From Big Data to Intelligent Data: Pure Storage FlashBlade Gets 5x Bigger, Faster

SAN FRANCISCO, June 13, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Pure Storage (NYSE: PSTG), the market's leading independent all-flash data platform vendor for the cloud era, today announced a series of updates to its FlashBlade^TM product line which allow customers to further unlock the value of data with five-fold improvements in both capacity and performance. FlashBlade customers will be able to manage up to 75 blades as a single system. The company also announced an ultra-fast, all-flash S3 object store to unlock additional use cases in rich media, healthcare and advanced analytics. Additionally, Pure introduced a 17TB blade to complement existing 8TB and 52TB configurations.

Since its introduction in March 2016, FlashBlade has helped organizations across a wide range of use-cases, including automotive, machine learning, oil and gas, professional sports, healthcare, SaaS, and predictive analytics. Driven by the expansion and analysis of mission-critical data, Pure has pushed to meet ever-evolving customer needs with significant feature updates for the FlashBlade system that help solidify Pure Storage as the most complete data platform for the cloud era.

"Modern computing frameworks have given rise to increasingly complex, high-performance analytics and valuable data," said Par Botes, VP of FlashBlade, Pure Storage. "With FlashBlade, our mission is to make big data into fast data with an all-flash platform that is big, fast, and simple to deploy – and one that provides value across all industries and segments. Today, we continue to deliver on that promise with brand new innovations that organizations and existing customers need to gain next-level insights from their data."

Scale Out: Eight petabytes across 75 blades

With the latest Purity software for FlashBlade, customers will be able to scale from seven to 75 blades for a total maximum effective capacity of 8PB and raw capacity of 4PB. With a proprietary networking module that allows up to five chassis to be managed as one cohesive system, organizations can deploy larger-scale, higher-performance systems that process more data at higher speeds.

"FlashBlade was built with dense capacity and high performance in mind from day one, but until now, the largest single system available was just short of 800TB raw. Now, we have the option to increase capacity as much as five-fold to create one system that communicates and integrates seamlessly," said Jim Dolan, Global Manager of HPC at ION. "What's truly eye-opening is the potential for performance gains across a scaled system – we don't just expect FlashBlade to get five times bigger, but five times faster, too. In data-intensive, performance-driven industries like oil and gas, there is an increased demand for ever-improving imaging processes. FlashBlade at greater scale will enable shorter delivery time, increased resource productivity and add direct business value."

Just Right: A 17TB Blade at an affordable price point

To complement existing 8TB and 52TB configurations, Pure Storage has announced the availability of a 17TB blade. This newly-available blade seamlessly fits into the modular design of FlashBlade with plug-and-play ease for both hardware and software, and offers a more attractive $/GB option for small-to-medium-sized deployments.

"At a time when many vendors have felt the crunch of supply chain shortages in the NAND and SSD industries, Pure Storage has engineered modularity into the FlashBlade system which allows us to bring new innovations to market at attractive price points," said Botes. "The new 17TB blade will provide improved simplicity of management, increased performance and real flexibility to customers with mid-range capacity needs."

Accelerated Insights: Object storage becomes fast storage

Historically, object storage has been big and slow. Today, there is an increasing need for high-performance object storage. As S3 and other public cloud object storage protocols continue to drive the growth of object storage both on-premises and in the cloud, the opportunity for a different, more modern object store has arisen – ultra-fast, all-flash, with an increased emphasis on performance.

A massive shift to highly-scalable object platforms is underway for applications that have historically used file systems. As organizations tap into next-generation applications and workloads, like deep learning and rich media, they require unprecedented levels of performance from their infrastructure. Companies that rely on the responsiveness of their websites and applications, like SaaS providers, rely on big, fast infrastructure to drive ever-better customer service levels. Meanwhile, data-intensive emerging analytics technologies have begun to leverage high-performance, large-scale object stores on the backend.

"Customers require a storage solution that supports a data intensive analytics infrastructure, so they can take advantage of data and discover insights in real time," said Rick Gordon, President, AE Business Solutions. "As evidenced by our customers, FlashBlade is a natural fit for their ever-expanding needs and this new update opens the potential of FlashBlade to large-scale, performance-intensive organizations. FlashBlade helps us offer the most complete data platform."

More Information

Additional features and updates for FlashBlade include:

• SMB v2.1 protocol interface, which allows data to be shared between SMB, NFS and HTTP clients;
• HTTP protocol interface, which allows data to be shared between SMB, NFS and HTTP clients;
• Support for IPv6 addresses for data and management, which enables the highest levels of data center scalability;
• Network Lock Manager (NLM), which unlocks additional use cases in EDA and genomics;
• Additionally, Pure Storage announced beta availability of snapshots, with expected general availability release in summer 2017.

For additional detail on today's news, please visit our blog. You can also join us today and tomorrow – June 13 & 14 – for our annual user conference, Pure//Accelerate, at Pier 70 in San Francisco via live stream.

About Pure Storage
Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG) helps companies push the boundaries of what's possible. Pure's end-to-end data platform - including FlashArray, FlashBlade and our converged offering with Cisco, FlashStack – is powered by innovative software that's cloud-connected for management from anywhere on a mobile device and supported by the Evergreen business model. The company's all-flash based technology, combined with its customer-friendly business model, drives business and IT transformation with solutions that are effortless, efficient and evergreen. With Pure's industry leading Satmetrix-certified NPS score of 83.5, Pure customers are some of the happiest in the world, and include organizations of all sizes, across an ever-expanding range of industries.

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Forward-Looking Statements
This release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding the expected performance and benefits of Pure Storage's product offerings. The words "believe," "may," "will," "plan," "expect," and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. If the risks materialize or assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. Risks include, but are not limited to, risks described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including future reports that we may file with the SEC from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. Pure Storage assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

Any unreleased products, features, or functions referenced in this release, our website or other press releases or public statements that are not currently available are subject to change at Pure Storage's discretion and may not be delivered as planned or at all. Customers who purchase Pure Storage's product offerings should make their purchase decisions based upon products, features and functions that are currently available.

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SOURCE Pure Storage