Podcast #130: The Latest from Pure Storage – ’24 //Accelerate Highlights

Jul 5, 2024

Peter Skovrup, VP of Product Management at Pure Storage, shares insights into the company’s latest innovations, including the groundbreaking 150TB DirectFlash Module. He discusses the importance of high Net Promoter Scores and how they reflect Pure's customer-centric culture. Peter explains non-disruptive upgrades, the Evergreen program for hardware refreshes, and how Pure's technology supports AI workloads efficiently. He also highlights the unique advantages of FlashBlade in managing unstructured data. A must-listen for tech enthusiasts!

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INSIGHT

Innovation Drives Event Energy

Pure drives event energy by delivering continual, tangible product innovation at Accelerate.
Customers engage because the content shows new ways to deploy and operate storage as a platform.

INSIGHT

NPS Is Embedded In Culture

Pure places Net Promoter Score (NPS) at the center of its culture and operations.
The company measures customer willingness to recommend and builds processes to maintain a high score.

INSIGHT

FlashArray And FlashBlade Together

FlashArray is Pure's scale-up platform and FlashBlade is its scale-out platform, together forming the core storage portfolio.
Both operate as unified systems to cover a wide range of workloads.

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Brian invited Peter Skovrup, VP of Product Management for Pure Storage, to continue their conversation from the Pure //Accelerate Las Vegas event in June. Brian and Jordan spent a few days with Pure, learning the latest for what’s new with Pure Storage technology – like their 150TB flash module!

<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span>This is another live event where the audience gets to ask Brian’s guests questions as they arise throughout the conversation. In case you missed it, our first two live events had a few hiccups, but we seem to have ironed those out now. This jam-packed session covers hardware and software, the all-important NPS scores, flash technology, and how it all fits together with Pure Storage solutions.

This is an exciting conversation that also tends to be a learning experience. If you have the time, it is worth listening to this entire podcast. However, if you are short of time or need to find details on a particular topic, we have created an easy way to jump around the podcast to get to the issues that are most interesting to you.

The podcast timestamps have been broken down into five-minute increments to make finding what you are looking for easier.

00:00 Introduction

Brian introduces Peter and talks a bit about Pure //Accelerate
Advancements in Pure Storage, flash modules, AI integrations, and Evergreen enhancements
The importance of NPS

06:00 Core Products

Where Peter is focused
- FlashArray for Scale-up
- FlashBlade for Scale-out
- Operate as a unified storage system
System Architecture
DirectFlash Module (DFM)

10:00 Why DFM is important to Pure

Personal anecdotes about football
What is it
What does it do
Global management for flash storage
Online Community

15:00 Energy Efficiency

DFM benefits
Reducing flash power consumption at DFM level two
Simplifying design by limiting DRAM
Centralizing processing
DRAM becomes part of the controllers
Increasing density and efficiency in storage systems

21:00 Questions from the Live Audience

What are the speed trade-offs?
Challenges managing increased data storage
Performance impacts
Pure’s approach to non-disruptive updates
Business aspects for non-disruptive operations

26:00 Pure Storage Evergreen//One

Clarification on how Evergreen programs work for customers
Discussion on the financial and operational benefits of continuous upgrades
Explanation of subscription models and their flexibility
Benefits of Evergreen One and subscription-based storage solutions
Focus on delivering performance SLAs and scalability

30:00 Back to the importance of NPS

Traditional hardware investment model vs. Evergreen program
Emphasis on the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of Pure Storage’s upgrade process
Financial planning benefits of Evergreen programs
Importance of the clarity and visibility of costs
Non-disruptive upgrades and flexibility for customers

36:00 Introduction of Pure One

Introduction of Pure One
Data visibility features
Simplifying storage management
Management-as-a-service capabilities
Copilot
Workload planner, anomaly detection, and security assessment
Benefits of Pure One for operating and optimizing storage environments at scale

42:00 Finally, mentioning AI

AI workloads and the importance of data support
Nvidia’s presence at the event
Collaboration with Nvidia and the certification of Superpod

45:00 SuperPod at scale

Importance of 400 gig Ethernet for AI workloads
Flashblade’s scalability and performance for AI and HPC environments
Hardware requirements for AI workloads and the advantages of Flashblade
Flashblade’s architecture and its benefits for AI and unstructured data
Flashblade versus other parallel file systems
Importance of metadata operations in high-performance file storage

51:00 Data Management

Challenges of managing data for AI
Importance of a comprehensive storage solution
SLA-based solutions for AI workloads
Long-term investments in AI
Guiding customers
Pure Storage’s technology for large AI deployments

58:00 Managing data for AI

Pure Storage scalability
Small deployments
Pure Fusion
Edge and Distributed deployments
Non-disruptive operations
Optimization and Utilization
Evergreen programs

62:00 Wrapping up

Brian and Peter begin wrapping up the discussion
Let’s talk real football—The EUROs

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