Pure Storage has unveiled its vision for the data platform for the cloud era through a host of comprehensive new hardware and software updates for the FlashArray product line for tier one storage.
The company has introduced Purity ActiveCluster, CloudSnap native cloud integration, Policy QoS, VVols, the 100 percent NVMe DirectFlash Shelf and much more within the Purity//FA 5.0 software.
The signature feature in Purity//FA 5.0 is ActiveCluster, a true active/active metro stretch cluster solution, according to the company. Purity ActiveCluster extends availability to an unprecedented level, and provides business continuity across the data center or metro region.
Application workloads on clustered Oracle, SQL Server, SAP, VMware Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) or Hyper-V continue to run transparently and effortlessly, even if an unexpected issue causes the array, network or data center to fail. Pure Storage FlashArray offers 99.9999 percent availability, now proven over two years, inclusive of maintenance and generational upgrades.
ActiveCluster is fully-integrated into FlashArray, requires no add-on gateway hardware and is included at no additional cost - which makes stretch clustering available to any application. The company claims that ActiveCluster can be configured in minutes with only four commands, and features the Pure1 Cloud Mediator, removing the need for managing a cumbersome third-site witness.
For three datacenter (3DC) clusters, ActiveCluster is fully-integrated with Purity asynchronous replication, enabling a third recovery site to be added anywhere in the world. ActiveCluster is available to existing FlashArray customers as a non-disruptive Evergreen upgrade to Purity//FA 5.0.
Purity//FA 5.0 is the company’s largest software release ever, and in addition to ActiveCluster, includes more than 10 additional new features built to extend reliability, performance, cloud integration, cloud automation and developer openness, including:
- Policy-Based QoS. QoS is essential for consolidating multiple tiers of workloads onto a single FlashArray, or implementing Service Provider business models. Purity's ultra-simple, Always-On QoS is extended in this release to include sophisticated policy management, which enables customers to define Bronze/Silver/Gold tiers of workloads for worry-free consolidation, or add per-workload limits for Service Providers to enable differential billing.
- Purity CloudSnap. Customers have increasingly leveraged the public cloud for low-cost backup, retention, DR, and to enable agile application development workflows. FlashArray introduces Purity CloudSnap, a new capability for moving snapshots to and from the public cloud. First, supporting Amazon Web Services (AWS), CloudSnap enables snapshot backup to S3 and Glacier, with recovery options into EBS or back to FlashArray. CloudSnap can restore customer's data in the public using the cloud's native storage formats, which enables full use of public cloud PaaS services. CloudSnap represents Pure's first step to much deeper public cloud integration within Purity.
- Snap to FlashBlade and NFS. Purity's Snap technology has been greatly enhanced to seamlessly move data copies off FlashArray for long-term retention. The feature uses a new Portable Snapshot format which encapsulates recovery metadata within the Snapshot. Purity Snapshots can now seamlessly be moved to FlashBlade or any NFS target for long-term retention. The migration and recovery is seamlessly managed within Purity's snapshot management policies, which enables snapshot retention on open, lower-cost media options.
- VMware VVols. Designed for cloud automation, VMware VVols and storage policy-based management bring automation and compliance to VMware-based clouds. Pure's VVols implementation offers new levels of simplicity and hosts the VASA provider right on the FlashArray, which enables accelerated VMFS → VVols conversion, and enabling simple P→V and V→P migrations.
- Purity Run. Now, Pure offers an array that also serves as an open platform to run custom code, extend interfaces, and enable analytic processing to happen where data is stored. Purity Run enables customers to host VMs and Containers on the FlashArray itself, which opens up new avenues for extensibility and integration. Purity Run creates a safe, dedicated, performance-and-security-isolated CPU and Memory space to run customer code, and supports use cases for Edge, remote office, analytic and database appliances.
- Windows File Services for Purity. Many FlashArray customers want to consolidate point SMB and NFS file shares onto FlashArray. Purity Run now integrates with Windows File Services (WFS) bringing best-of-breed SMB 2/3 and NFS 3/4 protocols onto FlashArray. WFS, fully integrated and optimized for FlashArray, is fully supported by Pure Storage, and can be easily managed with the native Microsoft management stack.
- Microsoft ODX. Integration with the Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX) API brings fast, transparent, automatic data copy and move services for files and VMs, onto FlashArray. By offloading the data transfer to the storage array, our ODX implementation minimizes latencies, maximizes array throughput, and reduces resource usage such as CPU and network consumption on the host systems.
- Docker Persistent Volumes. With container technology increasing in mainstream adoption, there is an immediate customer need to deliver persistent storage for containerized applications. With Certified Docker Volume Plugin for FlashArray, customers can extend the benefits of all-flash shared storage to their new containerized applications. The Pure Storage integration brings persistent storage to the docker ecosystem that extends to orchestrators like Swarm, Kubernetes and Openshift.
- Compression 2.0. Purity//FA 5.0 boosts Purity's already market-leading data reduction with an additional 25 percent improvement in compression effectiveness, and further improves all-flash cost efficiency for database and application workloads. All of this is made possible by the introduction of new self-selecting compression algorithms to match the most appropriate data sets.
- 2X Performance Improvements. Purity//FA 5.0 caps off a year of steady improvements in write performance for FlashArray, delivering up to a 2X improvement in write throughput, available to all FlashArray customers as a simple non-disruptive software upgrade.
In addition to the new software features, Pure is also announcing the new 100% NVMe DirectFlash Shelf. First announced in April 2017, the new 100 percent NVMe FlashArray//X is the industry's first mainstream NVMe all-flash array, and leverages Pure's uniquely software-defined DirectFlash Modules.
The new DirectFlash Shelf enables the expansion of FlashArray//X beyond its base chassis, and provides NVMe expansion over a dedicated 50 Gb/S RoCE v2 NVMe/F fabric.