How Pure Storage Enables The Hyperconvergence of IT
Hyperconverged infrastructure is being adopted at a rapid pace in the enterprise and the technology shift is bringing along with it a transformation in how IT teams function. In the years past, IT roles were clearly defined; you had the server pro, the storage guy, the networking gal and the security expert all taking care of their individual tasks and frequently working in siloes. Today, more organizations are experiencing the hyperconvergence of the IT group where IT professionals are doing less and becoming more efficient and knowledgeable about different areas of IT.
During our recent RoadCast series, we met with Vaughn Stewart, VP of Technology at Pure Storage, to get his take on this idea of hyperconvergence of IT, even though Pure Storage is not a hyperconverged company and doesn’t offer a hyperconverged solution. Pure Storage has been focusing solely on flash storage, becoming one of the leaders in this space.
Stewart tell us that hyperconvergence in terms of merging the teams is indeed in full force. He points out that the majority of data center space is consumed by virtual infrastructure or a private cloud; which in turn means that the largest footprint in the data center has been managed by two teams: the server team and the storage team. This is why CIOs who are looking at the bottom line, are realizing that they’ve been paying two separate teams for supporting a single architecture, says Stewart.
However, during our discussion Stewart also argues that hyperconvergence doesn’t make a good storage platform. The bottom line of hyperconverged architecture is that there are a few things that the server guys need to be aware of, says Stewart. He goes on to explain that when you converge compute and storage, you end up with a loss of discrete failure domains, which means that any server issues automatically become storage issues and vice versa, storage issues become server issues. And this alone impacts SLAs. What’s more, Stewart contends that with hyperconverged infrastructure you can have a configuration that’s either low cost, highly available, or highly performant, but not all three.
Pure Storage and other next generation storage platforms have a fundamentally different approach to these issues. Pure’s flash platforms have been architected to never require a storage admin and Stewart notes that there are no tradeoffs in terms of costs, availability or performance. This makes Pure Storage, and others like it, the ideal platform for the server admins who now have to manage storage, says Stewart.
So while Pure Storage isn’t jumping on the hyperconverged trend, the company is enabling server admins to be able to successfully run storage in their data centers. Stewart says that Pure’s goal is to make storage exponentially simpler than hyperconverged infrastructure, thus truly facilitating the hyperconvergence of IT teams.
Q4 2017: Pure Storage Product Update
In a separate video we spoke with Stewart about what’s new with Pure Storage and what customers can look forward to in the last quarter of 2017. Version 5.0 of Purity operating system, which powers Pure’s flash array products, is coming to market with important capabilities and support that VMware users will be excited about. Stewart goes on to explain additional features that will be available in Purity 5.0.
Watch the video to learn more about the top three exciting new features coming from Pure Storage in the next couple of months and visit purestorage.com for even more information.
Will IT Really Manage AI And ML?
In our final video with Pure’s VP of Technology we delve into Pure’s FlashBlade product, which is purpose-built for modern data analytics. Stewart offers a great overview of what the FlashBlade platform is capable of, what it was designed for and what makes it unique. Check out the video and request a demo at purestorage.com.
