Nutanix beefs up AHV hypervisor, doubles down on AI

Easing generative AI deployments

The second iteration of Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box, which was first launched last year, includes integrations with Nvidia Inference Microservices (NIM) and easy access to Hugging Face’s large language model (LLM) library. Other changes include a new graphical user interface, end-user access key management, integration with Nutanix Files and Objects, and the ability to use Nvidia’s Tensor Core graphics processing units (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 Cornely.

“Enterprise is the new frontier for GenAI [generative AI] 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-premise at scale while maintaining control on privacy and cost,” he added.

Manosiz Bhattacharyya, Nutanix’s chief technology officer, said the integration with NIM will simplify AI model deployment across the enterprise and at the edge, adding: “There’s no point creating models every year – the challenge is to use them.”

Clem Delangue, founder and CEO of Hugging Face, said: “Our partnership with Nutanix will help extend Hugging Face to more enterprises looking for private and secure control of their LLMs. Our mission is to enable organisations of all sizes to build their own AI with open source. Our work with Nutanix will make it easy for enterprises to build AI applications on-premises, leveraging text generation inference.”

To better support AI, machine learning and other applications, Nutanix Unified Storage now has the option of a new dense low-cost all-NVMe platform using Micron’s 30TB flash modules, with up to 10 GB per second sequential read throughput from a single node. Nutanix will also add support for Nvidia GPUDirect Storage for additional performance improvements.

AI-optimised GPUs, including the Nvidia L40S, H100, L40, and L4 GPUs, are now supported on Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box, as well as density-optimised GPU systems from Dell, HPE, and Lenovo to help reduce TCO by using fewer systems to meet their workload demands.

“Across every industry, enterprises are working to efficiently integrate AI into cloud and data platforms that power their operations,” said Manuvir Das, Nvidia’s vice-president of enterprise computing. “The integration of NIM into Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box gives enterprises an AI-ready solution for rapidly deploying optimised models in production.”

The new version of GPT in-a-Box is expected to be available in the second half of 2024.