Pure Storage Unveils 3rd-Gen All-Flash Array

Pure Storage, Inc. shipped the third generation of its all-flash enterprise storage array: the FlashArray 400 Series.

It packs serious power with double the storage capacity and performance, fueled by its new Purity Operating Environment 3.0 software release with expanded capabilities and advancements like CloudAssist support technology, ZeroSnap accelerated VM cloning, always on data-at-rest encryption and tighter integration with third-party applications. While many competitive solutions are still languishing in development or extended beta programs, the FA-400 Series with Purity 3.0 software is available to customers.

The new FlashArray is simple to implement, offering rapid time to deployment so new customers can begin realizing the benefits of all-flash storage in minutes instead of days or weeks, and existing customers can quickly and non-disruptively upgrade and expand deployed FA-300 Series FlashArrays to enjoy higher performance, improved scalability and increased functionality with zero downtime. Now in its third year of production deployments, with hundreds of units shipped, Pure Storage’s third generation FlashArray is a mature, stable and production-hardened all-flash enterprise storage array.
 
"End user investments in flash storage are accelerating as organizations seek to satisfy performance requirements and reduce latency for critical workloads. IDC has forecasted the all-flash storage array market to reach $1.2 billion in revenue by 2015, with a forecasted 58.5% CAGR over the forecast period. As more vendors, such as Pure Storage, deliver enterprise features, the market will continue to gain traction with end-users," said Dan Iacono, research director for IDC storage systems. "The FlashArray 400-Series includes enterprise features such as non-disruptive upgrades, enhanced data security, broader third-party application support and a cloud-based support model, which should position Pure Storage well."

Flash for All
Pure Storage pioneered the all-flash enterprise storage array category in 2009, with a vision to disrupt the status quo of the established market by delivering the benefits of flash technology and an altogether better storage experience at a price point the mainstream could afford. The first company to drive the cost of all-flash storage below the price of spinning disk, it has turned the economics of the enterprise storage industry on its head. For more than three years, it has been delivering a storage experience that meets the resiliency, scalability, efficiency and performance requirements of enterprise customers across diverse markets and applications.
 
In recent months, legacy storage vendors have followed the company’s lead, announcing plans to deliver all-flash products; however, not every all-flash storage array is created equal. Setting the FlashArray apart from the pack is its maturity and resiliency – proven over hundreds of customer deployments – and feature-rich architecture that offers integration with leading application environments, built to deliver an optimized data center storage experience.
 
Today, with its third generation FlashArray release, Pure Storage is realizing its vision to democratize all-flash storage and deliver ‘Flash for All:’ flash for all applications – flash for all industries – flash for all customer sizes – flash for all budgets.

"Pure Storage has established itself as one of the industry’s fastest growing storage companies. It has accomplished that milestone not only by delivering truly innovative and differentiated technology, but also through its commitment to delivering a better storage experience for its customers," said Ben Woo, MD at Neuralytix. "With the hardware, software and support advancements announced, the company continues to execute on its vision to make all-flash storage a viable option for organizations of all sizes and industries, and for a multitude of applications."

Pure Storage has been deployed across a broad spectrum of organizations and geographies, with FlashArray powering production environments in at least 1 of the top 5 companies in 12 major industries. As it continues to execute on its sweeping vision to deliver Flash for All, the company will continue to scale its global operations to diversify its install base with new use cases and industry applications for customers worldwide.

"Delivering accessible healthcare demands the ever increasing speed and efficiency of our medical staff. We are always looking for IT advantages that keep our doctors and nurses focused on the patients, not the systems that support them," said Adam Ausburn, knowledge management systems director at Arcare Pty Ltd. "With Pure Storage underpinning our medical information systems, we went from long, and sometimes unpredictable application responses, to instant information access."

"We are pleased to be partnering with Pure Storage to bring the FlashArray to our hosted customers in France, which will enable us to open new market opportunities and differentiate ourselves from our competitors by offering a very high performance, all-flash storage tier to our customers that is still affordable," said Bertrand Morin at AntemetA Business Continuity. "We were pleased with the ease of deployment: the FA-420 was integrated in a matter of a few hours in our existing environment and did not require any change in the way we provision storage."

FA-400 Hardware: Twice Capacity and Performance
Leveraging Intel’s latest 8-core Sandy Bridge processor, the FA-400 now delivers up to 400,000 8K IO/s, effectively doubling the performance and capacity over FA-300 systems with up to 100TB of usable all-flash capacity. Unlike most competitors who quote 4K IOP vanity benchmarks, the FlashArray has been optimized to perform well across all IO sizes (512byte to 128K and beyond) to meet the performance needs of a variety of workloads. Customers can expand capacity and perform routine software upgrades with zero downtime or disruption, ensuring they can take advantage of future performance and capacity improvements for the life of the array.
 
