manufacturers Association (LAMA’s) request was included, but it requires a commercial certificate to fly for compensation, and this requirement eliminates powered parachutes and weight shift trikes, for which no commercial certificate is available. This is discriminatory and should be fixed.
Maintenance experts have lots of questions; see the video at bottom.
ASTM standards writers raised questions about the value of noise regulations included for no present gain, “requiring solutions before the problem exists.” This appears to have political motivations.
You may find other aspects of MOSAIC that urge you to comment. If so, you may find the following helpful.
MOSAIC Study Guide
I can’t imagine anyone genuinely enjoys reading MOSAIC. The NPRM encompasses many pages in dense language; it’s tedious to review.
It just got a lot easier, thanks to Roy Beisswenger. [Beisswenger is founder and proprietor of Easy Flight]
Beginning in 2014—well before MOSAIC existed—Beisswenger and I spent years advocating on behalf of the LSA industry and the pilots that fly those light aircraft to the FAA. Beisswenger was the lead author on several white papers LAMA submitted to support each of its requests. They went over so well with the FAA that they are mentioned in the footnotes.
As you will see in the attached PDF study guide, Beisswenger has done a monster amount of work in reformatting the documents so that you can walk through it and find what you want much easier.
Beisswenger also addressed specific comments I had, whereupon reading one section, the FAA refers to another, and then to another. Before long, you forget where you started and struggle to retrace your steps. You also need internet access to study the FARs published outside the NPRM. The continuous back-and-forth makes studying the document slow, yet the clock is ticking on public comments. At this writing we have just over 60 days left.
Reviewing the NPRM is far easier with this PDF study guide because of the bookmarks, links, and backlinks, plus already-highlighted text which shows what current FARs could be changed plus some lightly-colored text that illustrates where the FAA will insert new language.
MOSAIC will still take a significant effort to review carefully, but Beisswenger made the task much easier and faster.
The Magic of Bookmarks
If you open the study guide with Adobe Acrobat on almost any device or computer—or if you use Preview on Apple laptops/desktops—you will gain access to the bookmarks (look for a small icon in the upper right of a tablet or a smart phone; in Preview, show the Table of Contents. On both, use the triangles to drop down further and further). Bookmarks are your navigation friend, helping you jump to places of interest or study.
Beisswenger even embedded back buttons on some pages when reviewing the FARs. This helps readers not get lost in their investigations.
Of course, within Acrobat (or Preview), you can search for specific text.
I observe for you that such ease of review was not possible when the SP/LSA regulation was released in 2004 (three years before the iPhone was introduced).
When reviewing MOSAIC I recommend you follow aspects of particular interest to you rather than try to absorb the whole thing.
However deep you go, Beisswenger made it much easier.
When you are ready to comment to FAA, use this link. We’ll have more advice on commenting as soon as possible but here’s some basic tips:
- Keep your remarks to a purpose; ask for something.
- Make specific requests.
- Reference language when changes are needed.
- Be constructive; no ranting.
- Be original; use your own words.
To see MOSAIC comments already made, use this link.
More About MOSAIC
John Zimmerman, president of Sporty’s, thought our conversation in this edition of the “Pilot’s Discretion” podcast conveyed a lot of good information (audio—42 minutes). John was an excellent interviewer.
COMPANY NEWS: Nutanix, a leader in hybrid multicloud computing, today announced the Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator, a new tool to help organisations understand how different factors can influence their environmental footprint by estimating annual power and emissions for various Nutanix solutions using Nutanix Validated Designs.
Nutanix software and solutions can help organisations meet power and carbon goals by optimising IT infrastructure through reduced footprint, on-demand resource scaling, and fast and easy workload movement between on-prem and cloud options.
According to the 5th Annual Enterprise Cloud Index, for 92% of IT decision makers sustainability is more important today than it was a year ago — a development driven by an increasing number of pending and imposed regulations globally that add to the heightened interest in this space.
As sustainability comes into view for many enterprises, they seek strategies to reduce their environmental impact. One of the first facets of the business that leaders evaluate when looking to minimise environmental impact is IT, where changes in equipment or practices have the potential to make significant impacts when it comes to energy consumption and emissions.
The Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator provides users with a report that helps illustrate how infrastructure choices can impact an environmental footprint with regard to power and emissions, with insights for developing more sustainable IT strategies.
