MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif — June 1, 2015 — Pure Storage, the market’s leading independent solid-state array vendor today announced FlashArray//m, the company’s new flagship all-flash storage array, Pure1 (see concurrent press release here), a new cloud-based management and support offering, and Evergreen Storage, a new model for storage procurement and upgrades. Together, these innovations deliver storage that is dramatically simpler and more efficient, and eliminate the forklift upgrade and data migration burden from storage ownership. Now, storage can contribute meaningfully to transforming customers’ business and IT infrastructure for higher growth and profitability.
Pure Storage’s new Evergreen Storage model eliminates the three- to five-year rip-and-replace storage lifecycle that has impaired IT efficiency for decades. With this new model, customers deploy storage once and upgrade it in-place for generations. Evergreen Storage is delivered by combining FlashArray’s modular, stateless and software-defined architecture with Forever Flash, the company’s standard maintenance program. Forever Flash delivers predictable ongoing “flat and fair” pricing, and includes software updates as well as periodic hardware upgrades, keeping the FlashArray modern over time. Pure Storage is also announcing Upgrade Flex Bundles, which enable customers who are expanding their capacity to upgrade their FlashArray controller hardware, if desired, and receive trade-in value for their existing controller investment. Evergreen Storage enables enterprises to invest in a storage infrastructure that helps their business be faster, smarter and more innovative – both today and tomorrow.
“Today, even when a customer buys the latest storage array, newer replacement equipment lies just around the corner, ready to render the current deployment obsolete. To refresh their technology, customers endure upgrade costs and hours of decreased performance or service interruptions during their ‘forklift upgrades’,” said Matt Kixmoeller, vice president, Products, Pure Storage. “The Evergreen Storage model changes all this completely. Now customers can invest in a storage platform that can add value to their businesses for a decade or more, and make individual component, non-disruptive upgrades to capacity and/or performance when required by the business. This flat, predictable, SaaS-like procurement model further lowers the bar for customers to bring all-flash storage into their data centers, unlocking both business and IT transformation.”
“It is clear that flash storage in the datacenter is here to stay. IDC recommends that all data centers should have flash deployed in at least some capacity today and should be strategically considering how best to leverage it going forward,” said Eric Burgener, Research Director, IDC. “With today’s announcements from Pure Storage, they are creating a unique, new model for technology refresh that offers significant value for their customers. Supported by modifications in the hardware of their new FlashArray//m, customers can now and going forward upgrade entire FlashArrays in the field to completely new technology generations without any downtime, performance impacts, forklift upgrades or data migration. This new model will change customer preconceptions about the way technology refresh is performed in enterprise-class storage arrays.”
FlashArray//m: Marrying Hardware and Software Innovation in All-Flash Storage
FlashArray//m, the fourth generation of Pure Storage’s flagship FlashArray product, delivers complete end-to-end integrated hardware and software innovation, a first for an all-flash array. FlashArray//m features a modular upgradable architecture, and delivers a 50 percent increase in performance, 2.6x improvement in density, and 2.4x improvement in power efficiency-per-terabyte over previous FlashArray generations. The FlashArray//m fully integrates two high-performance Intel Haswell controllers running the Purity Operating Environment 4.5, new NV-RAM cache modules, and new dual-drive flash modules inside the three rack unit (RU) chassis. This density results in the consolidation of racks of legacy disk storage, driving a 5-10x power, space, and efficiency improvement.
The FlashArray//m offers three controller options to meet a variety of performance and capacity needs:
Consistent with its Evergreen Storage model, Pure Storage crafted the new FlashArray//m to deliver density, performance and simplicity without sacrificing scalability and upgradability. The FlashArray//m delivers:
Pure1: Bringing Cloud-Based Management and Support Simplicity to Storage
Available today, Pure1 is Pure Storage’s new cloud-based management and support platform that enables customers, support staff and partners to seamlessly and securely collaborate to manage and support storage. Pure1 is built upon the Pure1 Cloud platform, an expansion of Pure Storage’s existing CloudAssist technology. More information on the Pure1 announcement can be found in today’s concurrent press release here.
Evergreen Storage that Translates to Business and IT Transformation
With today’s announcements, Pure Storage is introducing a modern, next generation storage platform that combines the industry’s first flash-optimized software and hardware flash array (FlashArray//m) with a revolutionary business model. This platform delivers a new storage ownership model that results in business and IT transformation for customers.
“Pure Storage continues to raise the bar with all-flash technology and FlashArray//m is proof of the company's commitment to innovation. Pure Storage allows us to be more dynamic and we no longer worry that we are going to run out of data storage," said Peter Dunn, Director of Communications and Services, Lamar Advertising. "The administration of FlashArray is easy and intuitive, it just works! Pure allows us to run business intelligence applications with the optimal performance, accelerating the completion time for critical development projects."
Pricing and Availability
The FlashArray//m has been validated in a widespread Beta program since Q1, 2015 and is expected to be available through a global Directed Availability program in July, enabling fully-supported production deployments. Full-volume shipments for General Availability are expected in Q3, 2015. Customers who purchase a FlashArray 405, 420 or 450 from February 1, 2015 through FlashArray //m GA are automatically entitled to the Pure Storage Upgrade Assurance Promotion (eligible to receive a free, non-disruptive //m chassis and controller upgrade when expanding their array by purchasing qualifying capacity) until January 31, 2016. All software features provided with Pure1 are available today and are automatically included with all FlashArray purchases, while on an active maintenance and support contract.
Click here to see what the Pure Storage technology alliance and channel ecosystem is saying about partnering with Pure Storage. Authorized Pure Storage channel partners can help customers to determine the right configuration for their environment. To find a reseller in your region, visit: https://www.purestorage.com/contact.html.
Watch the live stream of the Pure Storage launch event from New York City on June 1, 2015 at 2:30PM ET.
For a paper authored by IDC entitled Pure Storage Introduces a New Technology Upgrade Model with Evergreen Storage, visit here.
About Pure Storage
Pure Storage, the market’s leading independent solid-state array vendor, enables the broad deployment of flash in the data center. The company’s all-flash enterprise arrays offer significant performance and efficiency gains over mechanical disk, at a lower price point per gigabyte stored. Pure Storage FlashArrays are ideal for performance-intensive applications, including server virtualization and consolidation, VDI, OLTP database, real-time analytics and cloud computing. To learn more, visit:www.purestorage.com.
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