Ask Us Everything about Pure1® Self-service!
💬 Get ready for our first May 2026 edition of Ask Us Everything, this Friday, May 1st at 9 AM Pacific. This month is all about Pure1® Self-service. If you have a burning question, feel free to ask it here early and we'll add it to the list to answer on Friday. Or if we can't get it answered live, our Everpure experts can follow up here. jclark, mbradford plus dpoorman dpoorman are the moderators and experts answering your questions during the conversation as well as here on the community. See you this Friday! (Oh, and if you haven't registered yet, there's still time!)Ask Us Everything Recap: Rethinking Storage with the Intelligent Control Plane
The latest Ask Us Everything session focused on a topic that’s quickly becoming central to Everpure’s strategy: the intelligent control plane. And based on the questions from the community, it’s clear that many teams are starting to think beyond individual arrays and toward managing storage as a unified platform. Here are the key takeaways—driven by the questions attendees asked and the answers from Everpure experts Don Poorman, Zane Allyn and Mike Nelson. “Do I need to rebuild my automation to use Everpure Fusion?” Most teams already have automation in place, whether it’s Terraform, Ansible, or years of scripts. The good news: you don’t have to start over. Everpure Fusion is API-driven, so existing workflows can stay intact. In practice, you’re simply shifting from targeting individual arrays to targeting the fleet as a whole. That often means adding a parameter, not rewriting everything. Everpure Fusion picks up where any existing automation gets bogged down, so tasks get simpler as you scale, not more complex. The takeaway: Everpure Fusion helps you scale your existing automation—it simplifies, standardizes and extends it across your data estate. “What does API-first really mean here?” At Everpure, API-first isn’t just a label. The APIs are built before the GUI, which means everything you can do in the GUI is already available programmatically. For practitioners, that translates to flexibility. Whether you’re scripting, using infrastructure-as-code, or experimenting with AI-driven workflows, you’re not waiting for features to be exposed—you already have access. It’s a subtle difference from legacy storage, where automation often lags behind the interface. “How do I approach automation without losing control?” Attendees raised a common concern: automation can feel risky. The advice was straightforward—start with outcomes, not everything at once. Automate a single workflow, apply guardrails, and expand gradually. Automation here isn’t about removing control. It’s about: Reducing repetitive work Minimizing human error Freeing up time for higher-value tasks For most admins juggling multiple systems, that shift is practical—not theoretical. “What does this look like in real workflows?” One of the most relatable examples discussed was a ServiceNow-style request flow. Instead of manually provisioning storage across multiple systems, a user submits a request describing what they need—performance, protection, and resiliency. From there, Everpure Fusion and Pure1 handle the process automatically. The result is faster, more consistent delivery with fewer manual steps. More importantly, it abstracts the complexity away from both the admin and the requester. That’s a major difference from legacy environments, where admins must manage each step across each array. “What do I actually need to install?” This answer surprised some people. Everpure Fusion isn’t a separate product. It’s built into Purity. Once you’re on the right version (Purity//FA 6.8.1 or later, Purity//FB 4.5.5 or later), getting started is simple: Create a fleet Add arrays That’s it. No additional infrastructure, no separate control plane to deploy. This lowers the barrier significantly and makes it easy to start small and build as your needs require. “How does this scale?” As expected, scale came up quickly. Instead of managing arrays individually, Everpure Fusion introduces fleet-level management. New capabilities like topology groups allow further organization within that fleet—by region, workload, or compliance requirements. This is where Everpure’s approach really diverges from legacy storage. You’re no longer limited to thinking in terms of hardware. You can organize storage in ways that reflect how your business actually operates. “What happens if something fails?” Everpure Fusion is distributed across the arrays in the fleet. There’s no single point of failure. If one system goes offline, the rest of the fleet continues operating normally. That design keeps management resilient while still enabling centralized control. Final thoughts The biggest shift highlighted in this session is simple: Stop managing arrays. Start managing outcomes. With the intelligent control plane—powered by Everpure Fusion and Pure1—Everpure enables: Policy-driven automation Fleet-scale visibility Simpler, faster operations For storage teams, that means less time on manual tasks and more time focused on how data supports the business. And based on the conversation, that’s exactly where our customers want to go. Find out more about the Everpure Intelligent Control Plane here. Check out this and all our other Ask Us Everything sessions. And, keep the conversation going by jumping into the Everpure Community.Ask Us Everything About Intelligent Control with Everpure Fusion + Pure1
💬 Get ready for our April 2026 edition of Ask Us Everything, this Friday, April 17th at 9 AM Pacific. This month is all Intelligent Control with Everpure Fusion + Pure1. If you have a burning question, feel free to ask it here early and we'll add it to the list to answer on Friday. Or if we can't get it answered live, our Everpure experts can follow up here. Allynz, mikenelson-pure, plus dpoorman are the moderators and experts answering your questions during the conversation as well as here on the community. See you this Friday! (Oh, and if you haven't registered yet, there's still time!) Or, check out this self-serve resource: Presets and Workloads in Everpure Fusion video Pure Fusion Presets and Workloads: Enabling Automation Innovation for Storage Workloads Unlock the Future of Data Management with Pure Fusion File Presets
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. It’s been a game changer for enterprise data management. Read more on how Mississippi Department of Revenue deployed Pure Storage® 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 automation—freeing 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.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
Feature Request for Puritan Heroes — 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. We’d like first-class, Pure1-native capabilities to create, modify, and bulk-apply snapshot schedules—without 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 “Snapshot Policies” 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 events—so 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 “gold-daily-35d” 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 (“warn/deny if estimated growth > X TB or RPO < Y min”). 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 OhanianAccelerate Breakout Replay: Powering the Autonomous Enterprise with Pure1®
Discover how Pure1® uses AI to deliver self-service, automated storage ops with intelligent diagnostics, insights, and performance tools. Speakers: Payal Srivastava Kshitij Pandya Bryan White, Match.com https://www.purestorage.com/video/webinars/powering-autonomous-enterprise-with-pure1/6375770841112.htmlFREE 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! DP
