Tag Archives: pureaccelerate2019

Pure//Accelerate 2019 – Cloud Block Store for AWS

Posted on by

Disclaimer: I recently attended Pure//Accelerate 2019.  My flights, accommodation, and conference pass were paid for by Pure Storage. There is no requirement for me to blog about any of the content presented and I am not compensated by Pure Storage for my time at the event.  Some materials presented were discussed under NDA and don’t form part of my blog posts, but could influence future discussions.

Cloud Block Store for AWS from Pure Storage has been around for a little while now. I had the opportunity to hear about it in more depth at the Storage Field Day Exclusive event at Pure//Accelerate 2019 and thought I’d share some thoughts here. You can grab a copy of my rough notes from the session here, and video from the session is available here.

 

Cloud Vision

Pure Storage has been focused on making everything related to their products effortless from day 1. An example of this approach is the FlashArray setup process – it’s really easy to get up and running and serving up storage to workloads. They wanted to do the same thing with anything they deliver via cloud services as well. There is, however, something of a “cloud divide” in operation in the industry. If you’re familiar with the various cloud deployment options, you’ll likely be aware that on-premises and hosted cloud is a bit different to public cloud. They:

  • Deliver different application architectures;
  • Deliver different management and consumption experience; and
  • Use different storage.

So what if Pure could build application portability and deliver common shared data services?

Pure have architected their cloud service to leverage what they call “Three Pillars”:

  • Build Your Cloud
  • Run anywhere
  • Protect everywhere

 

What Is It?

So what exactly is Cloud Block Store for AWS then? Well, imagine if you will, that you’re watching an episode of Pimp My Ride, and Xzibit is talking to an enterprise punter about how he or she likes cloud, and how he or she likes the way Pure Storage’s FlashArray works. And then X says, “Hey, we heard you liked these two things so we put this thing in the other thing”. Look, I don’t know the exact situation where this would happen. But anyway …

  • 100% software – deploys instantly as a virtual appliance in the cloud, runs only as long as you need it;
  • Efficient – deduplication, compression, and thin provisioning deliver capacity and performance economically;
  • Hybrid – easily migrate data bidirectionally, delivering data portability and protection across your hybrid cloud;
  • Consistent APIs – developers connect to storage the same way on-premises and in the cloud. Automated deployment with Cloud Formation templates;
  • Reliable, secure – delivers industrial-strength perfromance, reliability & protection with Multi-AZ HA, NDU, instant snaps and data at rest encryption; and
  • Flexible – pay as you go consumption model to best match your needs for production and development.

[image courtesy of Pure Storage]

Architecture

At the heart of it, the architecture for CVS is not dissimilar to the FlashArray architecture. There’re controllers, drives, NVRAM, and a virtual shelf.

  • EC2: CBS Controllers
  • EC2: Virtual Drives
  • Virtual Shelf: 7 Virtual drives in Spread Placement Group
  • EBS IO1: NVRAM, Write Buffer (7 total)
  • S3: Durable persistent storage
  • Instance Store: Non-Persistent Read Mirror

[image courtesy of Pure Storage]

What’s interesting, to me at least, is how they use S3 for persistent storage.

Procurement

How do you procure CBS for AWS? I’m glad you asked. There are two procurement options.

A – Pure as-a-Service

  • Offered via SLED / CLED process
  • Minimums 100TiB effective used capacity
  • Unified hybrid contracts (on-premises and CBS, CBS)
  • 1 year to 3 year contracts

B – AWS Marketplace

  • Direct to customer
  • Minimum, 10 TiB effective used capacity
  • CBS only
  • Month to month contract or 1 year contract

 

Use Cases

There are a raft of different use cases for CBS. Some of them made sense to me straight away, some of them took a little time to bounce around in my head.

