Pure Storage Delivers Critical Cyber Outcomes
“We don’t have storage problems. We have outcome problems.” - Pure customer in a recent cyber briefing No matter what we are buying, what we are buying is a desired outcome. If you buy a car, you are buying some sort of outcome or multiple outcomes. Point A to Point B, comfort, dependability, seat heaters, or if you are like me, a real, live Florida Man, seat coolers! The same is true when solving for cyber outcomes, and often overlooked is a storage foundation to drive cyber resilience. A strong storage foundation improves data security, resilience and recovery. With these characteristics, organizations can recover in hours vs. days. Here are some top cyber resilience outcomes Pure Storage is delivering. Native, Layered Resilience Fast Analytics Rapid Restore Enhanced Visibility We will tackle all of these in this blog space (multi-part post alert!), but let’s start with the native, layered resilience Pure provides customers. Layered Resilience refers to a comprehensive approach to ensuring data protection and recovery through multiple layers of security and redundancy. This architecture is designed to provide robust protection against data loss, corruption, and cyber threats, ensuring business continuity and rapid recovery in the event of a disaster. Why is layered resilience important? Different data needs different protection. My photo collection, while important to me, doesn’t require the same level of protection as critical application data needed to keep the company running. Layered resilience indicates that there needs to be different layers of resilience and recovery. Super critical data needs super critical recovery. We are referring to the applications that are the life-blood of organizations, order processing, patient services or trading applications. These may only account for 5% of your data, but drive 95% of the revenue. Many organizations protect these with high availability which provides excellent resilience against disasters and system outages. But for malicious events, such as ransomware, protection is needed to ensure that recoverable data is available if an attack corrupts or destroys the production data. Scheduled snapshots can protect that data from the time the data is born. Little baby data. Protect the baby! Pure Snapshots are a critical feature, providing efficient, zero-footprint copies of data that can be quickly created and restored, ensuring data protection and business continuity. Pure snapshots are optimized for data reduction, ensuring minimal space consumption. This is achieved through global data reduction technologies that compress and deduplicate data, making snapshots space-efficient. They are designed to be simple and flexible, with zero performance overhead and the ability to create tens of thousands of snapshots instantly. They are also integrated with Pure1 (part of our Enhanced Visibility discussion) for enhanced visibility, management and security, reducing the need for complex orchestration and manual intervention. Snapshots can be used to create new volumes with full capabilities, allowing for mounting, reading, writing, and further snapshotting without dependencies on one another. This flexibility supports various use cases, including point-in-time restores and data recovery. In events that require clean recovery, and secure recovery at that, it would be much more desirable to leverage snapshots for recovery, where you could scan and determine cleanliness and safeness, often in parallel efforts and the reset time for going to an earlier period of time is a matter of seconds rather than days. But not even these amazing local snapshots are enough. What if your local site is rendered unavailable for some reason? Do you have control of your data to be able to recover in that scenario? Replicating those local snapshots to a second site could enable more flexibility in recovery. We have had customers leverage our High Availability solution (ActiveCluster) across sites and then engage snapshots and asynchronous replication to a third site as a part of their recovery plan. Data that requires extended retention and granularity is typically handled by a data control plane application that will stream a backup copy to a repository. This is usually a last line of defense in case of an event, as the recovery time objective is longer when considering a streaming recovery of 50%, 75%, or 100% of a data center. Still, this is a layer of resiliency that a comprehensive plan should account for. And if these repositories are on Pure Storage, these also can be protected by SafeMode methodologies and other security measures such as Object Lock API, Freeze Locked Objects, and WORM compliance. And most importantly, this last line of defense can be supercharged for recovery by the predictable, performant platform Pure provides. Some outcomes of this layer of resilience involves Isolated Recovery Environments to incorporate even security and create those Clean Rooms to isolate recovery to ensure you will not re-introduce the event origin back into production. In these solutions, the speed benefits that Pure provides is critical to making these designs a reality. Of