Pure Storage delivers long-term promise of resiliency and efficiency with unified block and file storage arrays

New global storage pools, unified policy management, and industry-first virtual machine-aware storage management capabilities allow FlashArray customers to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) by up to 58%

May 8, 2023, China - Pure Storage®, a global IT pioneer that provides advanced data storage technologies and services for multi-cloud environments, today announced the official launch of File Services for FlashArray™. This set of storage services can help enterprises benefit from a single global storage resource. The pool obtains native block and file storage services . Pure Storage FlashArray is currently the only storage system designed from the ground up to provide a native, unified block and file experience for flash storage.

Pure Storage delivers long-term promise of resiliency and efficiency with unified block and file storage arrays

Significance to the industry: 

Traditional multi-protocol block and file storage solutions have been around for decades, but these products have yet to deliver the resiliency and efficiency promised by unified storage arrays. Regardless of whether it was originally built for block or file use cases, new protocols are simply tacked on and will significantly increase management complexity in large-scale environments. Pure Storage rethinks the unified storage experience from the ground up and develops a modern architecture that supports the highest levels of native block and file services simultaneously and overcomes the shortcomings of traditional add-on platforms. 

News Highlights: 

Pure Storage delivers the first truly unified block and file platform built from the ground up with a unified experience in mind. The elastic global storage resource pool eliminates the need to plan storage growth in advance and also has a unified policy management system that can help reduce system management time. Pure's unified storage architecture allows customers to enjoy native block and file services, and receive direct support for files, blocks or virtual machines. According to the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), a leading industry analyst, it is estimated that such a platform can reduce management time by up to 62% and save up to 58% in total cost of ownership over three years.

Through FlashArray's unified block and file platform, customers will receive: 

• Global storage pool: Pure's elastic global storage pool eliminates the complexity of traditional unified arrays. In the past, system administrators needed to pre-plan every storage update and request. Now, they can simply use the parts they need, including blocks and files, while being able to expand in real-time without interruption and without file system size restrictions. 

• Unified policy management: Pure's management method can eliminate the complexity of traditional storage platforms and help system administrators accurately manage specific storage services that need to be deployed and controlled. With unified policy management, all jobs can be started quickly and applied consistently regardless of block or file. 

• Equipped with virtual machine-aware storage capabilities: Pure also launched VM-Aware Storage, which is the industry's first strategy to provide deeper visibility at the virtual machine level. Pure's current provision of granular visibility and management of files is also applicable In virtual machines and VM-Aware Storage. System administrators can natively manage virtual machines running on FlashArray, including virtual machine-level statistics, snapshots, capacity quotas, and policies. 

• Extensive support for common application scenarios: Pure supports all common application scenarios, including VMware and NFS data storage, user directories and configuration files, content repositories, data protection, and backup.  

Customer Insights:

"With the rapid growth of data, we recognize the importance of modernizing and unifying storage infrastructure practices to properly utilize IT resources," said Francesco Corba, IT Infrastructure Manager at Ospedale Pederzoli. "Pure Storage's FlashArray File Services can help reduce storage complexity , eliminating data silos and waste without sacrificing overall performance or efficiency. In fact, using Pure will reduce the number of machines in the data center by more than 75%, thereby eliminating technical barriers and giving more time to customers. Develop innovation, save a lot of costs, and invest more securely.” 

Analyst insights: 

Aviv Kaufmann, Practice Director and Chief Economic Validation Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, said: "As data grows, companies that rely on data to operate are constantly innovating to maximize the benefits of data and reduce management costs. Reducing management points can help simplify Storage operations while improving investment value, but the real value should be to unify block and file storage resources into a single native platform without sacrificing any service. Through customer interviews, product use experience and extensive knowledge of the storage industry, We found that Pure Storage's unified all-flash block and file storage reduces the complexity of managing block and file workloads by 62% and reduces total cost of ownership by 58%." 

Executive Insights: 

"The traditional unified storage market has been hampered by a lack of resiliency and costs derived from decades-old architectures," said Shawn Hansen, vice president and general manager of Pure Storage FlashArray. "It's time for a different approach, and we're excited about it." Delivering the first truly unified block and file storage platform, built from the ground up for modern simplicity and evolving with customers."