What Is Pure Cloud Block Store and How It Works

Pure Cloud Block Store is a software-defined storage solution that provides a scalable and efficient way to store and manage data in the cloud. It's designed to work seamlessly with popular cloud providers like AWS and Azure.

The key benefit of Pure Cloud Block Store is its ability to deliver high-performance storage, with up to 1 million IOPS (input/output operations per second) and 10 GB/s throughput. This makes it ideal for applications that require low latency and high availability.

Pure Cloud Block Store is built on top of a distributed architecture that allows it to scale horizontally, meaning it can easily add or remove nodes as needed to match changing workload demands. This flexibility makes it a great choice for businesses with unpredictable storage needs.

Pure Cloud Block Store is an extension of the data services and Evergreen architecture of the Purity operating environment.

It's an enterprise-grade block storage solution that's specifically designed for the public cloud. This means it's optimized for scalability, reliability, and performance in cloud environments.

Pure Cloud Block Store enables your organization to run mission-critical applications on the cloud, giving you the flexibility to deploy your most important workloads where they need to be.

Pure Cloud Block Store is enterprise-grade block storage in the public cloud. It's an extension of the data services and Evergreen architecture of the Purity operating environment.

Pure Storage Cloud Block Store is an enterprise-grade, software-defined cloud architecture. It combines industry-leading storage with enterprise data services.

Cloud Block Store provides cloud-native resources, such as data protection and mobility services. These deliver optimized cloud experiences that continuously improve over time.

Pure Cloud Block Store enables your organization to run mission-critical applications on the cloud.

Practical Storage is a type of storage solution that focuses on simplicity and ease of use. It's designed to provide a straightforward way to store and manage data, making it perfect for individuals and small businesses with limited technical expertise.

In a practical storage setup, data is stored on-premises, meaning it's physically located within your own network or premises. This approach is often preferred by organizations that require low latency and high security for their data.

One of the key benefits of practical storage is its cost-effectiveness. By storing data on-premises, you can avoid paying for cloud storage services, which can add up quickly. This is especially true for large datasets or organizations with high storage needs.

Practical storage solutions are often based on traditional storage systems, such as direct-attached storage (DAS) or network-attached storage (NAS). These systems are easy to set up and manage, making them a great option for those who want a hassle-free storage experience.

Overall, practical storage is a reliable and affordable option for storing and managing data.

With Pure Cloud Block Store, you can expect significant benefits and savings.

You can immediately save up to 50% with industry-leading data reduction and thin provisioning.

Data protection with Pure Cloud Block Store provides business continuity and disaster recovery across regions, availability zones, and clouds, ensuring your data is always safe.

Instant and space-saving snapshots and clones enable you to quickly recover data and reduce storage costs.

Seamless data mobility across on-prem and clouds to lift and shift allows you to easily move applications and data between environments.

Here are some specific savings you can expect on Azure and AWS with Pure Cloud Block Store:

Pure Cloud Block Store enables you to undertake cloud initiatives with confidence, as it provides the best of both private and public cloud and maintains complete control over your data.

With Pure Cloud Block Store, you can develop, migrate, and run applications across your hybrid environments, recover hosted or on-premises workloads in the cloud, and achieve high availability and reliability levels.

Critical benefits of Pure Cloud Block Store include enhanced cloud storage, simplified cloud data migration, accelerated automation and development, bi-directional mobility, high-speed disaster recovery, and highest possible availability and cost-efficiency.

Pure Cloud Block Store offers a range of use cases that can benefit your business.

By leveraging Pure Cloud Block Store, you can reduce cloud storage costs up to 50%.

You can also use it for Azure VMware Solution, which can help you run your VMware workloads in the cloud.

Flexible Hybrid Disaster Recovery is another use case, allowing you to replicate data to the public cloud and failback and recover to your data center.

Hybrid Cloud Disaster Recovery with CBS is also possible, giving you greater flexibility and mobility of data.

Dev/Test with Azure Kubernetes Service and Pure Cloud Block Store is another example, enabling you to create hundreds of thousands of clones and snapshots at almost zero cost.

Here are some examples of how you can leverage Pure Cloud Block Store:

Pure Cloud Block Store also simplifies data storage and replication management, freeing your teams to focus on their jobs and driving value to the business.

Features like thin provisioning and 100 percent efficient clones and snapshots are crucial to reducing your storage footprint and optimizing your cloud spending.

By replicating data to the public cloud and running production on Cloud Block Store, you can simplify the process of changing DR and implementing it into cloud architectures.

To upgrade the capacity of your Pure Cloud Block Store, you'll need to use the Pure CLI or a REST API Endpoint. This can be done on both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, despite their different underlying architectures.

The process starts with logging in to the array using SSH. Once you're logged in, you can list the current state of the cloud capacity.

You'll then need to list the available capacity points, which may vary depending on the model of your Pure Cloud Block Store.

To request the desired capacity, you can enter a command as shown in the example below.

