Why You Should Make Adopting Current Long-Life Releases a Habit
Hey everyone — At Pure Storage, we see many customers who still think about storage upgrades like old-school firmware: “set it and forget it” until it’s forced to change. But FlashArray isn’t firmware it’s modern, continually improved, and designed for an agile, secure, predictable data platform. That means it’s time to make adopting recent Long-Life Releases (LLRs) a regular habit not just something you reluctantly do, "when you have to". LLRs should be your standard practice: ✅ Fresh Features, Mature Code Each LLR is built on code that’s been running in production for at least 8 months before it branches. That means you get the innovations from recent Feature Releases — tested, stabilized, and production-proven. You avoid missing out on valuable improvements while still benefiting from enterprise-grade predictability. ✅ Consistent Security and Compliance Aging too far behind, even on an LLR, can expose you to security vulnerabilities and unsupported configurations. By habitually adopting recent LLRs, you ensure you’re in the supported window for critical patches and compliance audits and avoiding fire drills later. ✅ Reduce Technical Debt Getting stuck on very old LLRs can build up technical debt. Skipping multiple versions makes your next upgrade harder, riskier, and more time-consuming. Keeping up with recent LLRs means smoother transitions, less operational friction, and easier adoption of the next improvements. ✅ Keep Innovation Flowing The idea that an LLR is “old code” is a myth. Recent LLRs contain carefully chosen, well-hardened feature improvements. If you wait too long, you lock yourself out of meaningful performance, efficiency, and capability gains that your peers are already using. ✅ Break the Firmware Mentality FlashArray is software-driven, and has a rapid but reliable development model. Treating it like outdated firmware, and you miss the true value. The LLR program is designed precisely to let you safely adopt modern features and maintain enterprise-grade stability and maintain a predictable cadence. Bottom line? Adopting recent Long-Life Releases, habitually, is the best way to get modern features, maintain security, reduce upgrade risk, and keep your environment aligned with Pure’s best practices. You deserve innovation and peace of mind. Don’t settle for less by sticking with outdated code. If you want help reviewing which LLR is right for you, or understanding the timelines, just reach out — we’re here to help you stay current, secure, and ahead of the game.FREE BEER FOR ALL!!! Now That I Have Your Attention, Let's Talk About Purity Updates.
WAIT WAIT WAIT - don't leave yet because of my free beer tomfoolery....hear me out. Listen, we get it. Storage OS updates are historically the LAST thing you ever want to consider for your already impossibly thin maintenance windows. And, we all know NOBODY ever grew up saying, "When I get older, I want to manage enterprise storage for its rock and roll lifestyle." 😀 But - hear me out. Any past pain, suffering, or heavy drinking you may have taken on during previous OS updates with other legacy vendors has been minimized or even flat out eliminated by how we handle updating Purity for FlashArray and FlashBlade. We offer two tracks you can leverage for making them happen by either working directly with support for a white glove update experience where they do all the work remotely, or you can complete them via the Self Support Update (SSU) feature built into Pure1. We encourage regular Purity updates for two reasons: Performance. stability and security improvements...obviously New feature adoption. Want Fusion 2.0? Want the ability to deliver NFS/SMB shares on your FlashArray? These are bundled into your Purity updates and require no additional licensing costs to adopt if you want them. Think of them as over the air feature updates that are all the rage for EVs... For now, take a quick look at the Purity version you are running. If you haven't updated it in a year or two (which many of you probably haven't), you're missing out on being able to squeeze extra value out of your storage. I will be posting some supporting demos and other materials to help you visualize the process in the coming month or so. I would LOVE any feedback from the community, good or bad, on current or past experiences with our updating experience...through it all we can get more boats to rise with the tide! Stay tuned! DPAnnouncing the General Availability of Purity//FA 6.7.4 LLR
We are happy to announce the general availability of 6.7.4, the fifth release in the 6.7 Long-Life Release (LLR) line! This release line is based on the feature set introduced in 6.6, providing long-term consistency in capabilities, user experience, and interoperability, with the latest fixes and security updates. When the 6.7 LLR line demonstrates sufficient accumulated runtime data to be recommended for critical customer workloads, it will be declared Enterprise Ready (ER). Until then, Purity//FA 6.5 is the latest ER-designated LLR line. For more detailed information about bug fixes and security updates included in each release, see the release notes. UPGRADE RECOMMENDATIONS AND EOL SCHEDULE We recommend customers with compatible hardware who are looking for the latest feature set offered for long-term maintenance upgrade to this long-life release. When possible, customers should make use of Self-Service Upgrades (SSU) to ease the process of planning and executing non-disruptive Purity upgrades for their fleet. The 6.7 LLR line is planned for development through October 2027. HARDWARE SUPPORT This release is supported on the following FlashArray Platforms: Cloud Block Store for Azure and AWS, FA//X (R2, R3, R4), FA//C, FA//XL, and FA//E. Note, DFS software version 2.2.3 is recommended with this release. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank everyone within the engineering, support, technical program management, product management, product marketing, finance and technical product specialist teams who contributed to this release. LINKS AND REFERENCES Purity//FA 6.7 Release Notes Purity//FA 6.6/6.7 Feature Content Self-Service Upgrades Purity//FA Release and End-of-Life Schedule FlashArray Hardware and End-of-Support DirectFlash Shelf Software Compatibility Matrix FlashArray Capacity and Feature Limits FlashArray Feature Interoperability Matrix
Ask us everything about Purity Upgrades!