course, the final frontier is the archive layer. This is a part of the plan that usually falls into compliance SLA, where data is required to be maintained for longer periods of time. Still, more and more, there are performance and warm data requirements for even these data sets, where AI and other queries can benefit from even the oldest of data. One never knows what layer of resilience is required for any single event. Having the best possible resilience enables any company to recover, and recover quickly, from an attack. But native resilience is just one of the outcomes we deliver. Come back to read how we are delivering fast analytics outcomes in an environment that seeks to discover anomalies as fast as possible. Exit Question: How resilient is your data today? Jason Walker is a technical strategy director for cyber related areas at Pure Storage and a real, live, Florida Man. No animals or humans were injured in the creation of this post.Tips for High Availability SQL Server Environments with ActiveCluster
Tip 1: Use Synchronous Replication for Zero RPO/RTO Why it matters: ActiveCluster mirrors every write across two FlashArrays before acknowledging the operation to the host. This ensures zero Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and zero Recovery Time Objective (RTO), which are critical for maintaining business continuity in SQL Server environments. Best Practice: Keep inter-site latency below 5 ms for optimal performance. While the system tolerates up to 11 ms, staying under 5 ms minimizes write latencies and transactional slowdowns. Tip 2: Group Related Volumes with Stretched Pods Why it matters: Stretched pods ensure all volumes within them are synchronously replicated as a unit, maintaining data consistency and simplifying management. This is crucial for SQL Server deployments where data, log, and tempdb volumes need to failover together. Best practice: Place all volumes related to a single SQL Server instance into the same pod. Use separate pods only for unrelated SQL Server instances or non-database workloads that have different replication, performance, or management requirements. Tip 3: Use Uniform Host Access with SCSI ALUA Optimization Why it matters: Uniform host access allows each SQL Server node to see both arrays. Combined with SCSI ALUA (Asymmetric Logical Unit Access), this setup enables the host to prefer the local array, improving latency while maintaining redundancy. Best practice: Use the Preferred Array setting in FlashArray for each host to route I/O to the closest array. This avoids redundant round-trips across WAN links, especially in multi-site or metro-cluster topologies. Install the correct MPIO drivers, validate paths, and use load-balancing policies like Round Robin or Least Queue Depth. Tip 4: Test Failover with a regular cadence Why it matters: ActiveCluster is designed for transparent failover, but you shouldn’t assume it just works. Testing failover with a regular schedule validates the full stack, from storage to SQL Server clustering and exposes misconfigurations before they cause downtime. Best practice: Simulate array failure by disconnecting one side and verifying that SQL Server remains online via the surviving array. Monitor replication and quorum health using Pure1, and ensure Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) responds correctly. Tip 5: Use ActiveCluster for Seamless Storage Migration Why it matters: Storage migrations are inevitable for lifecycle refreshes, performance upgrades, or datacenter moves. ActiveCluster lets you replicate and migrate SQL Server databases with zero downtime. Best practice: Follow a 6-step phased migration: 1. Assess and plan 2. Set up environment 3. Configure ActiveCluster 4. Test replication and failover 5. Migrate by removing paths from source array 6. Validate with DBCC CHECKDB and application testing This ensures a smooth handover with no data loss or service interruption. Tip 6: Align with VMware for Virtualized SQL Server Deployments Why it matters: Many SQL Server instances run on VMware. Using ActiveCluster with vSphere VMFS or vVols brings granular control, high availability, and site-aware storage policies. Best practice: Deploy SQL Server on vVols for tighter storage integration, or use VMFS when simplicity is preferred. Stretch datastores across sites with ActiveCluster for seamless VM failover and workload mobility. Tip 7: Avoid Unsupported Topologies Why it matters: ActiveCluster is designed for two-site, synchronous setups. Misusing it across unsupported configurations like hybrid cloud sync or mixing non-uniform host access with SQL Server FCI can break failover logic and introduce data risks. Best practice: Do not use ActiveCluster between cloud and on-prem FlashArrays. Avoid non-uniform host access in SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances. Failover will not be coordinated. Instead, use ActiveDR™ or asynchronous replication for cloud or multi-site DR scenarios. Next Steps Pure Storage ActiveCluster simplifies high availability for SQL Server without extra licensing or complex configuration. If you want to go deeper, check out this whitepaper on FlashArray ActiveCluster for more details.
