It's September 24th 2024 at 5am, my alarm is going off and it's time to get on the train for Pure Accelerate London!!!!
It's now 10am and I've just arrived at the Fireworks Factory in Woolwich, I should have been here at 8:30am but you've got to love the trains in the UK.
Pure Accelerate is a highlight of the year, meeting customers, partners and of course the mighty team from Pure Storage, it's always a great event to attend and I highly recommend it for those that haven't bathed in the orange glow yet.
I was asked to write this blog post about all the technical updates & new offerings from the event, but we'd be here all day, so here are a few highlights that I think you'll be interested in.
EvergreenOne for AI: The EvergreenOne (EG1) offering is nothing new from Pure. It's the subscription-based storage model, that provides the best in flexibility & scaling in one simple contract. For those that are unfamiliar with EG1, you define a base commit capacity requirement, with guaranteed SLAs. Pure then supply the hardware to meet the capacity requirement & SLA and you consume the storage, bursting over the initial commit if needed. If Pure needs to expand the capacity or performance of the hardware, they manage that entirely.
With the introduction of EG1 for AI, the Pure Storage platform provides flexibility & scalability to make any AI solution evolve quickly, as the AI data expands. A cloud operating model provides easy predicable cost based on the most cutting-edge technology. The EG1 for AI has extended SLAs for GPUs to support training, inference, and HPC workloads, and introduces the ability to purchase based on dynamic performance and throughput needs. Pure will deliver the required performance, thereby eliminating the need for excess planning and expenditure.
New Direct Flash Module Capacity: Soon to be shipping will be the biggest capacity Direct Flash Module (DFM) to date, at 150TB it doubles the capacity but has the same power profile as previous DFMs. Thus, halving the power consumption for a similar overall footprint using 75TB DFMs. With this capacity expansion, the Pure Storage platform will reduce the datacentre footprint even further & reduce the power consumed, especially at large capacities. Initially available for the FlashBlade but it'll not be long before it's available for the FlashArray. The next iteration of the DFM will have a whopping 300TB capacity, so watch out for this in the future.
Pure Fusion: The first iteration of Pure Fusion was originally only available for greenfield sites and came out a couple of years ago. Now version 2 will be available to all existing customers as a non-disruptive upgrade.
Pure Fusion allows you to manage a fleet of arrays, whether they be FlashArray or FlashBlade, and any geographic location. By managing the fleet of arrays, it allows you to provide a global pool of storage, where different performance, security and resilience policies can be defined and implemented, allowing the pool of data to be consumed in a more public cloud like manner. This shifts the provisioning of new storage from the IT teams to the storage consumers, as they can simply request a volume of a certain capacity, with the required characteristics from a policy. Pure Fusion will then automatically decide where the new volume will be created, and which hosts it needs to be connected to.
By automating the provisioning process, Pure Fusion eliminates the risk of incorrect workload placement, avoiding the time-consuming manual placement process. The process uses AI to automatically place the new workload in the correct location based on the policies defined by IT. Transforming extensive coding, lengthy ticket requests, and manual intervention into workload presets and workflows that drastically cut provisioning efforts and resource usage.
Pure1 Updates & AI Copilot: AI is taking over the world!! Or at least trying to make our lives easier. The sustainability assessment has been in Pure1 for a while, which reports on scope 1 & 2, the latest version can now provide scope 3 assessments. Scope 3 emissions are all indirect emissions – not included in scope 2 – that occur in the value chain of the reporting company, including both upstream and downstream emissions. In other words, emissions that are linked to the company's operations.
With sustainability being a key factor in many organisations, being able to easily quantify how resources are being used & their carbon footprint, makes the justification for Pure Storage much more compelling.
The estimator feature of Pure1 has been enhanced to make more recommendations based on usage & performance. Enabling simplified expansions based on real data. Quote requests can then be sent to your Pure account team.
A new feature to Pure1 is the AI Copilot & AI Copilot for Enterprise Files (currently in preview), Copilot radically changes the way to manage & protect data using natural language queries. This makes the process of troubleshooting much easier, as most Pure platforms report back telemetry to Pure1 every 30 seconds, so the ability to train the large language models for this feature against that data, gives real insight by simply asking questions.
FlashBlade //S100: The unified file & object platform from Pure, will now be available in an entry level version. A lower capacity starting point but it still retains all the performance and scale-out architecture of the 200 & 500 versions. As with all the Pure product ranges, the FB //S100 can be non-disruptively upgraded to the larger versions, once an environment warrants the upgrade.
The concept of multi-tenancy for FlashArray was released at the Las Vegas Accelerate. That same functionality has been made available for the FlashBlade. Each "server" has its own resources and identity, allowing for segregation.
The //S version of the FlashBlade was the transition to using the Direct Flash Modules (DFM) that are utilised in the FlashArray. By consolidating the type of flash media used across the various array types, it allows Pure to simplify hardware production and have a consistent and predictable Purity OS performance at scale.
Gartner MQ Sept 2024: 11x a leader in the Gartner MQ, with 5x the furthest in vision is a real achievement for Pure Storage. This recognition indicates that Pure Storage once again innovates from the front and gives customers what they want from a storage company. An NPS score of 82, further solidifies that the Pure Storage offerings are market leading and will be for a very long time.
In conclusion, Pure Accelerate London 2024 was a resounding success. Plenty of new or enhanced offerings that everyone can benefit from, thus defining Pure Storage as the primary storage leader.
With an unrivalled product & excellent team across the board, Pure Storage makes storage exciting and as data is growing exponentially, it's got to be put somewhere, why not put it on Pure!!!