Disaster Recovery

  • Production instance on-premises
  • Replicate data to public cloud
  • Fail over in DR event
  • Fail back and recover

Lift and shift

  • Production instance on-premises
  • Replicate data to public cloud
  • Run the same architecture as before
  • Run production on CBS

Use case: Dev / test

  • Replicate data to public cloud
  • Instantiate test / dev instances in public cloud
  • Refresh test / dev periodically
  • Bring changes back on-premises
  • Snapshots are more costly and slower to restore in native AWS

ActiveCluster

  • HA within an availability zone and / or across availability zones in an AWS region (ActiveCluster needs <11ms latency)
  • No downtime when a Cloud Block Store Instance goes away or there is a zone outage
  • Pure1 Cloud Mediator Witness (simple to manage and deploy)

Migrating VMware Environments

VMware Challenges

  • AWS does not recognise VMFS
  • Replicating volumes with VMFS will not do any good

Workaround

  • Convert VMFS datastore into vVOLs
  • Now each volume has the Guest VM’s file system (NTFS, EXT3, etc)
  • Replicate VMDK vVOLs to CBS
  • Now the volumes can be mounted to EC2 with matching OS

Note: This is for the VM’s data volumes. The VM boot volume will not be usable in AWS. The VM’s application will need to be redeployed in native AWS EC2.

VMware Cloud

VMware Challenges

  • VMware Cloud does not support external storage, it only supports vSAN

Workaround

  • Connect Guest VMs directly to CBS via iSCSI

Note: I haven’t verified this myself, and I suspect there may be other ways to do this. But in the context of Pure’s offering, it makes sense.

 

Thoughts and Further Reading

There’s been a feeling in some parts of the industry for the last 5-10 years that the rise of the public cloud providers would spell the death of the traditional storage vendor. That’s clearly not been the case, but it has been interesting to see the major storage slingers evolving their product strategies to both accommodate and leverage the cloud providers in a more effective manner. Some have used the opportunity to get themselves as close as possible to the cloud providers, without actually being in the cloud. Others have deployed virtualised versions of their offerings inside public cloud and offered users the comfort of their traditional stack, but off-premises. There’s value in these approaches, for sure. But I like the way that Pure has taken it a step further and optimised its architecture to leverage some of the features of what AWS can offer from a cloud hardware perspective.

In my opinion, the main reason you’d look to leverage something like CBS on AWS is if you have an existing investment in Pure and want to keep doing things a certain way. You’re also likely using a lot of traditional VMs in AWS and want something that can improve the performance and resilience of those workloads. CBS is certainly a great way to do this. If you’re already running a raft of cloud-native applications, it’s likely that you don’t necessarily need the features on offer from CBS, as you’re already (hopefully) using them natively. I think Pure understands this though, and isn’t pushing CBS for AWS as the silver bullet for every cloud workload.

I’m looking forward to seeing what the market uptake on this product is like. I’m also keen to crunch the numbers on running this type of solution versus the cost associated with doing something on-premises or via other means. In any case, I’m looking forward to see how this capability evolves over time, and I think CBS on AWS is definitely worthy of further consideration.

Pure//Accelerate 2019 – (Fairly) Full Disclosure

Posted on by

Disclaimer: I recently attended Pure//Accelerate 2019.  My flights, accommodation, and conference pass were paid for by Pure Storage. There is no requirement for me to blog about any of the content presented and I am not compensated by Pure Storage for my time at the event.  Some materials presented were discussed under NDA and don’t form part of my blog posts, but could influence future discussions.

Here are my notes on gifts, etc, that I received as an attendee at Pure//Accelerate 2019. Apologies if it’s a bit dry but I’m just trying to make it clear what I received during this event to ensure that we’re all on the same page as far as what I’m being influenced by. I’m going to do this in chronological order, as that was the easiest way for me to take notes during the week. Whilst every attendee’s situation is different, I was paid by my employer to be at this event.

 

Saturday

My wife kindly dropped me at the airport. I flew Qantas economy class from BNE – LAX – AUS courtesy of Pure Storage. I had a 5 hour layover at LAX. I stopped at the Rolling Stone Bar and Grill in the Terminal 7 and had a breakfast burrito. It wasn’t the best, but anything is pretty good after the smell of airplane food. When I got to Austin I was met by a driver that Pure had organised. I grabbed my suitcase and we travelled to the Fairmont Austin (paid for by Pure) in one of those big black SUVs that are favoured by many of the limousine companies.