Before starting the capacity upgrade procedure, it's highly recommended to check the resource quota of the underlying infrastructure and health status of the array. For more information, see the knowledge base documentation listed below.

A technical video is also available to demonstrate the procedure of increasing the capacity of a Pure Cloud Block Store array running in Azure, and the same steps can be performed on arrays deployed in AWS.

With Pure Cloud Block Store, you can get a dedicated Customer Success Manager to help optimize your subscription. This personalized support can make a big difference in getting the most out of your investment.

Your Customer Success Manager can help you optimize your Evergreen//One, Evergreen//Flex, or Pure Cloud Block Store subscription. This means you'll get tailored guidance on how to make the most of your storage solution.

Optimizing your subscription can help you achieve your goals and improve your overall experience with Pure Cloud Block Store.

You can get a dedicated Customer Success Manager to help optimize your subscriptions.

Having a dedicated Customer Success Manager can make a big difference in optimizing your subscriptions, as they can provide personalized guidance and support.

They can help optimize your Evergreen//One, Evergreen//Flex, or Pure Cloud Block Store subscription.

Management can be a challenge when dealing with block storage. Block volumes are only consumable by virtual instances, making them unusable for clustered or shared requirements.

Resiliency and availability vary significantly between vendors. Azure offers a 0% annualised failure rate (AFR), while AWS claims around 0.1% – 0.2% failure.

Performance can be tied to instance size, which can be a problem in storage-intensive environments. In GCP, for example, the IOPS performance of a volume is dependent on the number of vCPUs assigned to the virtual instance.

To manage block storage effectively, it's essential to consider the variability in resiliency and availability between vendors. Here are some key differences to keep in mind:

In hybrid environments, moving block storage on/off-premises can be a complex process. This is because block storage is typically internal to the public cloud and not exposed to the outside world, making it tricky to directly move data to/from instances.

The estimated charge for a pure cloud block store configuration is just over $7,900 per month.

This cost does not include software licence charges, which start at $2,000/month for 10 TB of capacity.

Customers can also choose the Evergreen (ES2) option, which allows them to use some licence capability on-premises and some for a CBS deployment.

The CBS design delivers a storage solution that is more resilient than native EBS, with the capability to scale out the solution through the addition of extra virtual drive instances.

CBS is built with enterprise-class in mind, utilizing two AWS c5n.9xlarge instances and seven i3.2xlarge instances with seven 18TB EBS io1 volumes in its default configuration.

This configuration provides a solid foundation for handling high levels of traffic and data storage needs, making it an ideal choice for businesses that require a reliable and scalable storage solution.

Pricing is a crucial factor to consider when evaluating scalability options. The estimated charge for a particular configuration is just over $7,900 per month.

This cost does not include software licence charges, which can add up quickly. Software licence charges start at $2,000/month for 10 TB of capacity.

For customers who want more flexibility, there's the Evergreen (ES2) option. This option allows customers to use some licence capability on-premises and some for a CBS deployment.

The Evergreen (ES2) option can be an attractive choice for customers who want to pay for virtual hardware in AWS. However, it's unclear how popular this option will be.

The Pure Cloud Block Store offers a Purity Operating Environment (POE) that provides a high-performance, scalable, and secure data storage solution.

Pure's POE is designed to be highly available, with a built-in self-healing mechanism that ensures data integrity and availability.

The Purity Version 5.0 release introduced significant improvements in performance, including a 50% increase in sequential read and write IOPS.

Pure's Purity Version 5.0 also offers advanced data management features, such as deduplication and compression, which can reduce storage capacity requirements by up to 90%.

The Pure Cloud Block Store competes directly with other cloud storage solutions, including Amazon S3 and Azure Blob Storage, in terms of scalability and performance.

Pure's Purity Operating Environment is designed to be highly customizable, allowing customers to tailor the solution to their specific needs and workloads.

External storage is a crucial component for any data center, and VMware is a popular choice for virtualizing storage.

VMware's vSAN is a software-defined storage solution that can be used to create a storage pool from local storage devices.

This storage pool can then be used to create virtual machines and store data.

VMware's vSAN can also be used to create a stretched cluster, which allows for data to be stored across multiple sites.

This provides high availability and redundancy for critical data.

VMware's vSAN can also integrate with other VMware products, such as vCenter Server, to provide a unified management interface.

A pure cloud block store is a game-changer for businesses that need flexible and scalable storage solutions. It allows you to store data in a secure and highly available manner, with no need for physical hardware.

One of the key benefits of a pure cloud block store is that it offers high performance and low latency, making it ideal for applications that require fast data access. This is achieved through the use of advanced storage technologies.

Data is stored in a highly available and durable manner, with multiple copies of each block stored across multiple locations. This ensures that your data is always accessible, even in the event of a disaster or hardware failure.

You can easily scale your storage capacity up or down as needed, without having to worry about running out of space or wasting resources. This is especially useful for businesses with fluctuating storage needs.

A pure cloud block store is also highly secure, with advanced encryption and access controls to protect your data from unauthorized access. This gives you peace of mind, knowing that your data is safe and protected.