Pure Storage Announces NVMe DirectFlash and New FlashArray Model

Posted on 11 April 2017 by GeekFluent

Today Pure Storage, known for their All-Flash Storage arrays, announced their next Big Thing^TM, DirectFlash, as well as a new FlashArray model. DirectFlash is a combination of NVMe hardware and the software to manage it (more details on that below). The new array model, the FlashArray//X, uses exclusively DirectFlash as the storage medium.

A Brief Flash Primer

“Flash” refers to silicon-based memory chips used for storage. It tends to come in one of two form factors.

The first is Solid State Drives (SSD). These typically have the same dimensions as hard-disk drives (HDD) and connect via either SATA or (more typically) SAS interfaces.

The second is Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe). These use (not surprisingly) non-volatile memory chips to store data. The “Express” in the name indicates that it connects via PCIe which is not only higher bandwidth than SATA or SAS, but is both physically and logically closer to the storage controllers, making NVMe faster and higher bandwidth than SSD. NVMe is often 5X faster than SSD.

I’ll describe the new offerings from Pure below.

Continue reading →

Pure Storage’s FlashBlade is now GA

Posted on 25 January 2017 by GeekFluent

Today, Pure Storage, an All-Flash storage vendor, announced the General Availability (GA) of their FlashBlade, a scalable, All-Flash, NFS storage platform, as well as the GA of version 1.2 of Elasticity, the software that runs the FlashBlade.

I wrote about FlashBlade when it was first announced in 2016. At the time I was very excited about the possibilities of this platform. I wasn’t able to get hands-on with the platform. The closest I got was being able to hold and examine one of the blades — encased in a Lucite box. (Really. They handed it to me all boxed up. I was tempted to use my multitool to open the box up to conduct a more-thorough examination, but not only did it feel like it would be rude, they also seemed to always make sure I was within arms-reach of at least three Pure employees at any point the blade was within arms-reach of me… (Kudos to them on having done their advance research.))

At that time, not all of the specifications had been solidified, but those details are available now. Continue reading →

How I Accidentally Became a Conference Keynote Guest Speaker

Posted on 18 March 2016 by GeekFluent

Over the years, I’ve attended many industry technical conferences. I’ve been an attendee. I held a whiteboard session that was livestreamed over the Internet. I’ve done video interviews. I’ve been booth staff. I’ve given presentations in booths. I’ve been responsible for the entire booth.

With all that, there are still a few things I haven’t ever done at a technical conference. I’ve never given a keynote speech (yet), and I’ve never been a guest speaker in a conference keynote.

Earlier this week, that changed when I accidentally ended up with a (very brief) speaking role in the keynote on Day 2 of the Pure//Accelerate event.

If you were there, you may have witnessed it, or if you were following the event on Twitter, you may have read about it more-or-less as it happened, but I’ve been encouraged to share the story of how it came about. Continue reading →

Pure Storage Announces New Solutions and New Architecture

Posted on 14 March 2016 by GeekFluent

Today, Pure Storage made several announcements: new product, new bundled solutions, and a brand-new scale-out architecture. These announcements were timed to coincide with Day One of their first-ever conference event, Pure//Accelerate, which I am attending.

[DISCLAIMER: In the interest of full disclosure, Pure Storage provided me with a complimentary pass to their conference and also covered my plane fare and hotel costs to attend. That said, there was no requirement that I post anything, nor has Pure reviewed anything I’ve written in this post. The only input they’ve had on this content is being very available to answer any questions I’ve asked.]

The announcements that interested me the most are:

A new addition to the FlashArray//m Series line of products
New bundled FlashStack solutions
A from-the-ground-up new scalable storage architecture

I’ll walk through these in order below. Continue reading →

Headed to Pure//Accelerate 2016

Posted on 26 January 2016 by GeekFluent

[Disclaimer: Pure Storage is sponsoring my attendance at this event, and paying for my hotel and airfare. There was no requirement that I write about the event at all. Any thoughts or views expressed here are entirely my own.]

I’ve just received my travel confirmation to Pure Storage‘s Pure//Accelerate 2016 event coming up on 14-15 March. I’m looking forward to this event for a number of reasons. Continue reading →

Pure Storage Files Intent to IPO

Posted on 12 August 2015 by GeekFluent

Today, Pure Storage announced that it had filed Form S-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Form S-1 is essentially a proposal to create an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of publicly-traded shares of stock.

Pure Storage intends to list its Class A common stock under the ticker symbol “PSTG”. The number of shares that will be offered and the price range for those shares has not been determined yet.

Pure Storage makes a line of All-Flash storage arrays. These arrays use very effective compression and deduplication algorithms to use the SSD space effectively. To me, though, the thing that most differentiates their offering from their competitors is not the technology, but the approach. Innovative programs like Forever Flash and Evergreen Storage provide an easy answer to customers with concerns about the investment they’re making when they purchase storage hardware.

Congratulations to my friends at Pure Storage for this huge step. It will be very interesting seeing how this stock moves once it hits the market.

Pure Storage Announces New Program, New Hardware, New Software Services

Posted on 1 June 2015 by GeekFluent

Today, Pure Storage, an all-Flash array vendor I’ve written about before, made three major announcements covering a new program for customers, new hardware, and new management software. Specifically, they announced:

Evergreen Storage
The FlashArray//m family (also called FA//m)
Pure1 Management Platform

I’ll cover all three in detail below. Continue reading →

Pure Storage Announces Major Release of Purity Operating Environment

Posted on 15 May 2014 by GeekFluent

Today, Pure Storage announced a major release of their Purity operating environment. (Pure also announced two new hardware models, which you can read about here.) The new release, Purity 4.0.0, adds multiple new features including a RESTful management API, and the much-anticipated remote replication. I’ll walk through the details of what’s new in the release below. Continue reading →

Pure Storage Expands FA-400 Series Offerings