Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA to offer a fully integrated solution with VAST Data, using the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design, to accelerate RAG pipelines and enable agentic AI at scale

Cisco unveiled a blueprint for building AI infrastructure designed to support workload data fabrics, further enabling enterprises to securely use their data for agentic AI at enterprise-scale. With this new solution, the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA expands to new use cases, including the acceleration of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines with faster data extraction and retrieval. This new capability ensures AI agents have instant, secure access to the data they need, when they need it.

Cisco AI PODs, the AI Infrastructure building blocks of the Secure AI Factory, are now available with VAST InsightEngine, a core capability of VAST Data AI OS. These AI PODs deliver a fully integrated solution using the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design to transform raw data into AI-ready datasets. Within the AI PODs, the Cisco UCS server portfolio with NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs together provide exceptional performance for next-generation AI applications. RTX PRO Servers from Cisco are some of the first systems to deliver the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design.

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NVIDIA accelerated computing and AI software ensures low-latency model interaction, and Cisco’s high-performance ethernet networking connects compute and data seamlessly. This unified solution enables AI agents to operate with near-real-time business insights, backed by the security, governance and flexibility of the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA architecture.

“Agentic AI has the potential to unlock the value of AI for enterprises around the world. Moving beyond chatbots to agents that can help solve true business challenges is revolutionary, but only if enterprises can effectively leverage the right data at the right times. Cisco, NVIDIA and VAST are working together to give customers a simple path to unlocking the value of their data,” said Jeremy Foster, senior vice president and general manager, Cisco Compute. “We are designing the architecture for how the enterprise will build the next generation of AI factories.”

“The next wave of agentic AI will be fueled by enterprise data, enabling agents to tap into business knowledge during inference for precise, up-to-date insights,” said Justin Boitano, vice president, Enterprise AI at NVIDIA. “Bringing together Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA and VAST Data AI OS creates an integrated platform for running powerful AI agents at scale.”

“By integrating the VAST Data InsightEngine into the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA, we’re giving enterprises the first integrated design for RAG acceleration at scale,” said John Mao, vice president of strategic alliances at VAST Data. “This collaboration with Cisco and NVIDIA represents a major milestone in the evolution of enterprise AI. The integration of the VAST InsightEngine into the Secure AI Factory architecture sets the stage for a new era where intelligent agents can operate securely, collaboratively, and at unprecedented scale.”

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An Architecture for Enterprise Agentic AI

Agentic AI workloads place unique demands on IT infrastructure. Enterprises across industries are looking to deploy AI agents that can communicate with knowledge workers and other AI agents to solve complex challenges. However, this requires support for workload data fabrics that remove data bottlenecks and lower latency, so agents have access to the right data, while providing the security and governance necessary to ensure organizations stay safe.

The new capabilities unveiled today offer customers a secure AI infrastructure solution for fast data extraction and retrieval to unlock agentic AI use cases. VAST Data will be the first vendor to integrate with Cisco AI PODs to offer enterprise customers an NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design. Customers can now experience:

  • Faster time to insights by reducing RAG pipeline latency from minutes to seconds for near-real-time AI responses.
  • Agentic AI at enterprise scale by enabling AI agents to operate continuously, learn dynamically and deliver contextualized business outcomes. The high throughput of data unlocks multi-step reasoning, and the architecture is designed for scale by supporting multiple agents and workloads simultaneously.
  • Security and governance are at the core, designed to protect sensitive data while also accelerating AI innovation. With role-based access control and compliance and audit readiness, enterprises can trust their infrastructure to keep sensitive information safe.

Cisco AI PODs with VAST InsightEngine, offering an NVIDIA AI Data Platform solution, are orderable from Cisco now. The AI POD designed for RAG acceleration with NVIDIA and VAST is the first in a series of AI services PODs built to support the growing number of use cases in the enterprise.

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FAQs

1. What is the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA, and how does it benefit enterprises?

The Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA is an integrated AI infrastructure solution designed to help enterprises securely use their data for agentic AI at scale. It accelerates AI workloads, supports retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, and enables AI agents to access the right data instantly, ensuring near-real-time business insights.

2. What are Cisco AI PODs and how do they support AI applications?

Cisco AI PODs are modular building blocks of the Secure AI Factory that integrate compute, storage, and networking for AI workloads. With NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs and VAST InsightEngine, these PODs transform raw data into AI-ready datasets, reducing latency and improving the performance of next-generation AI applications.

3. How does this solution accelerate retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines?

By integrating VAST InsightEngine into the AI PODs, the architecture reduces RAG pipeline latency from minutes to seconds. This allows AI agents to extract and retrieve data faster, enabling multi-step reasoning, continuous learning, and near-real-time responses for enterprise-scale AI use cases.

4. What security and governance features are included in Cisco’s AI infrastructure?

The Secure AI Factory is built with security and governance at its core, offering role-based access control, compliance readiness, and audit support. This ensures sensitive enterprise data is protected while supporting high-performance AI workloads.

5. How can enterprises get started with Cisco AI PODs and the NVIDIA AI Data Platform?

Enterprises can now order Cisco AI PODs with VAST InsightEngine, which follow the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design. This solution provides a fully integrated platform to deploy agentic AI at scale, unlock faster insights, and support multiple AI agents and workloads simultaneously.

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