INTELLIGENT DATACENTRES
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Customers are looking to leverage public cloud to both develop applications and to retain data for long-term protection
• Data on disk is the last mechanical gate in the compute chain
• Delivering reliable and efficient storage is only a very small piece of the data lifecycle
• Differentiation lies in having the most data, analysing it the fastest, discovering new insights, delivering new products and experiences not possible without it
• Hyper-converged vendors are focusing on reducing cost by making storage just an integrated commodity function versus a platform for strategic advantage
• It is time to banish SCSI for good
• Legacy protocols most notably SCSI remain the archaic way we still speak to flash within storage arrays and to storage arrays over the network
Earlier this year we introduced FlashBlade, the second major product from Pure Storage, aimed squarely at tackling the big data problems and opportunities of tomorrow.
Transform application data storage
5 again with Non-Volatile Memory Express Our founding vision for Pure Storage was to eradicate the spinning disk from the datacentre, but it turns out that the remnants of disk remain in the storage architecture even after the disk is gone. Legacy protocols, most notably SCSI, remain the archaic way we still speak to both flash within storage arrays, and to storage arrays over the storage network. It is time to banish SCSI for good.
The advent of the new Non-Volatile Memory Express and Non-Volatile Memory Express / F protocols hold the promise to do just that. Non-Volatile Memory Express over PCIe enables storage arrays to eliminate serial-attached SCSI links from their controller processors to flash. Non-Volatile Memory Express / F enables dramatically faster, SCSI-less connections between servers and storage arrays, making them appear local to servers and enabling local storage performance with networked storage shared efficiency and manageability.
Pure Storage’ s approach to Non-Volatile Memory Express is simple, and perhaps unsurprisingly similar to how we first approached flash. We believe Non-Volatile Memory Express is for everyone. We are building a set of Non-Volatile Memory Express-enabled products that will allow mainstream Non-Volatile Memory Express adoption across a wide set of use cases, not just for the performance elite.
The move to Non-Volatile Memory Express will be a multi-year transition, and we are committed to taking our customers there in a non-disruptive, investmentprotected, Evergreen fashion.
Deliver next-generation converged
6 infrastructure, optimised for cloud and new stack applications Storage does not exist as an island, it is deployed with compute, networking, virtualisation, and all this is ultimately in the service of applications and users. Nearly a decade ago the concept of converged infrastructure was born to gain the advantages of an end-to-end tested stack. We see an opportunity to re-think converged infrastructure solutions for the modern cloud era, an era that demands greater agility and uses public cloud as the key comparison yardstick.
It was this need to modernise that first inspired us to create FlashStack converged infrastructure solutions over two years ago. Pure Storage and Cisco Systems recently announced an expansion of collaboration around FlashStack. We believe FlashStack is the most reliable, powerful, and agile private cloud foundation available.
Looking further beyond, we see an opportunity to redefine the lines between databases, analytic stores, and data storage. In the end, they are all about interacting with your data. Should they not be much more seamless? Can we blur the lines to create a new data tier to power next-generation applications?
Make application development and data
7 protection effortless in the cloud era
Delivering reliable and efficient storage is only a very small piece of the data lifecycle. While storage has improved, data management processes have remained largely unchanged for decades, and drive much of the proliferation of unnecessary data copies in the enterprise. It is also a whole new era, a cloud era, where customers are increasingly looking to leverage the public cloud to both develop applications and to retain data for long-term protection.
We believe that the potential of data is so huge, so integral to the future of the digital economy, that the market deserves a pure-play company that focuses wholly on delivering data advantage.
Matt Kixmoeller is Vice President Products at Pure Storage
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