Updated Pure Storage Purity//FA 6.4.9 for FlashArray with Cloud Archival Option, Wasabi Support, and More

By Adam Eckerle, director, technical marketing engineer, Pure Storage, Inc.

Purity//FA 6.4.9 is available for FlashArray customers.

This monthly software release adds a number of new features, including VASA 5 support and SPBM policy enforcement for SafeMode in VMware environments. We also add FlashArray support for Wasabi to give customers another option for cost-effective long-term cloud archival of snapshots. Let’s dig in to understand why these features are important.

Optimize cloud storage bill by up to 80% for long-term retention in cloud
FlashArray customers can leverage CloudSnap to Wasabi for a cost-effective solution that is up to 80% less expensive than cloud storage alternatives. Purity//FA 6.4.9 allows you to store snapshots in Wasabi as an alternative to other clouds for long-term retention and hybrid DR purposes. Storing snapshots in Wasabi via CloudSnap not only enables you to reduce your cloud storage costs but also eliminates egress charges for data retrieved from Wasabi. Best of all, CloudSnap is included with FlashArray at no additional cost so you can start exploring it immediately.

Simplify management and enhance security of shared multi-tenant VMware environments
Purity//FA 6.4.9 adds support for VASA 5 with enhanced security and simpler certificate management. Who doesn’t want easier certificate management? Thankfully, VMware has built automated certificate provisioning into their latest VASA provider and removed the need for manual intervention. This eliminates having to share certificates across independent VMware environments through external certificate authorities which reduces the risks from human error and helps to keep certificates from causing unexpected issues. And VASA 5 has multi-vCenter Server capabilities included and on by default to make multi-VC and multi-tenancy easier to manage.

With all of these enhancements included in VASA 5, we’re proud to say that FlashArray is the first primary storage array to support this new version of VASA, enabling you to take advantage of superior VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols) capabilities. This is especially handy for those of you running multi-tenant VMware vSphere environments on FlashArray.

Simplify data protection of VMware environments
With Purity//FA 6.4.9, we’ve simplified data protection by adding replication-type policy capabilities with Storage Policy-Based Management (SPBM). Customers running virtualized workloads continue to want to control all of FlashArray’s feature use and compliance via policy-driven interfaces. Policies make this possible in a streamlined fashion, and at scale, otherwise, feature assignment is manual with no simple way to ensure configuration drift does not occur. Replication-type policy allows customers to protect their VMs through SafeMode-protection replication groups in addition to CloudSnap capabilities to protect the vVols into the public cloud. 

Conclusion
Purity//FA 6.4.9 has some important new features that should help reduce costs and make managing VMware vSphere environments better. Also, remember that with each Purity//FA release, there are plenty of bug fixes and other minor enhancements that you can read about in the release notes. We encourage FlashArray customers to upgrade to this release and to try to stay as current as possible with Purity//FA.

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