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 Treating it like outdated firmware, and you miss the true value.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 Don’t settle for less by sticking with outdated code.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.
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!Announcing 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
Using FlashArray Volume Snapshots with Microsoft SQL Server
FlashArray volume snapshots are an amazing tool for any DBA/DBRE managing SQL Server. You can use them to: Instantly recover from user errors or ransomware attacks Create rapid dev/test copies without full restores Offload CHECKDB to another host to avoid production performance hits Refresh reporting environments on demand Seed Always On availability groups faster, without large full backups Enable point-in-time recovery when paired with SQL log backups And the best part? Snapshots on FlashArray are: Immutable Space-efficient Fast to create and restore Fully automatable through the REST API or SDK tools! I worked very closely with our SQL Server field super stars (Anthony Nocentino, Andrew Pruski and Andrew Yun) on a white paper going VERY deep into the architecture and how to. It includes everything from crash- vs. application-consistent snapshots, to step-by-step restore and cloning procedures, to using SQL Server 2022’s new T-SQL snapshot backup. Did we miss anything ? Let us know!New SQL Server with Pure Storage Reference Architecture!
We have a new SQL Server with Pure Storage Reference Architecture! It’s been out for a few months, but this is a great start to your journey to a simpler, high-performance database environment! This reference architecture shows how to: Consolidate transactional and analytical SQL Server workloads using FlashArray Use FlashBlade for rapid, parallel T-SQL backups to file or object storage Enable zero-downtime operations with ActiveCluster and near-synchronous replication via ActiveDR With this RA you will find detailed technical guidance for storage provisioning for SQL Server databases on Windows or Linux as well as best practice guidence on how to take the best advantage of the primary storage layer. Check out the full reference architecture here: Optimizing SQL Server Operations and Scale with Pure Storage (PDF) Have feedback, use cases to share, or questions about implementation? Please reach out!🧠 Deep Dive: Configuring File Services Policies & File Systems on FlashArray
Continuing our technical walkthrough series on Pure Storage FlashArray File Services, this new video dives into the nuts and bolts of setting up policies and file systems to create your first SMB file share. If you’ve already followed along with the previous video on setting up networking, DNS, and Active Directory integration, this next step completes the foundation — showing exactly how to configure: Export Policies for SMB access and permissions Quota Policies to manage capacity limits Audit and AutoDir Policies for visibility and governance And finally, how to create and assign a file system for your department or team shares The demo walks through the FlashArray UI and even steps into Windows file share management to validate access-based enumeration and permissions in action — proving just how simple and powerful FlashArray file services can be. 👉 Watch the video on Pure360 to see how easy it is to go from blank configuration to a fully functional SMB file share environment in minutes. -JasonChoosing Between Snapshots and Backups? Use Both
Let's settle the old debate: snapshots or backups for data protection? The answer is you need both, working together. The Problem VMware snapshots are great for quick rollbacks, but they create redo logs that strain storage IO and need eventual consolidation. During active snapshots, your storage reads multiple files simultaneously, potentially impacting production. Storage snapshots like Pure's are instantaneous and lightweight, but they capture entire volumes at once, are only crash-consistent, and require full restores or manual workarounds to extract specific data. Neither alone covers every recovery scenario you'll face. The Solution Integrate VMware, Pure Storage, and Veeam into a cohesive platform: Leverage Pure snapshots for fast, efficient data capture without production impact Use Veeam to orchestrate application-consistent backups and enable granular restores Keep snapshots close to the source for quick recovery Maintain backup files for long-term retention Replicate everything to DR sites with the same capabilities The Payoff One integrated solution gives you flexibility for any situation: ransomware recovery from immutable snapshots, granular file restores, site failovers, or long-term archive retrieval. All without impacting production. Modern data protection isn't about picking sides. It's about making your storage, hypervisor, and backup solution work together intelligently. Hear more here on Pure360 Pure Storage and Veeam- Why Architecture MattersIt's Purity Upgrade Tuesdays!!! Get Excited!
OK - maybe I made that special event Tuesday thing up, but you have to admit it's catchy in a way every terrible social media feed ad grabs your eye 😀. And with that, it does lead to a great question: Are you on the latest version of Purity? As you may or may not know, we had some recent Purity releases over the summer...we've been busy: Purity 6.9.1 for FlashArray: This is the latest Long Life Release (LLR) Purity 6.10 for FlashArray: This is the latest Feature Release (FR) Purity 4.5.12 for FlashBlade: This is the latest LLR Purity 4.6.2 for FlashBlade: This is the latest FR Click here for a quick reminder on what their difference is in a blog from my buddy Ben Casey, the wisest Puritan I know. 💪 And with that being said - how did your latest upgrade go? Did you use Pure1 or the support white glove service we offer? Give us your stories - good and bad...we are all in learning mode and listening! Just don't expect me to send special Hallmark cards to mark Tuesdays as a special day 😀. Happy upgrading! DP