Purity 3.0 Software: More Resilient, More Secure,
More Integrated and More Supportable
FlashArray’s software, now in its third generation release, offers new levels of resiliency, security, performance and integration.

New features include:

• Non-Disruptive Everything Ensures Performance Continuity: When a storage array is used to host hundreds of enterprise applications, taking downtime for array maintenance isn’t an option FlashArray offers completely non-disruptive maintenance, software updates, capacity expansion, and performance expansion through controller upgrades and drive/HW replacement, all with zero downtime or performance impact.
• Always-on Encryption and Secure Administration: The FlashArray now features always-on data-at-rest 256-bit AES encryption, helping protect customers against loss or theft of data during operations, transit or drive maintenance. Additionally, it now includes secure administration, featuring roles-based access control, multi-admin support and an audit log of administrator actions.
• ZeroSnap Accelerated VM Cloning: The company has enhanced its ZeroSnap snapshot feature, making it available with this release and enhancing it to provide accelerated VM cloning in conjunction with the VMware VAAI xCopy command. In a vSphere environment, the ZeroSnap Accelerated VM Cloning allows a typical VM clone operation to be offloaded 100% to the FlashArray, enabling 1,000 VMs to be cloned in less than 30 minutes (~2s each).
• Integration with Third Party Applications: The firm has shipped an OpenStack CINDER driver for the FlashArray, enabling web-scale customers to automate its management in an OpenStack environment. Additionally, the FlashArray now supports IBM AIX ACA (native multi-pathing), vSphere VAAI xCopy, and the vSphere Web Client management plug-in now supports iSCSI.

CloudAssist: Delivering Better Enterprise Support
With its new CloudAssist technology, customers can now break free of the old reactive support model to receive proactive health checks, diagnostics and support via the cloud.

Advantages include:

• Support Whenever and Wherever You Need It: 24x7x365 global support from the company and its trained support partners, with service offerings ranging from next-business day parts onsite to 4-hour onsite full replacement service. Round the clock phone support is offered for English-speaking countries; in-country native language tier 1 and tier 2 support is now offered for non-English speaking countries via qualified support partners.
• Cloud-Based Diagnostics and Technical Support: Calling home every 30s, FlashArrays are constantly cloud-connected. Now, powered by CloudAssist technology, it offers problem alerts, identification and analysis in the cloud, and crowdsourced intelligence gathered from Pure Storage’s installed base. Additionally, CloudAssist support personnel monitor array health in real-time and can act proactively to resolve issues and perform routine maintenance with the customer’s permission via a secure connection. And it is constantly learning and improving: issues that are found in one customer site are turned into issue signatures and uploaded to the analysis engine, allowing the entire CloudAssist customer base to be checked in real-time, so customers can be proactively notified about potential issues.

Customer Satisfaction
Pure Storage is committed to delivering a superior customer experience over its predecessors:

• Relentlessly Customer-Centric Support: With its newly opened US-based support operations center in Salt Lake City, UT and CloudAssist technology, Pure Storage offers 24x7x365 global technical support, delivered by a focused, 100% US-based, trained team integrated with engineering.
• Unconditional ‘Love your Storage’ Guarantee: The Pure Storage FlashArray is backed by the company’s risk-free Love Your Storage Guarantee. Every FlashArray is guaranteed for 30 days after arrival at the customer site. If a customer is unhappy with their FlashArray for any reason, they need to alert Pure Storage – the customer decides whether the guarantee has been met or not. If they don’t love their FlashArray, they can elect to return it for a full refund. The guarantee requires no standalone agreement, paperwork or ‘acceptance’ from either side. Full terms of the guarantee are reflected in every standard Pure Storage licensing agreement provided to customers at the time of purchase.

"We are exceedingly proud of the advancements delivered in our third generation FlashArray today and believe this release will further separate us from the pack. Perhaps more importantly, however, this release supports and extends our broader vision of creating an altogether better storage company that delivers an exceptional experience for everyone – regardless of size, regardless of industry or application, regardless of budget," said Scott Dietzen, CEO, Pure Storage. "We recognize that the market we are competing in has become hotly contested, but we wholeheartedly believe that ours is the winning recipe that is serving up what the market is actually hungry for. We continue to advance our market leadership through precision execution of our vision to deliver ‘Flash for All’ with groundbreaking product and support innovation for an unrivaled customer experience."