Boston Meetup - July 15, 2025 Trillium - Fort Point
Hey everyone, I want to let you all know we have scheduled a Boston Meetup for July 15, 2025 at Trillium - Fort Point in the seaport. You can view the meetup details at the following link: Join Pure Storage over a Pint at Trillium - Fort Point I hope to see you there!Pure Storage FlashBlade//S 100 Now Veeam Ready. Because Backups Deserve Better
Good news: Pure Storage has expanded our presence in the Veeam Ready database with two brand-new validations! 🎉 In addition to our existing platforms that already have Veeam Ready validations, FlashBlade//S 100 is now officially validated for both Repository and Object with Immutability use cases, solidifying our position as a trusted, high-performance platform for cyber resilience. But what does that actually mean? And why should you care? Let’s break it down. Why Use Object for Backups? Backups used to be simple, you’d write them to tape or a local disk and hope for the best. But today’s environments are more complex, distributed, and under constant threat from ransomware. That’s where object storage steps in. Here’s why object storage is becoming the go-to for modern backup: Scalability: Object storage can handle petabytes of data like a champ. Need more capacity? Just add more objects, no forklift upgrades needed. Simplicity: Flat namespace, no file hierarchies, and built-in metadata = less complexity for your team. Immutability: This is the big one. With S3 Object Lock features, your backups become tamper-proof, which is exactly what you need when ransomware comes knocking. So, if you’re backing up with Veeam Data Platform and you’re not using object storage, it might be time for a rethink. Enter: FlashBlade//S 100 Now, let’s talk about the star of the show: FlashBlade//S 100. This isn’t just any storage system. It’s unified fast file and object storage on an all-flash platform. That means it’s built to handle file workloads and the massive throughput of object-based backup and recovery, all from the same system at the same time. Here’s what sets it apart: 🚀 Performance: All-flash speed coupled with Pure’s ultra-fast object protocol mean backups complete faster and, as those backup datasets grow ever larger, that speed becomes essential for meeting tight recovery time objectives (RTOs). Traditional disk just can’t keep up when seconds count. 🧩 Unified access: File and object protocols on the same box? Yes, please. 🧱 Immutability built in: Ransomware can’t touch what it can’t change. FlashBlade//S supports object lock natively. 🔒 Enterprise security: End-to-end encryption, multi-tenancy, and API-driven operations come standard. 📈 Simple to scale: Whether you’re starting small or scaling up for multi-petabyte archives, FlashBlade’s scale out architecture lets you grow and non-disruptive upgrades from FlashBlade//S100 to FlashBlade//S200 or FlashBlade//S500, ensure continued investment protection and scalability It’s not just storage. It’s a future-ready data platform for backup, recovery, and beyond. So...What Is the Veeam Ready Program? The Veeam Ready Program is a qualification process designed to help Veeam’s technology partners (like us!) prove that their solutions actually work with Veeam Backup & Replication™. Think of it as Veeam’s stamp of approval. A way to separate the real-deal backup solutions from the “trust us, it works” crowd. Pure Storage already had Veeam ready validations but the new FB//S100 is designed for entry-level enterprise use cases. These new validations give customers the confidence that no matter what size their workloads are, whether it’s tens of Terabytes in a remote/branch office or multiple petabytes in the datacentre, Pure and Veeam have a solution that’s already been validated. ✅ Veeam Ready - Repository 🔗View Listing (Veeam Ready - Repository Certification) FlashBlade//S 100 passed Veeam’s tests as a primary backup repository. It’s fast, reliable, and perfect for ingest-heavy workloads, synthetic fulls, and instant recoveries. ✅ Veeam Ready - Object with Immutability 🔗View Listing (Veeam Ready - Object with Immutability Certification) This certifies FlashBlade//S as a Veeam-compatible object target, complete with immutability support. Use it for long-term retention and ensure your data is locked down and protected. Ready to Modernize Your Backups? Whether you’re dealing with backup sprawl, tightening your ransomware defenses, or just tired of slow recoveries, the Veeam + Pure Storage combo is ready for you. ✔️ Veeam Ready ✔️ Flash performance ✔️ Object immutability ✔️ Future-proof architecture What’s not to love? Let’s build something better. For your backups and your business.
