Pure Storage Cloud for Azure VMware Solution, a Closer Look

By Vaclav Jirovsky, principal technical product specialist for cloud, Pure Storage, Inc.

Now in public preview, Pure Storage Cloud extends the power of the Pure Storage platform to the public cloud, providing enterprise-grade storage for VMware in Azure.

Today marks an important milestone in the development of our new Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud service as we move into public preview for Azure VMware Solution. First announced in November 2024 at VMware Explore Barcelona, this new fully managed Azure Native service makes it possible to migrate storage-heavy VMware environments to the cloud via Azure VMware Solution.

In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at the service and provide a technical deep dive, explaining its architecture, deployment, deepened VMware integration, pricing, and security considerations.

What Is Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud?
Many organizations already use Pure Storage in the public cloud today with Pure Cloud Block Store. This service extends the power of Purity, our storage operating environment, beyond your data center, bringing benefits like efficiency, enterprise-grade security, features, and reliability to the public cloud. Used for disaster recovery and production and dev/test workloads, this service is most loved for helping customers save on their cloud storage bills, but it requires you to manage and deploy your own storage arrays. 

While a customer-managed service offers ultimate flexibility and control, many of our customers have expressed a strong need for a service that requires less operational overhead and seamless integration into their Azure environment.This is where Pure Storage Cloud as an Azure Native service comes in—extending the power of the Pure Storage platform to the public cloud as a fully managed block storage as a service (STaaS), natively integrated and consumed directly within the Azure Portal and VMware tools.

Figure 1: Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud service in the Azure Portal
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Offered as part of Azure’s Native Integrations program, Pure Storage Cloud offers:

• Enterprise-grade storage with no infrastructure management burden: Pure Storage and Microsoft engineers handle all aspects of platform management, including patching, upgrades, and overall storage lifecycle operations.
• Flexible pricing models: Customers are charged based on actual consumed capacity and allocated performance. Our advanced data reduction technology helps optimize storage efficiency and drive cost savings.

Solving AVS Storage Challenges
In its first iteration, the Azure Native version of Pure Storage Cloud will offer a fully managed service designed to optimize Azure VMware Solution (AVS). Many enterprises look to AVS to extend or move on-premises VMware environments to the cloud without rearchitecting.

One of the biggest hurdles to AVS adoption is storage scalability. AVS’s default storage option, vSAN, tightly couples storage with compute, requiring customers to scale storage by adding more AVS nodes – even if compute power is not needed. This increases costs significantly for non-utilized compute power and memory.

With Pure Storage Cloud, storage scales independently, allowing customers to:

• Reduce AVS TCO by up to 40% by eliminating unnecessary compute node expansions.
• Unblock storage-heavy workload migrations by providing a scalable storage model.
• Leverage enterprise storage features like vVols, snapshots, and deduplication natively within their AVS environment.

First vVols Storage Provider for AVS
Pure Storage Cloud is the first and only vVols storage provider for any public cloud VMware offering. vVols (Virtual Volumes) are a VMware storage framework that improves the granularity and flexibility of storage management in VMware environments. Unlike traditional VMFS-based storage, which relies on LUNs and datastores, vVols abstracts the storage layer into smaller, virtualized units tied to individual VMs. By doing so, vVols offers: 

• Granular VM storage control: Each VM gets its own virtual volume, allowing per-VM snapshots, policies, and performance management.
• Faster, more efficient storage operations: Unlike VMFS, vVols eliminates LUN-based constraints and inefficiencies.
• Seamless VMware integration: Pure Storage Cloud automatically installs a management plugin into the vSphere Client, enabling VMware admins to manage storage directly with familiar tools.

Architecture
Pure Storage Cloud is powered by our Purity OS, delivering the following advantages:

• No customer-managed hardware: Pure Storage Cloud doesn’t require any special hardware and runs on top of Azure standard IaaS resources, leveraging Azure’s strong scale and availability options.
• Secure private network integration: Pure Storage Cloud is available from your virtual network via private, high-performance access to storage.
• Native integration with vSphere: The Pure Storage Cloud service automatically installs into the vSphere Client plugin, allowing full storage management from a single interface.

Deployment
Pure Storage Cloud can be deployed from the Azure Portal and connected to a vNET, where AVS is connected.

Figure 2: Architecture diagram of Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud

1. Delegate a subnet for the Pure Storage Cloud service in your Azure vNET, which is connected to AVS via an ExpressRoute Circuit, enabling a private, secure, and high-performance connection for your storage.

2. Select your AVS resource to integrate with the Pure Storage Cloud service.

Figure 3: Connect your AVS resource to a Pure Storage Cloud storage pool
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3. The service automatically deploys the Pure Storage plugin into the AVS vSphere Client, enabling VMware admins to manage storage directly from their existing environment at no cost.

Figure 4: Deploy via the vSphere plugin
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Figure 5: Manage directly from your existing VMware environment
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4. Provision and manage storage seamlessly. Create VMs, manage snapshots, apply storage policies, and scale performance dynamically.

Figure 6: Manage snapshots, VMs, and storage policies from storage pools
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Data Protection and Security
Designed with security and data protection in mind, Pure Storage Cloud provides:

• Fully isolated customer resources: Each Pure Storage Cloud instance is isolated from the resources of other customers.
• Always-on encryption: All data is double encrypted at rest.
• Network-level isolation: Customers can apply NSG rules to control access and further restrict visibility into their Azure environment.

Pricing and Billing
Pure Storage Cloud counts toward your Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) spend and follows a transparent, consumption-based pricing model, with charges based on the following meters:

1. Actually Consumed Capacity
   • Minimum billed capacity: 30TB/storage pool resource
2. Allocated Performance (MB/s – based pricing)
   • Minimum performance tier: 800MB/s per storage pool resource
   • Maximum performance: 2,048MB/s per storage pool resource
   • Performance can be scaled up or down from the Azure Portal anytime 

Purchase Options

• Pay as you go: Ideal for dynamic workloads
• Commitment-based plans: Discounted pricing for long-term commitments
• Private offers: Custom pricing for specific customer needs

Public Preview: Get Started Today
If you’re ready to experience enterprise-grade storage for VMware in Azure, now’s your chance to try Pure Storage Cloud firsthand.

Pure Storage Cloud is now in public preview.

Resource:
To try the service in your Azure environment, go to the Azure Marketplace and click the Contact Me button. We’ll reach out to assist you with onboarding.