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 Treating it like outdated firmware, and you miss the true value.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 Don’t settle for less by sticking with outdated code.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.
Choosing 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 MattersTop 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.htmlFlash Array Certification
All FlashArray Admins, If any of you currently hold a Flash Array certification there is an alternative to retaking the test to renew your cert. The Continuing Pure Education (CPE) program takes into account learning activities and community engagement and contribution hours to renew your FA certification. I just successfully renewed my Flash Array Storage Professional cert by tracking my activities. Below are the details I received from Pure. Customers can earn 1 CPE credit per hour of session attendance at Accelerate, for a maximum of 10 CPEs total (i.e., up to 10 hours of sessions). Sessions must be attended live. I would go ahead and add all the sessions you attended at Accelerate to the CPE_Submission form. Associate-level certifications will auto-renew as long as there is at least one active higher-level certification (e.g., Data Storage Associate will auto-renew anytime a Professional-level cert is renewed). All certifications other than the Data Storage Associate should be renewed separately. At this time, the CPE program only applies to FlashArray-based exams. Non- FA exams may be renewed by retaking the respective test every three years. You should be able to get the CPE submission form from your account team. Once complete email your recertification Log to peak-education@purestorage.com for formal processing. -CharlieA 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 LimitsAUE - Key Insights
Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone! This is Rich Barlow, Principal Technologist @ Pure. It was super fun to proctor this AUE session with Antonia and Jon. Hopefully everyone got in all of the questions that they wanted to ask - we had so many that we had to answer many of them out of band. So thank you for your enthusiasm and support. Looking forward to the next one! Here's a rundown of the most interesting and impactful questions we were asked. If you have any more please feel free to reach out. FlashArray File: Your Questions, Our Answers (Ask Us Everything Recap) Our latest "Ask Us Everything" webinar with Pure Storage experts Rich Barlow, Antonia Abu Matar, and Jonathan Carnes was another great session. You came ready with sharp questions, making it clear you're all eager to leverage the simplicity of your FlashArray to ditch the complexity of legacy file storage. Here are some the best shared insights from the session: Unify Everything: Performance By Design You asked about the foundation—and it's a game-changer. No Middleman, Low Latency: Jon Carnes confirmed that FlashArray File isn't a bolt-on solution. Since the file service lands directly on the drives, just like block data, there's effectively "no middle layer." The takeaway? You get the same awesome, low-latency performance for file that you rely on for block workloads. Kill the Data Silos: Antonia Abu Matar emphasized the vision behind FlashArray File: combining block and file on a single, shared storage pool. This isn't just tidy; it means you benefit from global data reduction and unified data services across everything. Scale, Simplicity, and Your Weekends Back The community was focused on escaping the complexities of traditional NAS systems. Always-On File Shares: Worried about redundancy? Jon confirmed that FlashArray File implements an "always-on" version of Continuous Available (CA) shares for SMB3 (in Purity 6.9/6.10). It’s on by default for transparent failover and simple client access. Multi-Server Scale-Up: For customers migrating from legacy vendors and needing lots of "multi-servers," we're on it. Jon let us know that engineering is actively working to significantly raise the current limits (aiming for around 100 in the next Purity release), stressing that Pure increases these limits non-disruptively to ensure stability. NDU—Always and Forever: The best part? No more weekend maintenance marathons. The FlashArray philosophy is a "data in place, non-disruptive upgrade." That applies to both block and file, eliminating the painful data migrations you’re used to. Visibility at Your Fingertips: You can grab real-time IOPS and throughput from the GUI or via APIs. For auditing, file access events are pushed via syslog in native JSON format, which makes integrating with tools like Splunk super easy. Conquering Distance and Bandwidth A tough question came in about supporting 800 ESRI users across remote Canadian sites (Yellowknife, Iqaluit, etc.) with real-time file access despite low bandwidth. Smart Access over Replication: Jon suggested looking at Rapid Replicas (available on FlashBlade File). This isn't full replication; it’s a smart solution that synchronizes metadata across sites and only pulls the full data on demand (pull-on-access). This is key for remote locations because it dramatically cuts down on the constant bandwidth consumption of typical data replication. Ready to Simplify? FlashArray File Services lets you consolidate your infrastructure and get back to solving bigger problems—not babysitting your storage. Start leveraging the power of a truly unified and non-disruptive platform today! Join the conversation and share your own experiences in the Pure Community.Why Your Writes Are Always Safe on FlashArray
