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Articles by Hunter Smit
Here’s how a global cloud provider improves data delivery with F5
F5 ADSP | August 12, 2026 Object storage was designed to be an affordable, durable place to store data, not to be the busiest service in the data center. Until the AI era, that distinction didn't matter much because the traffic hitting it, things like backups, archives, media, and application assets, was forgiving. Then model training, fine-tuning, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workloads arrived, and the read/write patterns changed from occasionally retrieve to continuously saturate.
Building F5 BIG-IP to speak S3-compatible storage
F5 Ecosystem | June 18, 2026 Object storage was built to hold data, not to direct heavy traffic. Now AI has changed the job. As companies push more data into S3-compatible storage to train and run models, the reads and writes pile up faster than the storage system's own load balancing can handle. Traffic backs up right where it matters most. One spike can take the system down. One slow path can leave expensive GPUs sitting idle.
Blog posts by Tanu Mutreja
Senior Director, Product Management | F5 Blog posts written by Tanu Mutreja(1) Sort By: F5 Ecosystem | 06/18/2026 Building F5 BIG-IP to speak S3-compatible storage F5 brings native S3 commands and events to BIG-IP iRules, letting storage and security teams easily configure, manage, and enforce S3 policies.
Access to Resilient AI Storage Increases Engineering Discipline
Modern AI workloads, whether training large models, fine-tuning on specialized data, or executing inference with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), are as much about data logistics as they are about computation. Businesses are investing heavily in GPUs, networking, and optimized compute stacks, but the part of the system that determines whether those investments payoff is often overlooked: the delivery of data from storage to compute.
Enterprise AI needs a better data layer
Industry Trends | May 19, 2026 Enterprise AI is entering a more demanding phase. The challenge for most organizations is no longer gaining access to models or standing up GPU capacity. It is building an architecture that can reliably connect AI systems to enterprise data, expose that data as a shared service across the business, and protect it as usage scales.
Blog posts by Adam Robyak
Principal Engineer and Global AI Lead for Presales | Dell Technologies Blog posts written by Adam Robyak(1) Sort By: Industry Trends | 05/19/2026 Enterprise AI needs a better data layer Learn why reliable data flow, control, and protection matter as much as models and compute. F5 and Dell discuss their technology alliance built for enterprise intelligence projects.
Validated testing shows resilient AI data delivery with Dell ObjectScale and F5 BIG-IP
F5 Ecosystem | May 18, 2026 AI infrastructure does not slow down only when compute is constrained. It slows down when data cannot move fast enough, consistently enough, or reliably enough to keep AI workflows running. For model training, fine-tuning, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), S3-compatible object storage has become a critical foundation. Massive datasets land in object stores. Training jobs read them at scale.
Optimizing AI pipelines by removing bottlenecks in modern workloads
Industry Trends | December 11, 2025 This blog post is the second in a series about AI data delivery. As AI usage accelerates, data pipelines must scale even faster to prevent bottlenecks and maintain performance. Recent research from firms such as McKinsey & Company shows that the appetite for AI-ready data center capacity is expected to grow by approximately 33% per year through 2030.
Fueling the AI data pipeline with F5 and S3-compatible storage
Industry Trends | November 24, 2025 This blog post is the first in a series about AI data delivery. Data is the new fuel for artificial intelligence. As AI and analytics workloads explode in volume and velocity, enterprises need storage and delivery systems capable of transporting data efficiently across clouds, data centers, and edge environments. S3-compatible object storage is now the industry’s preferred foundation for this monumental storage task.
F5 BIG-IP v21.0 brings enhanced AI data delivery and ingestion for S3 workflows
F5 ADSP | November 18, 2025 Amazon S3 changed the shape of modern infrastructure. By separating object storage from compute, S3 gave application teams durable, affordable capacity with a simple API, and just as importantly, a neutral point for data created in one place and consumed in another.
Blog posts by Paul Pindell
Principal Solutions Architect Blog posts written by Paul Pindell(2) Sort By: F5 Ecosystem | 01/30/2025 AI Factories Produce the Most Modern of Modern Apps: AI Apps See what's changed and what’s remained the same as we explore the differences between security and deliver for modern apps and AI apps. By Paul Pindell, Hunter Smit Deliver and Secure Every App F5 application delivery and security solutions are built to ensure that every app and API deployed anywhere is fast, available, and secure.
