Today, Pure Storage announced two new models in their FA-400 Series line of all-Flash arrays. (Pure also announced a new major release of their Purity Operating Environment, which you can read about here.) The new hardware offerings “bracket” the previously-available FA-420, with one being smaller and one larger than it. (The “FA” in the model names stands for “Flash Array”.) I’ll walk through the details of the new models and other changes to the Pure line of arrays below.

New Entry-Point: FA-405

The new FA-405 model offers not only a lower entry-point for an all-Flash array, it also makes the case for Flash in remote or branch offices. This model has a smaller physical footprint than the rest of the FA-400 series, using a pair of new 1U controllers, rather than the 2U controllers used in the rest of the Pure arrays.

The FA-405 can be configured with 2.75 to 11TB of raw Flash storage. With data protection overhead and Pure’s average 6:1 data-reduction ratio taken into account, the largest FA-405 configuration should provide up to 40TB of effective usable space.

Truly Enterprise Flash: FA-450

The new FA-450 model is the largest offering to come from Pure. With its larger capacity, it’s ideal for expanding Flash farther through the enterprise, or for data center consolidation.

The FA-450 can be configured with 34 to 70TB of raw Flash storage. With data protection overhead and Pure’s average 6:1 data-reduction ratio taken into account, the largest FA-450 configuration should provide up to 250TB of effective usable space.

In addition to providing higher performance than the other models, the FA-450 is notable for being the only Pure Storage model with support for 16Gbps FC connectivity.

Models Going End of Sale

With the addition of the two new models, Pure is removing some models from their portfolio.

The first change is that the 2.75 and 5.5TB (raw) configurations of the FA-420 will no longer be available after 15 July. This shouldn’t be cause for concern since the new FA-405 model now fills the space that the smaller FA-420 configs once did.

The second change is that the FA-300 series is being phased out. No FA-300 models will be available for sale after 15 July. At the point, the FA-300 will enter “Year 3 Support”, Pure’s limited software support. In Year 3 Support, any FA-300 that is already installed will continue to be supported for the next 3 years. During years 1 and 2, new major software releases will continue to be tested against the platform. During year 3, any new major release published will not support the FA-300 platform.

FA-400 Family

The table below provides a quick summary of the different models in the FA-400 series, for easy comparison.

In the table, note the following:

• Usable capacity numbers take into account data protection, metadata overhead, and assume Pure’s average 6:1 data reduction ratio.
• IOPS numbers are for a mix of reads and writes using 32KB block size.

Availability

The FA-405 is GA now. The FA-450 can be ordered starting today and will start shipping in early June.