Based on user inputs regarding workloads, the efficiency of the data centre, and location, an organisation can conceptualise how IT choices can help them meet their sustainability goals.
“Understanding what drives carbon and power consumption is an important first step for many enterprises looking to advance on their sustainability journey,” said Nutanix vice president for pre-sales APJ Daryush Ashjari.
“The Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator can help enterprises take initiative by educating organisations on factors that can influence their environmental impact.”
The Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator enables organisations to:
- Estimate the effects of different factors on power and emissions for Nutanix solutions. As an example, with the Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator, a user could see that if an organisation deploys Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for a general virtualisation use case with 300 virtual machines (VMs) in a UK data centre with a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 2.0, it would generate an estimated 68 metric tons of carbon dioxide (MTCO2) annually. If, on the other hand, the organisation was able to find a way to bring the data centre’s PUE down to 1.5, this change would reduce the emissions estimate by 17 MTCO2 to 51 MTCO2.
- Account for geography, which can also play a major factor in sustainability. The Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator demonstrates the impact of moving workloads to geographies that leverage low carbon sources for energy generation compared to fossil fuels, which have a higher carbon intensity. For example, if the same general virtualisation use case described above, with the reduced PUE of 1.5, were moved to a data centre in Sweden, then the estimated carbon emissions would drop from 51 MTCO2 to just two MTCO2. This is because Sweden leverages a relatively high share of low carbon energy sources to power its grids. The Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator makes clear that migrating workloads can be a viable part of an organisation's sustainability strategy.
- Compare power consumption of Nutanix’s hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) and 3-Tier (SAN-based) infrastructure. After using the Estimator, users can obtain a report that highlights how eliminating proprietary SAN components can help reduce power consumption. Based on a third-party reviewed methodology, Nutanix HCI demonstrated significant power savings compared to 3-Tier solution with the ability to run a similar workload.
Because every customer configuration is unique, the Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator provides typical estimates that are generalised to help customers develop sustainability strategies rather than to provide exact usage figures.
City of Unley technical services coordinator Simon Sowerby shared: “Our previous three-tier system consisted of about ten racks of compute equipment, and we have been able to reduce that to a quarter rack. Our power expenses have come down about 70%, which is working out to tens of thousands of dollars - and 24,000kg of CO2 emissions - saved per year.”
For more details, read the case study here.
Explore the Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator here.
About Nutanix
Nutanix is a global leader in cloud software, offering organisations a single platform for running apps and data across clouds. With Nutanix, companies can reduce complexity and simplify operations, freeing them to focus on their business outcomes. Building on its legacy as the pioneer of hyperconverged infrastructure, Nutanix is trusted by companies worldwide to power hybrid multicloud environments consistently, simply, and cost-effectively. Learn more at www.nutanix.com or follow us on social media @nutanix.
Nutanix has launched GPT-in-a-Box, a bundled service that adds artificial intelligence (AI) software stack elements – such as foundation models and AI frameworks – to scale-out hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI).
GPT-in-a-Box also offers consulting so that customers can specify the right infrastructure configuration, in terms of hardware – for example, GPU spec – and software, such as AI components.
Nutanix will aim the initial launch squarely at customer on-premise use cases, but including edge workloads, with expansion to the cloud coming later.
Essentially, Nutanix believes customers need help to specify an infrastructure for AI because it can involve a complex mix of software elements plus hardware add-ons, and that concerns are commonplace over privacy and governance in AI applications.
“It’s activity that consumes, creates and generates a lot of data,” said Nutanix senior vice-president for product management Thomas Cornely. “And discussion about what you can do on-premise often resolves around privacy and governance.”
Nutanix will offer what it calls a “full-stack AI-ready platform”, in which it expects customers to deploy hardware and software to train and retrain models and be able to expose results to application developers.
GPT-in-a-Box bundles will comprise Nutanix HCI, Nvidia GPU hardware or recommendations, the Nutanix AHV hypervisor, a Kubernetes container layer, AI foundation models, open-source AI frameworks that could include KubeFlow, Jupiter and PyTorch, and a curated set of large language models including Llama2, Falcom GPT and MosaicML, all of which will provide outputs exposed for application development.
Nutanix’s offering is the latest effort from storage array makers to target AI/ML use cases, and clearly aims to hook on the surge in interest in chat-format AI. All of the big storage makers have addressed the rise in prominence of unstructured data as a source of analytics processing, but not all have been so explicit in targeting product bundles. An exception is Vast Data, which wants to build its recently launched Vast Data Platform as a global brain-like network of AI learning nodes.