The promise of modern storage is simple: when the system says “yes,” your data better be safe. No matter what happens next; power failure, controller hiccup, or the universe throwing what else it has at you writes need to stay acknowledged. FlashArray is engineered around this non‑negotiable principle. Let me walk you through how we deliver on it. Durable First, Fast Always When your application issues a write to FlashArray, here’s the path it takes: Land in DRAM for inline data reduction (dedupe, compression, you know the lightweight stuff). Persist redundantly in NVRAM (mirrored or RAID‑6/DNVR, depending on platform), in a log accessible by either controller. Acknowledge to the host ← This is the critical moment. Flush to flash media in the background, efficiently and asynchronously. Notice what happens between steps 2 and 3? We don’t acknowledge until data is durably persisted in non‑volatile memory. Not “mostly safe,” not “probably fine” but safe and durable. This isn’t a write‑back cache we’ll get around to flushing later. The acknowledgement means your data survived the critical path and is now protected, period. Power Loss? No Problem. FlashArray NVRAM modules include integrated supercapacitors that provide power hold‑up during unexpected power events. When the power drops, these capacitors ensure the buffered write log is safely preserved without batteries to maintain, no external UPS required just to have write safety. Though it is recommended, no external UPS is necessary for write safety; many sites still deploy UPS for broader data center and facility reasons. Because durability is achieved at the NVRAM layer, we eliminate the most common failure mode in legacy systems: the volatile write cache that promises safety but can’t deliver when it matters most. Simpler Path with Integrated DNVR In our latest architectures, we integrate Distributed NVRAM (DNVR) directly into the DirectFlash Module (DFMD). This simplifies the write path fewer hops, tighter integration, better efficiency. And scales NVRAM bandwidth and capacity with the number of modules. By bringing persistence closer to the media, we’re not just maintaining our durability guarantees we’re increasing capacity and streamlining the data path at the same time. Graceful Under Pressure What happens if write ingress temporarily exceeds what the system can flush to flash? FlashArray applies deterministic backpressure you may see latency increase but I/O is not being dropped. Thus data is not at risk. Background processes yield and lower‑priority internal tasks are throttled to prioritize destage operations, keeping the system stable and predictable. Translation: we slow down gracefully and don't fail unpredictably. High Availability by Design Controllers are stateless, with writes durably persisted in NVRAM accessible by either controller. If one controller faults, the peer automatically takes over, replays any in‑flight operations from the durable log, and resumes service. A brief I/O pause may occur during takeover; platforms are sized so a single controller can handle the full workload afterward to minimize disruption to your applications. No acknowledged data is lost. No manual intervention required. Just continuous operation. Beyond the ACK: Protection on Flash After the destage, data on flash is protected with wide‑striped erasure coding for fast, predictable rebuilds and multi‑device fault tolerance. And NO hot‑spare overhead. The Bottom Line Modern flash gives you incredible performance, but performance means nothing if your data isn't safe. FlashArray's architecture makes durability the first principle—not an optimization, not an add-on, but the foundation everything else is built on. When FlashArray says your write is safe, it's safe. That's not marketing. That's engineering. This approach to write safety is part of Pure's commitment to Better Science, doing things the right way, not the easy way. We didn't just swap drives in an existing architecture; we reimagined the entire system from the ground up, from how we co-design hardware and software with DirectFlash to how we map and manage petabytes of metadata at scale. Want to dive deeper? Better Science, Volume 1 — Hardware and Software Co‑design with DirectFlash https://blog.purestorage.com/products/better-science-volume-1-hardware-and-software-co-design-with-directflash/ Better Science, Volume 2 — Maps, Metadata, and the Pyramid https://blog.purestorage.com/perspectives/better-science-volume-2-maps-metadata-and-the-pyramid/ The Pure Report — Better Science Vol. 1 (DirectFlash) https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/better-science-volume-1-directflash/id1392639991?i=1000569574821Purity//FA 6.9 is (Finally) Enterprise Ready!
A few months ago I wrote about the top 10 reasons to upgrade to Purity 6.9, and here are 10 more reasons; because…..6.9 has just gone Enterprise Ready! https://support.purestorage.com/bundle/m_flasharray_release/page/FlashArray/FlashArray_Release/01_Purity_FA_Release_Notes/topics/concept/c_purityfa_69x_release_notes.html 10 💍 It's "Long-Life"! Stability until June 2028. That's a longer, more successful relationship than 90% of reality TV couples achieve. 9⚰️ Your Pure SE Won’t Keep Bugging You About Running an EOL Release. You know who you are…. 8💯 It's Been to College. It met the criteria for "customer fleet adoption, cumulative runtime, and observed uptime." Basically, it passed the field test with flying colors. 7🤝 You Get a Side of Fusion. Upgrade to 6.9 and get the powerful, simple-to-use multi-array storage platform management system included. You know you want it! 6😴 The Engineers Can Finally Go Home. A big thank you to the engineering, support, technical program management, and product management teams for all the hard work. Go take a nap! 5🛡️ We Have a Stable Alternative to Chasing New Features. For customers who want rock-solid reliability, you can skip the Feature Release (FR) line drama and stick with the LLR. 4✅ It's The Complete 6.8 Feature Set. You don't lose any capabilities; you just gain the confidence of a battle-tested release. Full meal deal, no compromises. 3🖱️ It's So Easy to Get There, Even The Intern Could Do It. Compatible hardware customers are encouraged to use Self-Service Upgrades (SSU). Less work, more coffee breaks. 2🔒 Guaranteed Bug Fixes and Security Updates. This release is officially maintained, meaning your security team can finally relax... slightly. 1🚨 When You Call Support, We Won’t Start With "Did You Upgrade Yet?"
