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." đ 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! DPGetting Started with Pure Storage Fusion: A Quick Guide to Unified Fleet Management
One of the most powerful updates in the Pure Storage ecosystem is the ability to federate arrays into a unified fleet with Fusion. Whether you're scaling out infrastructure or simplifying operations across data centers, Fusion makes multi-array management seamlessâand the setup process is refreshingly simple. Hereâs a quick walkthrough to get your fleet up and running: đš Step 1: Create or Join a Fleet From the Fleet Management tab in the Purity UI, you can either create a new fleet or join an existing one. Creating a fleet? Just assign a memorable name and generate a one-time fleet key. This key acts like a secure handshake, ensuring that only authorized arrays can join. đš Step 2: Add Arrays to the Fleet On each array you want to bring into the fold: Select Join Fleet, enter the fleet name, and paste in the fleet key. Once verified, the array becomes part of your managed fleet. đš Step 3: Manage as One With federation complete, you now have a single, unified control plane. Any array in the fleet can serve as your management entry pointâconfigure, monitor, and operate across the entire environment from one location. This capability is a big leap forward for simplifying scale and operationsâespecially for hybrid cloud or multi-site environments. If you're testing it out, Iâd love to hear how it's working for you or what use cases you're solving.Ask us everything about Purity Upgrades!
đŹ 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! dpoormanâ , skennedyâ , rquastâ , jhoughesâ 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
Feature Request for Puritan Heroes â Manage snapshot schedules directly in Pure1
An opportunity to shine Summary / problem Today, snapshot scheduling and edits are performed per-array (e.g., via Purity protection policies / groups). At fleet scale this is manual, slow for change control, and hard to audit centrally. Weâd like first-class, Pure1-native capabilities to create, modify, and bulk-apply snapshot schedulesâwithout logging into each array. Impact / why this matters Fleet operations: one place to set/adjust RPO/retention across many FlashArrays/FlashBlades. Change management & compliance: audited, role-scoped changes with approver workflow. Risk & capacity: pre-change impact analysis (capacity, performance) using Pure1 telemetry. Consistency: policy templates and guardrails reduce configuration drift. Scope (initial ask) Pure1 UI âSnapshot Policiesâ workspace to create/edit/delete schedules and retentions (minute/hour/day/week/month), including SafeMode/immutability options where supported. Bulk Apply/Override to multiple arrays, volume groups, file systems/shares. What-if capacity forecast prior to save (based on Pure1 analytics). Change review & approvals (optional), with rationale and ticket ID fields. Maintenance/blackout windows and exceptions. Full audit trail (who, what changed, before/after, when, target objects). RBAC: granular rights (view vs. edit vs. approve), and per-array or per-group scoping. Pure1 Public API New endpoints to programmatically create/read/update/delete snapshot policies, bind/unbind them to objects, run an on-demand snapshot from a policy, and pull audit eventsâso we can integrate with CI/CD and ITSM. (We rely on Pure1 API today for telemetry; adding write ops for policies would unlock safe automation.) Edge / connectivity Use Pure1 Edge Service for secure, two-way execution on arrays. Include graceful handling for dark/offline assets (queue and notify). Acceptance criteria (examples) From Pure1, I can create a policy âgold-daily-35dâ and attach it to 100+ arrays / 1,000+ objects in a single operation. A non-admin can propose a policy change; an approver must OK it before it takes effect. Audit page shows a human-readable diff (before/after crontab-style schedule and retention) plus API payloads. Capacity impact estimator shows expected snapshot object growth over 30/90 days based on historical change rates. API: POST /snapshot-policies, PATCH /snapshot-policies/{id}, POST /snapshot-policy-attachments, GET /audit-events?type=snapshot_policy. Nice-to-haves Prebuilt policy templates (e.g., 15-min RPO for 24h + daily 35d + monthly 12m). Guardrails (âwarn/deny if estimated growth > X TB or RPO < Y minâ). Service-now/Jira webhook on approval/change. Environment Mixed FA/FB fleet; Pure1 connected, Edge Service available. SafeMode enabled on arrays requiring immutability. Thanks in advance - Garry Ohanian
Feature Request: Certificate Automation with ACME
Hi Pure people, How about reducing my workload a little by supporting the ACME protocol for certificate renewal? . Certficate lifespans are just getting shorter, and while I have a horrid expect script to renew certificates via ssh to flasharray, it would be much simpler if Purity ran an ACME client itself. PS We use the DNS Challenge method to avoid having to run webservices where they aren't needed.
4 steps to enable Pure Fusion
Several teams like yours have recently switched on Pure Fusion and saved 39.5 hours of staff time per day by boosting application-response times. Itâs been a game changer for enterprise data management. Read more on how Mississippi Department of Revenue deployed Pure StorageÂŽ platform for a faster, more versatile storage to boost application performance, protect data, and support hypervisor mobility. Pure Fusion unifies enterprise data and automates workflows with simplified storage management, workload automation and AI-driven workload placement. With the power of an Intelligent Control Plane, Fusion automates storage management across cloud, edge or core or any protocol file, object or block. Anchoring the Enterprise Data Cloud, it unifies data services and integrates with existing infrastructures, turning complex, manual tasks into streamlined, policy-driven operations. Fusion enables end-to-end automationâfreeing you to accelerate innovation while reducing operational risk and overhead. Here are the 4 steps to enable Pure Fusion: Click here for the complete Pure Fusion Quick Start Guide. Using Secure LDAP (LDAPS) requires additional configuration with certificates. Please reference the Quick Start guide for more information. For compatibility reference, please see the Compatibility Matrix.Announcing the General Availability of Purity//FA 6.8.6
We are happy to announce the general availability of 6.8.6, the seventh release in the 6.8 Feature Release line, including the SMB Continuous Availability feature, which guarantees zero downtime for customers' businesses during controller disruptions and upgrades, ensuring uninterrupted access to shared files. Some of the improvements to Purity contained in this release include: SMB Continuous Availability preserves file handles to ensure uninterrupted SMB access during controller failovers and upgrades. Target Pods for Pgroup Replication allows customers to target a specific pod for protection groups, avoiding the clutter of snapshots replicating to an arrayâs root pod. CBS for AWS Write Optimization for Amazon S3 improves how its data is committed and managed on Amazon S3 and can significantly drop the AWS infrastructure operating cost, providing customers with write or replication heavy workloads with cost reductions of up to 50%. Allow NVMe Read-Only Volumes for ActiveDR eliminates restriction on promotion/demotion of pods containing NVMe-connected volumes, saving customers from unexpected command failures and time-consuming workarounds. For more detailed information about features, 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 fastest access to the latest features upgrade to this new feature 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. This 6.8 release line is planned for feature development through May 2025 with additional fixes coming in June 2025 to end the release line. HARDWARE SUPPORT This release is supported on the following FlashArray Platforms: Cloud Block Store for Azure and AWS, FA//X (R3, R4), FA//C (R3, R4), FA//XL, FA//E, and FA//RC (starting with 6.8.5). Note, DFS firmware 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 6.8 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 LimitsTry Fusion Presets and Workloads in Pure Test Drive
Pure Test Drive now has a hands on lab designed to let you demo the Presets and Workloads capability included in Purity//FA 6.8.3. A Preset is a reusable template that describes how to provision and configure the Purity objects that make up a Workload; and Workloads are a container object that holds references to other Purity objects, which will enable them to be managed and monitored as a set. Watch a recorded walkthrough or roll up your sleeves and try it your self by filling out this form or asking your local Pure SE for a voucher for the Pure Fusion Presets & Workloads lab.