Meanwhile, Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box is not just a self-service deploy-and-run offer. “It’s a bundled offer and it can scale down and out,” said Cornely. “But there’s a consulting phase, on GPUs, for example, and the software elements needed to support customer requirements.”
It’s an offer primarily launched at greenfield deployments in core datacentre or edge locations. Existing Nutanix customers can, in theory, build AI-ready infrastructures but would still need to consult over, for example, GPU sizing. “They do need different components,” said Cornely.
“They could upgrade their own infrastructure, but many customers lack the time to get started,” he said. “And there are different components for different parts of the [machine learning] process. There’s quite a lot of consulting up-front, but Nutanix has people that are chairs and vice-chairs of organisations that are putting this stuff out so they can say, ‘This is what’s needed for this deployment’.”
According to Cornely, many customers lack policies for the data that’s going into models and where it goes after it comes out, so for the time being, this offer is aimed at deployments on-premise to simplify matters of privacy, copyright and governance.
“It’s clearly targeted at on-premise and edge, and allowing customers to be fully in control of what they’re paying for and what data is going into it,” he said. “The cloud element is limited to getting foundation models, registering for LLMs, etc.”
WASHINGTON — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is kicking off a study to develop an “analytical framework” to guide development of integrated lunar infrastructure over the next decade.
DARPA announced the 10-Year Lunar Architecture, or LunA-10, project Aug. 15, seeking ideas from both potential developers or lunar power, communications, navigation and other infrastructure as well as users of such capabilities. The agency plans to select a group that will then work together on “new integrated system-level solutions that span multiple services” and be commercially available by 2035, it said in a release.
Michael Nayak, the DARPA program manager leading LunA-10, noted in an interview that many companies are working on various elements of that infrastructure in isolation. “We want to bring those companies in to LunA-10 and form sort of a consortium,” he said. The effort would look at ways of combining those concepts, with one example being a lunar power unit that also transmits communications and navigation signals.
The study will also define a “commercial end state” for lunar infrastructure in 10 years. “This is the end state at which we have a self-sufficient lunar economy,” he said, allowing the project to work backwards from there to see what technology is needed to create that and identify gaps.
He described the study as split “50-50” between technology and economics. “I do want to look at both: an engineering-rooted, financially closed analysis.”
Such a study would appear to be within the mandate of NASA, which has been working on a detailed architecture for lunar and Martian exploration, the first phase of which it released in April. Nayak said DARPA was coordinating with NASA on this effort, describing LunA-10 as complementary to NASA architecture studies.
“We set out to talk with NASA, figure out what they’re doing, figure out what their roadmap is, and then see if there are other complementary investments that we can make to significantly advance the state of the art that are sort of in line with your typical DARPA mission,” he said.
He said he has been working directly with Niki Werkheiser, director of technology maturation in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, on planning for LunA-10 and tapping the agency’s expertise in relevant technologies.
“Opportunities for technology maturation are key for development for lunar capabilities in order to meet the objectives of future lunar architectures,” Werkheiser said in the DARPA statement about the study.
The benefit to DARPA for this lunar study is identifying technology that could have other national security applications. Nayak gave an example of developing advanced thermal management technologies, needed for power systems on the moon that might also provide communications and navigation services, that could be used elsewhere. “Framing problems like that is what I’m hoping the defense community can walk away with at the end of this,” he said.
DARPA emphasized in the announcement that the study is “grounded” in Article 4 of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which states that the moon and other celestial bodies will be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and forbids the establishment of military bases and testing of weapons there.
DARPA is soliciting three-page abstracts that are due Sept. 6. The agency will then request 10-page white papers and technical presentations from some of those who submitted abstracts, which will be due Sept. 25. DARPA plans to select those who will work on the study at the fall meeting of the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC), scheduled for Oct. 10–11 in Pittsburgh.
Nayak said the goal of LunA-10 is to present an “80% product” of the study at the April 2024 meeting of LSIC, to show “some things that the community can go think about and show our work.” A final report is due in June 2024.
Written by the Priests and Pastoral Associates of Priests for Life
This study guide is based on the Vatican Translation of Humanae Vitae
Table of Contents:
Introduction to the Study Guide
A Summary of Section II. Doctrinal Principles
Summary of Section III. Pastoral Directives
Essay: Finding Our Way Back Home
Essay: Life, Purity and Humanae Vitae
Essay: The Transmission of Life -- On Whose Terms?
