Ask Us Everything Recap: Rethinking Storage with the Intelligent Control Plane

The latest Ask Us Everything session focused on a topic that’s quickly becoming central to Everpure’s strategy: the intelligent control plane. And based on the questions from the community, it’s clear that many teams are starting to think beyond individual arrays and toward managing storage as a unified platform.

Here are the key takeaways—driven by the questions attendees asked and the answers from Everpure experts Don Poorman, Zane Allyn and Mike Nelson.

“Do I need to rebuild my automation to use Everpure Fusion?”

Most teams already have automation in place, whether it’s Terraform, Ansible, or years of scripts. The good news: you don’t have to start over.

Everpure Fusion is API-driven, so existing workflows can stay intact. In practice, you’re simply shifting from targeting individual arrays to targeting the fleet as a whole. That often means adding a parameter, not rewriting everything. Everpure Fusion picks up where any existing automation gets bogged down, so tasks get simpler as you scale, not more complex.

The takeaway: Everpure Fusion helps you scale  your existing automation—it simplifies, standardizes and extends it across your data estate.

“What does API-first really mean here?”

At Everpure, API-first isn’t just a label. The APIs are built before the GUI, which means everything you can do in the GUI is already available programmatically.

For practitioners, that translates to flexibility. Whether you’re scripting, using infrastructure-as-code, or experimenting with AI-driven workflows, you’re not waiting for features to be exposed—you already have access.

It’s a subtle difference from legacy storage,
where automation often lags behind the interface.

“How do I approach automation without losing control?”

Attendees raised a common concern: automation can feel risky.

The advice was straightforward—start with outcomes, not everything at once. Automate a single workflow, apply guardrails, and expand gradually.

Automation here isn’t about removing control. It’s about:

• Reducing repetitive work
• Minimizing human error
• Freeing up time for higher-value tasks

For most admins juggling multiple systems, that shift is practical—not theoretical.

“What does this look like in real workflows?”

One of the most relatable examples discussed was a ServiceNow-style request flow.

Instead of manually provisioning storage across multiple systems, a user submits a request describing what they need—performance, protection, and resiliency. From there, Everpure Fusion and Pure1 handle the process automatically.

The result is faster, more consistent delivery with fewer manual steps. More importantly, it abstracts the complexity away from both the admin and the requester.

That’s a major difference from legacy environments, where admins must manage each step across each array.

“What do I actually need to install?”

This answer surprised some people.

Everpure Fusion isn’t a separate product. It’s built into Purity. Once you’re on the right version (Purity//FA 6.8.1 or later, Purity//FB 4.5.5 or later), getting started is simple:

• Create a fleet
• Add arrays

That’s it. No additional infrastructure, no separate control plane to deploy.

This lowers the barrier significantly and makes it easy to start small and build as your needs require.

“How does this scale?”

As expected, scale came up quickly.

Instead of managing arrays individually, Everpure Fusion introduces fleet-level management. New capabilities like topology groups allow further organization within that fleet—by region, workload, or compliance requirements.

This is where Everpure’s approach really diverges from legacy storage. You’re no longer limited to thinking in terms of hardware. You can organize storage in ways that reflect how your business actually operates.

“What happens if something fails?”

Everpure Fusion is distributed across the arrays in the fleet. There’s no single point of failure. If one system goes offline, the rest of the fleet continues operating normally.

That design keeps management resilient while still enabling centralized control.

Final thoughts

The biggest shift highlighted in this session is simple: Stop managing arrays. Start managing outcomes.

With the intelligent control plane—powered by Everpure Fusion and Pure1—Everpure enables:

• Policy-driven automation
• Fleet-scale visibility
• Simpler, faster operations

For storage teams, that means less time on manual tasks and more time focused on how data supports the business. And based on the conversation, that’s exactly where our customers want to go.

Find out more about the Everpure Intelligent Control Plane here.

Check out this and all our other Ask Us Everything sessions. And, keep the conversation going by jumping into the Everpure Community.