Pure//Accelerate: Pure Storage Unveils Next-Gen FlashArray//X and FlashArray//C R4 Systems

At Pure//Accelerate 2023, Pure Storage, Inc. announced the release of the next-gen FlashArray//X and FlashArray//C R4 models.

FlashArray//C R4

These models deliver global enterprises with the data agility, performance, security, and cost savings needed to economically scale business operations with an efficient storage product line.

Industry significance
The combination of data growth, changes in application types, new technologies and the need to move faster drive a critical need for agility, yet organizations continue to face pressure to get more done with less energy, less time, and reduced costs.

However, today’s fragmented and siloed storage solutions, coupled with stagnant IT budgets and countless manual, inflexible operations, continue to result in increased Opex costs, while the rapid growth of data causes existing storage platforms to reach capacity and management limits too quickly.

The FlashArray//X and FlashArray//C supports the industry’s agile storage needs by pioneering an all-flash platform that uniquely integrates hardware with a unified Purity operating environment architecture across all products.

Highlights
With a massive leap forward in performance and scale, FlashArray continues to lead the storage industry, powering the most demanding applications and business-critical workloads while reducing their overall management costs by up to 74% over legacy storage. The company’s Evergreen//Forever subscribers can take advantage of the massive performance and efficiency gains at no additional cost and completely non-disruptively.

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FlashArray//X and FlashArray//C R4 models deliver advancements over prior-gen. Customers get:

Up to 40% performance boost: The latest R4 models drive up to a 40% performance boost, over 80% increased memory speeds to support greater workload consolidation, and a 30% inline compression boost to stretch storage capacity further. Built on PCle Gen4 technology and using the latest Xeon chipset and DDR5 DRAM, FlashArray//X and FlashArray//C R4 gives customers more power to support more workloads with up to 74% TCO savings.
More choices for business-critical workloads: By expanding its FlashArray//C line with FlashArray//C90, the company enables more customer choices for business-critical workloads and data where sub 2ms latency is not required, making it the platform for operational databases, workload consolidation, BCDR, and file workloads, including VMware, PACs, and file stores.

Industry’s largest flash drives: FlashArray//C will include the upcoming release of 75TB QLC DirectFlash Modules with built-in non-volatile RAM (DFMDs), while FlashArray//X will include 36TB TLC DFMDs. These DFMDs deliver 1.5PB/3RU, a 106% improvement in density/rack unit. DFMDs, first introduced with Flash/Array//XL, reduce rack space requirements and enable even more scale with capacity and improved NVRAM throughput. DirectFlash provides 20x greater reliability and drives over 4x more energy efficiency compared to competing AFAs.
Continuous innovation, without extra cost or disruption: Firm’s customers can take advantage of the R4 upgrades at no cost via a non-disruptive, no-downtime upgrade through the company‘s patented Evergreen architecture and subscription offering. Evergreen//Flex uniquely adds how hardware components and controllers can be reused across the family. Pure pioneered the notion of non-disruptive upgrades via a subscription to continuous innovation and has since upgraded more than 30,000 active storage arrays.
Improved data protection: FlashArray Auto-on SafeMode has been extended to new volumes on existing arrays, including a new default snapshot schedule and snapshot protection for up to 30 days. This gives customers ultimate protection for all data, with no additional effort, while still providing granular controls as needed.

“Pure pioneered all-flash storage, and the 4″ generation of FlashArray//X and FlashArray//C extends our multi-year leadership advantage. We’re driving the revolution of an all-flash data center at the cost of disk-which unlocks the incredible density, OPEX, and power efficiency savings needed for next-generation data centers,” said Shawn Hansen, VP and GM, FlashArray, Pure.

“FlashArray has long supported us in improving the performance and availability for our enterprise clients’ most critical workloads. These powerful new advancements in efficiency, performance and security will allow lnvolta to unlock even more value and scalability while driving ongoing TCO savings with unified, efficient management,” said Josh Holst, VP, cloud services, lnvolta.