The Contraception of Grief: A Personal Testimony
A Study Guide to Humanae Vitae
Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life
Forty years is not a long time in Church history. Indeed, we are still living in the moment of Humanae Vitae (issued on July 25, 1968), and of the challenge it presents to the world.
Humanae Vitae does not identify the key problem of our day in the realm of sex or birth or "the pill," but rather in the myth that we can be God. Pope Paul writes at the beginning of the document, "But the most remarkable development of all is to be seen in man's stupendous progress in the domination and rational organization of the forces of nature to the point that he is endeavoring to extend this control over every aspect of his own life -- over his body, over his mind and emotions, over his social life, and even over the laws that regulate the transmission of life” (n.2).
The Pope here is painting a wider vision of the problem. We think everything belongs to us, but the reality is that we belong to God. "Humanae Vitae" means "Of human life." Human life came from God, belongs to God, and goes back to God. "You are not your own," St. Paul declares. "You have been bought, and at a price" (1 Cor. 6:19-20). Sex and having children are aspects of a whole cluster of realities that make up our lives and activities. We suffer from the illusion that all of these activities belong to us. “This is my life, my body, my choice.
The problem we face is not that our society is obsessed with sex. Rather, it is afraid of it-- afraid of the total reality and power of what it represents, where it comes from, and where it leads. Sex properly understood requires that we acknowledge God who made it. More than that, sex can never be separated from its purpose: to insert us into this immense, powerful movement of life and love that started when God said "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3) and culminates when the Spirit and the Bride say "Come, Lord Jesus!" (Revelation 22:17).
Sexual activity means so much that it is wrong to diminish its message or deny its full reality: it belongs in the context of committed love (sealed by marriage) and openness to life precisely because this is the only context great enough to hold its message and reflect the greater reality to which the gift of sexuality points us and to which it commits us.
This is a reality that is bigger than all of us. It is the self-giving which starts in the Trinity, and is revealed in a startling way on the Cross, and then challenges each of us in our daily interaction with others, with God, and with our own eternal destiny. It is so real and so big that it is scary. That's why so many today are afraid of the full reality and meaning of sex. That's why Pope Paul VI wrote Humanae Vitae.
That is also why our Priests for Life pastoral team wrote this Study Guide. We have also established a special website, www.HumanaeVitae40.com, to promote the teachings of this document. It is our daily prayer that this effort will lead many believers to understand, embrace, and proclaim the beautiful truth of human life.
INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY GUIDE
James J. Pinto, Jr., M.E.V.
Editor: A Study Guide to Humanae Vitae
This Study Guide will be most effective if one first thoroughly familiarizes himself with its content and layout. Review the table of contents and the location of each section listed. The Study Guide is to be used by an individual or group as a side by side companion with the text of Humanae Vitae included in this booklet. The three Essays offer unique insight with questions for further discussion. The Contraception of Grief: A Personal Testimony presents a riveting and practical witness to why Humanae Vitae is the wholesome truth.
The Glossary assists the reader in clarifying some key terms contained in the Encyclical. Glossary terms are listed by the number/paragraph in which they first appear. The terms will be marked with an *asterisk in the Humanae Vitae text as a note to the reader that the term is contained in the Glossary.
After reading Fr. Pavone’s Foreword one should read the Summary of the Introduction and Section I, followed by the reading of the Introduction and Section I. of Humanae Vitae itself. After completing the Introduction and Section I. of Humanae Vitae; the reader answers the series of questions below the Summary of the Introduction and Section I. The sequence followed for the Introduction and Section I is repeated for each following section: reading the Study Guide Section Summary, reading of the corresponding Encyclical section itself and returning to the Study Guide questions for that particular section. The questions are meant to refer the reader back to particular paragraphs/numbers (n.or n.n.) of that section where he/she will find the answers. One may work on the answers to these questions while reading the paragraph/number, or, wait until he/she has read the entire section and then complete the answers. Continual returning to the text of the encyclical helps emphasize that the document itself is the primary source of instruction and the basis for individual and group applications.
The three Essays have several questions at their conclusion to help foster reflection and discussion. A personal witness to the truth and wisdom of Humanae Vitae is presented in The Contraception of Grief: A Personal Testimony.
