Pure Storage Unveils New Flash Array And Upgrade Model

Today Pure Storage announced a new all-flash array, the FlashArray//m. The new array is completely integrated software and hardware solution, a first for an All-Flash Array (AFA). Pure Storage is also announcing a new model of storage procurement and upgrades, Evergreen Storage. These new innovations will deliver more performance while eliminating IT inefficiencies.

Today Pure Storage announced a new all-flash array, the FlashArray//m. The new array is completely integrated software and hardware solution, a first for an All-Flash Array (AFA). Pure Storage is also announcing a new model of storage procurement and upgrades, Evergreen Storage. These new innovations will deliver more performance while eliminating IT inefficiencies.

Technology is a fickle beast. Buying the latest and greatest equipment today could lead one to owning something out of date by tomorrow. Pure Storage’s Evergreen Storage model is designed to eliminate forklift upgrades and the downtime that is associated with them. With Evergreen customers can deploy their storage once and upgrade it over and over again in-place for generations. Pure Storage achieves this upgrade model though a combination of its modular FlashArray software-defined architecture with Forever Flash, the company’s standard maintenance program. Forever Flash delivers software and periodic hardware updates to customers for “flat and fair” pricing keeping their equipment modern. Along with Evergreen, Pure Storage is announcing Upgrade Flex. Upgrade Flex is a more flexible upgrade program that enables customers to upgrade their FlashArray controller hardware more frequently.

Pure Storage’s new storage array is the fourth generation of its flagship product FlashArray. FlashArray//m is consistent with their Evergreen Storage in being modular and upgradable. The newest array has claimed performance enhancements of 50% increase in performance, 2.6 times the density, and 2.4 times as power-efficient per TB over previous models. 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 chassis.

The FlashArray//m comes in three configurations:

• //m20 controllers – up to 120+ TBs usable (5-40TBs raw storage) and 150,000 32K IOPS
• //m50 controllers – up to 250+ TBs usable (30-88TBs raw storage) and 220,000 32K IOPS
• //m70 controllers – up to 400+ TBs usable (44-136TBs raw storage) and 300,000 32K IOPS

As far as what the ‘m’ stands for, according to Pure Storage it stands for four things:

• Mini- size, capable of consolidating an entire rack of spinning disks into 3U space, with 40TB per U.
• Modular- enables customers to upgrade both processors and flash roughly every 9-12 months with no data migration, downtime, or performance impact
• Mighty- the new array claims some impressive numbers with up to 300,000 32K IOPS at less than one millisecond average latency and up to 9GB/s bandwidth
• Meaningful- simple to deploy and use and stays so over time.

Availability

The FlashArray//m is expected to be generally available in the third quarter of 2015. Customers who have either purchased a FlashArray 400-Series since February, 2015, or who do so through the remainder of the 2015 calendar year will be eligible for a special promotion, which includes a free non- disruptive upgrade to the FlashArray//m after the GA version becomes available.

Pure Storage Flash Arrays

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