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Pure Storage, specialist in all-flash data storage, looks beyond its own hardware with the launch of its new Cloud Data Services. This enables the company to bridge the gap between on-premises and the public cloud, so that applications can function seamlessly in a hybrid cloud environment.

“After the cloud movement initially encouraged companies to park applications in the cloud as much as possible, we now see a more thoughtful approach”, says Marco Bal, principal systems engineer at Pure Storage Benelux. Companies are increasingly considering the best place to run a specific application. “The one-cloud approach is evolving into a hybrid environment.”

The mobility of enterprise applications increases the strategic importance of a suitable infrastructure exponentially. “The hybrid cloud requires a data-centric architecture,” says Bal. “Data must always be available from any environment, wherever it is.”

Cloud Data Services

With its new services, Pure Storage creates a unified hybrid cloud architecture. First and foremost, it allows applications to migrate seamlessly from on-prem to the cloud and vice versa. It also supports the ability to run applications partly on-premises and partly in the cloud, thanks to the API-first approach of the Purity Software.

Pure Storage launches the following services for customers who use the public cloud of Amazon Web Services:

  • Cloud Block Store: Block storage that works on AWS. Cloud Block Store is designed to make business-critical applications work seamlessly in the cloud, enables hybrid mobility and adds new storage services to webscale applications. This service is in limited beta, with general availability mid 2019.
  • CloudSnap: CloudSnap makes it easy to send FlashArray snapshots to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), enabling cost-effective protection in the cloud, along with flexible on-site or cloud recovery. CloudSnap is immediately available.
  • StorReduce: StorReduce is the result of the first acquisition in the history of Pure Storage. It’s a cloud-native deduplication technology designed to allow fast, simple, cost-effective cloud backups to AWS S3 storage, combined with on-premises flash for fast recovery. StorReduce is in limited beta, with a general availability in the first half of 2019.

Flash-to-flash-to-cloud

Pure Storage’s new solutions also enable a new type of backup architecture. In our vision, “Disk-to-disk-to-tape is evolving towards Flash-to-flash-to-cloud”, says Bal. The discs are replaced by flash for faster performance and faster recovery. That’s more expensive, but according to Bal, performance takes precedence in some scenarios. In addition, falling flash prices make the difference smaller. In Pure Storage’s vision, Tape makes way for the AWS cloud to store a copy of the data externally.

The new cloud services will initially be launched in collaboration with AWS, because Amazon’s public cloud has the largest market share among Pure Storage’s customers. Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform will follow in due course, but for a timing it is currently too early, so let Bal know.

Related: Why a professional SSD costs more money

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.