Embracing New Habits With Regular Purity Updates

A Fun Start to a Heady Subject!

Since this is my first Pure Storage community blog, I wrote a celebratory limerick about its subject to break the ice:

There once was a system called Purity,
Where upgrades take little dexterity.
With self-service in hand,
It's simple and grand—
Stay current with seamless prosperity!

With That Out of the Way…

I am sure we can all agree - data storage is arguably the most vital core of IT operations and businesses. After all, there’s a reason they call it a “DATAcenter” and not a “NETWORKcenter” or “COMPUTEcenter”.  And, data’s evergrowing importance is being driven by the constantly increasing demands for uptime, security, and an increasing number of storage services deployed to support business workloads, all while being overseen with fewer resources. Purity, Pure Storage's operating environment for FlashArray™ and FlashBlade™, is key to our data platform being able to support these ever growing demands.

Purity is not a static operating environment. Its development cadence is driven by customer feedback, technology trends, and the imperative to deliver continuous improved value. Examples of these improvements are: improving performance, adding SafeMode immutable snapshots, and adding NFS/SMB capabilities.

Our ask to you: Instead of viewing upgrades as infrequent, high-risk projects, operators should see them as opportunities for ongoing innovation that drive operational efficiency and deliver competitive advantages. This blog explains the strategic, operational, and security benefits of regular Purity upgrades to support that idea..

Why Don’t Admins Keep Their Arrays Updated?

Modern data centers are continuously evolving to meet business needs - new applications emerge, data volumes grow, cyber threats mutate, and the expectations for agility are always in flux. Against this backdrop, the software running the storage solutions supporting all of this must keep pace.

Interestingly, this idea is often counterintuitive to a prevalent psychology in the enterprise storage space - upgrading a storage operating environment is something that often doesn’t get done until the vendor’s end of life announcement for a specific version is on the horizon.

Why? 

• The upgrade process for legacy storage includes updating the firmware of stateful components that are dependent on firmware in their BIOS. These are risky because firmware upgrades could fail and brick components and halting the entire upgrade process.
• Their operating environments are highly reliant on that stateful nature to deliver storage services…legacy storage designs prioritized hardware capabilities over software functionality. 

And, all of this uncertain upgrade process had to occur during constrictive maintenance windows while upstream workloads were offline. This risk makes most administrators reluctant to upgrade anything until it is absolutely necessary.

Pure Storage’s approach to upgrading Purity is meant to break from that tradition and mindset, allowing for its storage platform to non-disruptively evolve in a more dynamic way that keeps pace with the continuously shifting demands of the modern datacenter and business.

Why Should Admins Keep Purity Updated?

It was mentioned above - Purity is in an aggressive and continual state of evolution, with every version released adding demonstrable value for our storage arrays. This idea can be viewed as unique in comparison to other legacy vendors, whose storage operating environment “upgrades” tend to mostly comprise bug fixes or addressing tech debt.

Here are some tangible benefits from Purity upgrades over the last two years:

• Operational Efficiency: Pure Fusion, which offers the simplicity of fleet-wide automation improvements that leverages our API-first design for Purity.
• Enhanced Storage Efficiency: Advanced data reduction techniques help shrink the storage needed for workloads, cutting down both physical footprint and associated running costs. 
• Performance Boosts: Previous Purity upgrades have fine-tuned resource allocation, providing better performance per watt and maximizing DFM utilization.
• Ecosystem Enhancements: With each release, Purity expands its support for new hypervisors, VMware updates, Kubernetes distributions, and cloud integrations. Remaining current ensures seamless interoperability as your full IT stack evolves.
• Advanced Security Features: Purity releases include new security functionalities, such as improved encryption protocols, tighter access controls, and enhanced auditing tools. These are critical for compliance and best practice operations. Purity upgrades have also delivered updated compliance features such as support for new encryption standards, expanded logging and reporting, and alignment with current legal mandates.
• Access to Reliability Improvements: Each Purity upgrade cycle delivers stability improvements, and optimizations that directly impact array performance and effectiveness. Storage administrators who delay upgrades risk remaining exposed to known issues that may have already been resolved in newer Purity releases.

Ensuring Safe, Reliable, and Consistent Updates with Purity

Change management is a valid concern; administrators often hesitate with frequent updates due to perceived risks and time costs. Pure Storage understood this when designing Purity, and has built in mechanisms to simplify upgrades:

• Automated Processes: The upgrade workflow is automated and guided, with checks for compatibility and hardware health.
• Rollback Support: In rare scenarios, if an issue emerges, supported rollback options help maintain stability.
• Comprehensive Documentation: Step-by-step guides and technical support ensure you are never left guessing during the upgrade process.

With these safeguards in place, the operational risk of upgrading is nearly eliminated, making frequent upgrades a low-impact, high-return operation.

The Purity upgrade process is non-disruptive by design - connected workloads do not have to be taken offline during the entire upgrade process. This is possible due to how our stateless controllers operate in a failover operation. It may be hard to imagine, but Pure has customers whose workloads have near “always on” requirements, and their Purity upgrades have occurred in the middle of day.

Two Paths to Purity OS Upgrades

Purity upgrades can be orchestrated through two different paths - this gives administrators the ultimate flexibility in coordinating their execution:

Figure One - Two Purity Upgrade Paths

While the outcome of both paths is the same in successful Purity upgrades, they offer different advantages:

• Support Assisted: A “white glove” experience where Pure support oversees and executes the upgrade. This is a great option for administrators who have flexible maintenance windows and prefer to supervise the process.
• Self Service Upgrades: This option offers maximum scheduling flexibility to administrators and leverages Pure1® as the orchestration tool. The upgrade process in this path is the same as Support Assisted and empowers an administrator to have full control. This is a great option if there is a struggle to match upcoming maintenance windows with Pure support for their upgrade process.

Purity OS Upgrades - Encouraging a New Way of Thinking

In an era where “always-on” operations are non-negotiable, leveraging the latest storage operating system enhancements is a proactive way to stay ahead of risks - this idea is core to Purity’s design and employment.

The pace of change in IT isn’t slowing down—and neither is Pure Storage’s innovation. Treating Purity upgrades as essential maintenance, rather than as optional enhancements, reposition your data center as a resilient, competitive, and future-ready asset.

Ready to take your storage environment to the next stage? Log into your account on Pure1 to review your array upgrade options. Don’t have a Pure1 account? That’s OK - get with your account team for more details on getting it set up. And, be sure to check out this link to see a demo of the upgrade process on Pure360.