This Study Guide is meant to be a “springboard” to delve more deeply into Humanae Vitae and its themes, in order to stimulate reflection, and a lifestyle of holiness.
For those considering the possibility of facilitating a study group, this study guide lends itself to a discussion study group method of learning. While a leader/facilitator encourages the group and keeps it “on track”, it is the individual sharing and group dynamic that contribute most to the learning process. The facilitator is not a lecturer, neither is he there to provide all the answers. The facilitator seeks to shepherd the group learning process and does everything possible to solicit their contributions. Members interact and learn from everyone, including the facilitator. A Facilitator’s Guide is available through Priests for Life at www.HumanaeVitae40.com. The Facilitator’s Guide seeks to assist you in leading a group and lays out suggested study sessions.
It is our hope, that on the fortieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, this study guide will assist in promoting the Church’s clear and authoritative word on transmitting human life. May all who hear this true, prophetic and lovely word be assured that: the Church has always issued appropriate documents on the nature of marriage, the correct use of conjugal rights, and the duties of spouses. These documents have been more copious in accurate times. (n.4)
The new offering adds an Opinionated AI stack and related services to Nutanix’s infrastructure and storage stacks, and the company believes it will find a good reception from the SMB to the enterprise.
Manosiz Bhattacharyya, Nutanix’s CTO
Today, Nutanix is announcing Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box, a full-stack software-defined AI-ready platform designed for customers who are looking to jump-start artificial intelligence [AI] and machine learning [ML] innovation, but who don’t know quite where to start.
“Nutanix is primarily an infrastructure player, with a parallel storage stack,” said Manosiz Bhattacharyya, Nutanix’s CTO. “The infrastructure stack and the storage stack are both the same as we use here. What is new is the addition of an Opinionated AI stack on top, and services that in turn go on top of it.”
This makes the solution a stack of Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, Nutanix Files and Objects storage, and Nutanix AHV hypervisor and Kubernetes platform with NVIDIA GPU acceleration, all on the Nutanix Cloud Platform. 78% of Nutanix customers indicated that they were likely to run their AI and ML workloads on the Nutanix Cloud Platform.
“The AI stack lets you deploy, fine tune and do inference,” Bhattacharyya said. There are foundational base models for LLM, which include all the standard open source models and a curated set of large language models like Llama2, Falcon GPT and MosaicML.
“Customers want to use AI but don’t know where to start,” Bhattacharyya indicated. “There are tons of tools today, although some, like PyTorch, have become more popular than others, like TensorFlow. And we also bundle in services, so it’s not just the infrastructure stack or the AI stack, but the services as well. What we are doing is making sure we provide you the right tools with the services, and this combination of services and the right tools makes it easy and lets the customer hit the ground running.”
Nutanix sees the potential market for their GPT-in-a-Box solution as fairly large.
“We are trying to target the higher end of SMB through to larger customers,” Bhattacharyya stated. “We want to take it downstream as well. This kind of AI has been typically seen in larger markets, but there are areas like fraud detection where the use can be much broader because it makes a lot of sense in smaller markets.”
Bhattacharyya said that many prospects for this typically have both data scentists and IT, but they are siloed separately.
“The data scientists don’t understand the infrastructure side of things and IT doesn’t know what the data scientists want,” he commented. “We provide them a solution where the data scientists can do their models without bothering IT.”
At the same time, Bhattacharyya cautioned that Nutanix is well aware that Generative AI today can’t have the final decision on anything important.
“In terms of where we think Generative AI is going, we see it as more of a helping tool for specialists right now,” he said. “For example, in pharmacy manufacturer, you can use it to check regulations, but a person is charge has to have the authority to implement it. What has improved is the fewer number of steps that a human has to do. But there is no way at this juncture that AI can be given the authority on its own to make decisions that affect things that matter.”
There are no immediate plans to follow up on GPT-in-a-Box with near-term roadmap solutions.
“As of now, there is no extension planned to what we are offering here,” Bhattacharyya said. “We think that will suffice for a majority of customers – those who want a simple infrastructure and a stack. We may announce additional things later on, but not now.”
Service integrator partners have been particularly excited about the new solution.
“I see a lot of traction with them because services are a big part of this,” Bhattacharyya indicated. “Most companies and most industries do not have people who can create a fine-tuned AI model by themselves. We believe that service integrators can play a big part with this, and they are excited.”
