Pure Storage: Top End FlashArray Model, Bringing Power and Scale With Simplicity to Enterprise
FlashArray//XL and Pure Fusion combine to provide limitless scale with rapid deployment and flexibility of cloud
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on December 9, 2021 at 2:03 pmPure Storage, Inc. announced FlashArray//XL, the newest member of the FlashArray family, designed for mission-critical, platinum tier enterprise applications – from massive databases to containerized and cloud-native apps. FlashArray//XL delivers unmatched performance and scale with a nearly 80% improvement in IO/s.
With the pace of business only increasing, application demand can shoot up in an instant and the need for new apps to be deployed requires IT to work in hours, not months. Previously, the largest enterprises had to scale their top tier applications with legacy technology that required high management complexity, high power and energy costs, and disruptive forklift upgrades.
Now, with the new FlashArray//XL and Pure Fusion – Pure’s self-service, autonomous Storage-as-Code platform – Pure continues to add enterprise-grade scale to its promise of subscription storage that easily evolves to keep IT infrastructure agile and up-to-date.
FlashArray//XL delivers:
- Strength to run the most demanding business services: Accelerate enterprise workloads with maximum performance even as they scale to operate at increased loads, with 100% more host connectivity and two times more volume support on a single array.
- Cloud-like model for deploying new apps quickly and easily: Designed to work in concert, Pure Fusion and FlashArray//XL give enterprises Storage-as-Code access to cloud scale, enabling platinum-level storage tiers and data policies with robust tools to optimize storage pools and workload placement.
- Efficiency and density to consolidate applications for maximum TCO and green data center standards: Enable workload consolidation on fewer arrays to simplify operations, reduce rack space requirements, and significantly reduce power consumption and cooling costs.
- Always-on data protection that’s savvy to ransomware threats: Ensure that data stored on FlashArray//XL is secure, available, and easily recoverable after disruptions, including malicious attacks.
- Future-proof with Evergreen subscription: Get immediate access to ever-improving capabilities with a right-size guarantee and non-disruptive upgrades and capacity expansions as storage needs evolve.
FlashArray //XL and Pure Fusion were built to meet demand from new customers who wanted to standardize their storage environments on the simplicity of the Pure subscription model but needed new levels of scale. This demand is already seeing early validation with pre-release orders to standardize top enterprise workloads on FlashArray//XL arrays, as customers eliminate the last remnants of their legacy Dell EMC footprint.
“Customers expect a new, modern way to scale enterprise storage. FlashArray//XL is a clear shot across the bow of legacy storage vendors by combining high-end scale of a true enterprise-class array with the scale-out agility of the cloud operating model,” said Shawn Hansen, VP and GM, FlashArray.
“For top tier applications like massive databases, enterprises need maximum performance and density, but they also want the control of their own datacenter and the agility and flexibility of the cloud. Enterprise-class storage solutions like the FlashArray//XL that are coupled with the cloud operating model give customers the best of both worlds,” commented Eric Burgener, research VP, enterprise infrastructure practice, IDC
“The announcement of the FlashArray//XL series underscores Pure’s unwavering commitment to delivering market leading storage services. It is exciting and exceptionally gratifying to see a partner with the same dedication to supporting even the most demanding workloads. It’s clear that the new //XL platform will ensure continued support to our growing and expanding data services portfolio and ecosystem,” added James Laming, VP, Global Head of Infrastructure, Options Technology
Available, FlashArray//XL delivers up to 5.78PB effective capacity, 150µs latency, and up to 36GB/s throughput, with 5:1 data reduction average, 10:1 total efficiency, and 99.9999% availability in a 5U platform.
Resources:
FlashArray//XL product page
FlashArray//XL data sheet
Comments
This announcement represents a milestone for the company introducing a denser, faster and bigger storage array in the Pure lifetime. Storage analysts recognize the pioneer and leadership role of the manufacturer in the industry.
This new member of the FlashArray family, the XL, arrives with several new attributes and characteristics. Among others we notice a capacity of 5.78PB in 5U, a minimum latency of 150µs, a bandwidth of 36GB/s and a data reduction factor of 5:1. The availability reaches 6x9 which means 52mn per year. It embeds some permanent data protection methods especially around ransomware. Performance and scalability receive a positive multiplier gaining respectively 70% and 68% increase versus the FA//X90 model. Beyond NVMe devices, in term of connectivity the array can be coupled to hosts with NVMe-oF with Ethernet (RoCE) and FC in block mode but as a unified storage entity industry file sharing protocols such NFS and SMB are also available.
This model introduces a new DirectFlash module with NVRAM directly embedded on it removing the central or global NVRAM. This new design coupled with DirectMemory and Cache filled with Optane SCM suggests a better bandwidth and an interesting latency profile. This new evolution provides also a better density in 5U with 40 DirectFlash modules. Purity 6.2 offers a mechanism to assign volume and volume groups to these DirectMemory modules to reach a new level of QoS finally. 6TB is the maximum supported. Beyond this volume prioritization, Purity 6.2 extends the protection, BC and DR capabilities.
The goal was to address the new challenges around business applications and IT agility with an increase in performance and scalability. In fact, this new product targets top tier applications being consider as a top-end solution.
It confirms that such approach converges to the platform approach rather than a tool or product. Tool is of course not the case here, as it is more reserved for single or mono task offering, product is obviously more global but not central or critical for the business. Here it is considered as a platform, a storage platform, at the heart or center of the IT environment that supports the business of the enterprise. In other words, all data traffic enter that platform to be stored, protected and served high demanding applications.
With such characteristics, the FA//XL represents an interesting model for consolidation whatever is the application environments: bare-metal, VM or container-based. With advanced data reduction and efficiency ratio, this delivers optimized TCO, once again an angle of friction for usual suspect players.
With that, it just fills the gap with competition but the association with Pure Fusion, introduced last September, makes the offering a real compelling one. On demand and storage as code allowed by Pure Fusion provide a new dimension towards a cloud operating model, a bit like the cloud giant does everyday exposing a very fast and easy way to deploy a service.
In other words, a on-premise product is deployed like a cloud service. Having reach this level marks a key moment that eliminates once again a long time resistant barrier between these 2 environments.
This self-service approach is a real trajectory for the company with several key steps since the launch of the company. Pure as-a-Service, Evergreen, Pure1, Cloud Block Store and Portworx... are all key elements of this strategy confirming that on-premises must include cloud oriented management to compete vs. cloud offerings and keep a serious attractive point. If you add subscription, you converge with real cloud behaviors and this is clearly what users expect.
Beyond the product itself, we understand that this resource control, consumption and on-demand model and globally Infrastructure as Code coming from the DevOps world crystalizes the market battle with other classic gorillas like Dell with Apex, HPE GreenLake/Alletra, NetApp, IBM, Hitachi, Infinidat to name a few, as we counted up to now 153 manufacturers of AFA systems in the world.
It will be interesting to see the evolution of various offerings and ecosystems with proprietary approaches and open ones based on Red Hat Ansible, HashiCorp Terraform, Chef, SaltStack or Puppet... and we must include here also the composability industry effort.
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