VAST Data, a prominent player in AI infrastructure, has announced a collaboration with Microsoft to enhance the capabilities of its AI Operating System, set to debut at the Microsoft Ignite conference. This partnership aims to provide Azure customers with scalable, high-performance cloud infrastructure to support the next generation of agentic AI solutions.
The VAST AI OS, designed to streamline the deployment of AI technologies in the cloud, will allow enterprises to leverage a full suite of data services, including unified storage, data cataloging, and advanced database capabilities. By integrating these services within Azure, organizations will be able to manage data effortlessly across on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments, thus promoting rapid AI innovation.
Running on Azure, the VAST AI OS will enable customers to utilize a familiar ecosystem of tools, governance frameworks, and security protocols. This integration promises unified management and consistent performance, alongside Azure’s renowned reliability. “This collaboration with Microsoft reflects our shared vision for the future of AI infrastructure, where performance, scale, and simplicity converge to enable enterprises to transform their business with agentic AI,” said Jeff Denworth, Co-Founder of VAST Data.
Azure customers will benefit from several key features of the VAST AI OS. The platform is built for **agentic AI**, harnessing the **VAST InsightEngine** and **AgentEngine** to facilitate data-driven workflows directly at the data’s source. This architecture is designed to deliver stateless, high-performance compute and database services that enhance vector search, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, and data preparation tasks.
For model builders, the VAST AI OS promises robust performance at scale, designed to meet the rigorous requirements of model training and inference. By keeping Azure’s **GPU** and **CPU** clusters saturated with high-throughput data services, intelligent caching, and optimized I/O, the solution ensures reliable performance from initial pilot projects to expansive, multi-region deployments. The collaboration leverages the latest Azure infrastructure advancements, including the Laos VM Series, which utilizes Azure Boost Accelerated Networking.
The platform is also designed to support **seamless hybrid AI workflows**. With an exabyte-scale DataSpace, VAST Data eliminates data silos, allowing for effortless data mobility. Customers can quickly scale from on-premises to Azure for GPU-accelerated workloads without the need for extensive migrations or reconfigurations.
Alongside this, VAST’s **DataStore** offers unified data access via file, object, and block protocols, while the VAST DataBase combines transactional performance with fast query speeds, enabling diverse workloads to be executed on a single platform without compromise. The architecture’s **Disaggregated, Shared-Everything (DASE)** design allows for independent scaling of compute and storage resources, enhancing cost efficiency for large-scale AI infrastructures.
Aung Oo, Vice President of Azure Storage at Microsoft, emphasized the advantages of this partnership: “VAST’s AI Operating System running on Azure will give Azure customers a high-performance, scalable platform built on the Laos VM Series using Azure Boost that seamlessly extends on-premises AI pipelines into Azure’s GPU-accelerated infrastructure.” He noted that many AI model builders are already leveraging VAST for its scalability and performance capabilities.
As Microsoft advances its investment in AI infrastructure, including custom silicon initiatives, VAST plans to collaborate closely with Azure to refine future platform requirements. This partnership positions VAST as a critical component of Microsoft’s overarching AI computing strategy, aimed at unlocking the potential of innovative compute technologies. Both companies aspire to ensure that future AI systems are powered by an operating system that emphasizes scalability, performance, and simplicity.
Looking ahead, Renen Hallak, Founder and CEO of VAST Data, is set to be present at Microsoft Ignite in San Francisco for discussions on how Azure and the VAST AI Operating System can help enterprises operationalize agentic AI on a global scale. Additionally, at the upcoming Supercomputing 2025 event in St. Louis, VAST will engage in conversations with industry leaders about the evolving landscape of AI infrastructure. This ongoing collaboration signifies a strategic alignment in the transformative journey toward AI-driven business solutions.
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