💬 Have more questions for our experts around Purity Upgrades after today's live "Ask Us Everything"? Feel free to drop them below and our experts will answer! dpoorman , skennedy , rquast , jhoughes tag your it! You can also check out these upgrade resources: Bulk self-service upgrades demo video Upgrade your own FlashArray with Pure1 blog Fleet-wide self-service upgrades brief
Top 10 Reasons to Love Purity 6.9
(Because 6.7 is so 2024) 10. 🏋️♂️ Long-Life Release means it’s supported until June 2028 — which is about three years longer than that gym membership you swore you’d use. 9. 🌐 Works with all the latest FlashArray platforms, AWS, Azure… pretty much everything except your toaster (for now). 8. 🕵️♂️ Security updates so strong, even your data will feel like it’s in the witness protection program. 7. 🚀 Turn on File Services without downtime or approval from Pure product management — finally, a software update you don’t have to schedule for “that one weekend in Q4 when no one’s looking.” 6. 🙌 Encourages Self-Service Upgrades. Translation: fewer support tickets, more “Look, Mom, I did it myself!” moments. 5. 🔑 Default password warning. Yes, “pureuser” is adorable… until it becomes a resume-generating event. 4. 🍍 VMware improvements so good, your virtual machines just sent a fruit basket. 3. 🎛️ Fusion, Fusion, Fusion! Which is like having a universal remote for your data… without the panic of losing it between the couch cushions. 2. 📜 REST API 2.x release notes so thorough, they make War and Peace look like a sticky note. 🏆 You get to tell your boss you're on a "Long-Life Release," which sounds much more impressive than "I'm not doing an upgrade for a while." Check out the release notes for more! https://support.purestorage.com/bundle/m_flasharray_release/page/FlashArray/FlashArray_Release/01_Purity_FA_Release_Notes/topics/concept/c_purityfa_69x_release_notes.htmlA Platform for the Future
So, I’ve been at Pure Storage for a few seasons now. Hint: when I joined, the “//M” generation of FlashArray was still a little wet behind the ears, and was then styled as a lowercase “//m” (bonus points if you can guess the year I joined in your reply!). One of the things that has always impressed me the most about Pure, is how purposeful and thoughtful our development and engineering teams are. Most of us here had realized for years that Pure isn’t a collection of disparate products and features–it’s a real, integrated, intelligent storage platform! One OS (Purity). One flash architecture (DirectFlash). A universal NDU architecture, both software and hardware (Evergreen). Last year, we launched the Pure Storage Platform to make that engineering vision official. Today's announcements mark another huge milestone in the evolution of the Pure Storage Platform. We’ve unified operations across distributed infrastructures, maximized efficiency for AI, and embedded cyber resilience at every layer. Our engineers have outdone themselves once again. It all works together, so your organization can master its data, while you get more done. Pure Storage is helping enterprises turn data into a true business advantage. From edge to core to cloud, the message is clear: data should be unified, efficient, and resilient — so organizations like yours can innovate without compromise. Find out more about what we announced today in our blog. And let us know what you think below!Accelerate Breakout Replay: Simplifying Storage Management Automation with Pure Fusion™
See how Pure Fusion and APIs make storage automation easy—whether you're starting out or scaling advanced fleet-wide automation. Speakers: Mike Nelson Brent Lim Chris Jimenez - Fanatics https://www.purestorage.com/video/webinars/simplifying-storage-management-automation-with-pure-fusion/6375797858112.htmlAnnouncing the General Availability of Purity//FA 6.5.11 LLR
We are happy to announce the general availability of 6.5.11, the twelfth release in the 6.5 Long-Life Release (LLR) line! This release line is based on the feature set introduced in 6.4, providing long-term consistency in capabilities, user experience, and interoperability, with the latest fixes and security updates. This 6.5 LLR line has demonstrated sufficient accumulated runtime data to be recommended for critical customer workloads and has been declared Enterprise Ready (ER) effective with the 6.5.3 release. For more detailed information about bug fixes and security updates included in each release, see the release notes. UPGRADE RECOMMENDATIONS AND EOL SCHEDULE We recommend customers already running 6.5 who are looking for the latest fixes and updates to upgrade to this long-life release. When possible, customers should make use of Self-Service Upgrades (SSU) to ease the process of planning and executing non-disruptive Purity upgrades for their fleet. The 6.5 LLR line is planned for development through September 2026. HARDWARE SUPPORT This release is supported on the following FlashArray Platforms: FA//M (R2), FA//X, FA//C, and FA//XL. Note, DFS software version 2.2.3 is recommended with this release. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank everyone within the engineering, support, technical program management, product management, product marketing, finance and technical product specialist teams who contributed to this release. LINKS AND REFERENCES Purity//FA 6.5 Release Notes Self-Service Upgrades Purity//FA Release and End-of-Life Schedule FlashArray Hardware and End-of-Support DirectFlash Shelf Software Compatibility Matrix FlashArray Capacity and Feature Limits
New Reference Architecture: SQL Server on Azure VM's with Pure Cloud Block Store
This is a brand new, weeks-old reference architecture — and I’m really excited about this one. During development, one of the most surprising discoveries was just how much Azure VM performance is limited by the IOPS cap tied to managed disks. It caught me off guard how much planning it takes just to size storage and compute together when you go the native route. With CBS, I was able to bypass those constraints. It felt more like working with enterprise storage (which is what its meant to do!) , I could pull from a pool, scale performance independently of VM size, and provision storage volumes in a clean and easy way. This new RA covers: SQL Server architecture on Azure VMs with Pure Cloud Block Store Snapshot-based backup and restore DR patterns using ActiveDR™ and HA using ActiveCluster™ Dev/test database cloning with volume snapshots Performance benchmarking vs. Azure Premium SSD v2 It prooved: ~40% more transactional throughput (TPROC-C) ~93% better analytical query performance (TPROC-H) (using queries per minute normalization) 3–5x data reduction vs. raw data Download the full reference architecture here Would love to hear your thoughts on this architecture and how we could improve the expirience!