RAG in the Era of LLMs with 10 Million Token Context Windows
Meta recently unveiled the Llama 4 herd of LLMs—Scout, Maverick, and Behemoth preview—featuring a 10 million token context window with Scout. Soon afterward on X, LinkedIn, and other forums, comments around retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) becoming obsolete were gaining momentum, suggesting such an expansive context window could render RAG useless.
Why Your AI Factory Needs a Network Segmentation Strategy
As organizations build the next generation of market differentiating products using AI, enterprises are beginning to build AI factories, large-scale infrastructure investments featuring high-performance computing, specialized storage, and networking designed for high-volume training and inference. With increasing AI complexity and ever-changing security threats, traditional network architectures can quickly become bottlenecks or liabilities.
Introducing the AI Assistant for F5 NGINX One
Hunter Smit Published February 26, 2025 As organizations embrace modern application delivery at scale, many face overwhelming configuration demands and operational complexities across their deployments. In December 2024, we announced a new AI assistant for F5 Distributed Cloud Services to reduce the complexity and effort involved in delivering, securing, and operating applications.
AI Factories Produce the Most Modern of Modern Apps: AI Apps
Over the last several months, F5 has discussed AI factories in depth. At the beginning of our series, we defined an AI factory as a massive storage, networking, and computing investment serving high-volume, high-performance training and inference requirements. AI factories, at the end of the day, are an analogy for how AI models and services are created, refined, and deployed. Much like a traditional manufacturing plant transforming materials into finished goods, AI factories build AI applications.
DPUs, the New Heroes Powering AI Factories
As AI continues its rapid evolution, the scale and complexity of the infrastructure required to support it is also growing at unprecedented rates. A new type of data center is being developed to satisfy this. Dubbed AI factories, these are large-scale infrastructures with massive storage, networking, and computing investments purpose-built to serve the high-volume, high-performance requirements of AI training and inference.
The Power and Meaning of the NVIDIA BlueField DPU for AI Factories
A DPU is a programmable processor designed to handle vast data movement and processing via hardware acceleration at a network’s line rate. In late 2024, we announced BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes deployed on NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPUs. NVIDIA BlueField is an accelerated computing platform for data center infrastructure, purpose-built to power NVIDIA AI factories.
Introducing the AI Assistant for F5 Distributed Cloud Services
F5 is introducing a new AI-powered assistant within F5 Distributed Cloud Services, ourSaaS-based security, networking, and application management offering. As customers expand their use of Distributed Cloud Services, the complexity and effort involved in delivering, securing, and operating applications can increase as the catalog of apps deployed on the console grows.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) for AI Factories
Hunter Smit Published October 24, 2024 In today's rapidly evolving technology landscape, the deployment and operationalization of AI have become crucial differentiators for enterprises. As enterprises harness the power of AI for enhanced decision-making and efficiency or develop differentiating products with AI, AI factories have emerged as a foundational model.
What Is an AI Factory?
When ChatGPT was released in November 2022, the questions we asked and prompts we entered were simple: "Tell me a story about X" and "Write a narrative between person A and person B on topic Z." Through these questions and initial interactions with GPT-3.5 at the time, we were trying to identify how this new, trending technology would impact our day-to-day lives.
Unmasking Cybercrime Threats During Back-to-School Shopping with Web Application and API Protection
While walking to my favorite coffee shop to grab a mobile order recently, I spotted a bright yellow school bus, a reminder that local schools are starting the new academic year. With summer ending, back-to-school shopping is in its fullest swing. It’s clear more people than ever continue to turn to digital channels for their shopping needs.
Build Customer Trust by Protecting against Financial Aid Cybercrimes
In 2022, a Canadian government entity faced an alarming set of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), bot, and fraud problems for student financial aid and COVID-19 pandemic relief. When this organization contacted F5 to assist in mitigating these attacks, we began an extensive proof of concept for F5 Distributed Cloud Services.
Apple Introduces New Red iPhone 7, Updated iPad, New Cases & Watch Bands
Today, March 21, 2017, Apple has introduced updates to their current iPhone, iPad, iPhone Case, and Apple Watch Band lines. The new products come after multiple rumors floating around of a Product Red iPhone and updated iPad. In this blog, we will be going over the new products. The new iPhone 7 is a special edition model in red to go along with other (PRODUCT)RED devices and accessories, such as the iPhone 7 Smart Battery Case, Beats Solo 3 Wireless Headphones, and others.
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