I got presentable and then went down to the hotel bar to catch up with Alastair Cooke and his wife Tracey, Matt Leib, Gina Minks, and Leah Schoeb. I had a gin and tonic, paid for by Alastair, and then took the hotel courtesy car to Austin City Limits with Matt to see Joe Russo’s Almost Dead. It’s not the sort of gig I’d normally go to, but I appreciate live music in most forms, the crowd was really into it, and it’s always great to spend time with Matt. Matt also very kindly paid for my entry to the gig and bought me a beer there (a 16oz can of Land Shark Lager). I had a second beer and bought one for Matt too.

 

Sunday

I hadn’t really eaten since LAX, so I hit up Matt to come to lunch with me. We went for a wander downtown in Austin and ended up on 6th Street at Chupacabra Cantina y Tacqueria. I had one of the West Coast Burritos, a huge flour tortilla stuffed with refried beans, green chilli rice, jack cheese, crispy potato, lettuce, tomato, onion and chicken Tinga filling. It was delicious. I also had two Twisted X Austin Lager beers to wash it down.

In the afternoon I caught up with Matt and Chris Evans in the hotel bar. I had 3 Modelo Especial beers – these were kindly paid for by Emily Gallagher from Touchdown PR.

The Tech Field Day people all got together for dinner at Revue in the hotel. I had 3 Vista Adair Kolsch beers, some shrimp gyoza, chilli wonton dumplings, and okonomiyaki. This was paid for by Tech Field Day.

 

Monday

On Monday morning I had breakfast at the hotel. This was a buffet-style affair and I had scrambled eggs, huevo rancheros, bacon, jalapeño sausage, charcuterie, salmon and cream cheese, and coffee. This was paid for by Pure Storage. I received a gift bag at registration. This included a:

  • Pure//Accelerate cloth tote bag;
  • Rocketbook Everlast notebook;
  • “Flash Was Only The Beginning” hardcover book;
  • Porter 12 oz portable ceramic mug;
  • h2go Concord 25 oz stainless steel bottle; and
  • 340g bag of emporium medium house blend cuvée coffee.

For lunch I had beef brisket, BBQ sauce and some green salad. I also picked up a Pure FlashArray//C t-shirt during the Storage Field Day Exclusive event.

Before dinner I had a Modelo in the hotel – this was paid for by Tech Field Day. We then attended an Analysts and Influencers reception at Banger’s. I had 3 beers there (some kind of Pilsner) and a small amount of BBQ. I then made my way over to Parkside on 6th Street for an APJ event. I had 4 Austin Limits Lagers there and some brisket and macaroni and cheese. I should have smoke-bombed at that point but didn’t and ended up getting my phone swiped from a bar. Lesson learnt.

 

Tuesday

I skipped breakfast in favour of some more sleep. For lunch I had beef tacos in the Analysts area. Dinner was an Analyst and Influencer and Executive Program reception at the hotel. I had 3 Modelo beers, some dumplings, and some beef skewers. I turned in relatively early as the jet-lag was catching up with me.

 

Wednesday

For breakfast we were in the Solutions Exchange area for a private tour of the Pure setup. I had a greasy ham, cheese and egg croissant, some fruit, and 2 coffees. After the keynote I picked up some Rubrik socks.

In the afternoon I took a taxi to the Austin PD to attempt to report my phone. I then grabbed lunch with Matt Leib at P. Terry’s Burger Stand downtown. I had a hamburger and a chocolate shake. Matt paid for this. Matt then paid for a ride-sharing service to the local Apple Store where I picked up a new handset. We then took another car back to the hotel, which Matt kindly paid for.

We had dinner at Banger’s with the remaining Tech Field Day crew. I had 3 Austin Beerworks Pearl-Snap beers, boiled peanuts, chilli fries, and jalapeño sausage. It was delicious. This was paid for by Tech Field Day. I then headed to Austin City Limits for the Pure//Accelerate appreciation party. Weezer were playing, and I was lucky enough to get a photo with them (big thanks to Stephen Foskett and Armi Banaria for sorting me out!).

I had 3 Landshark Lager beers during the concert. After the show we retired to the hotel bar where I had 2 more Modelo beers before calling it a night.

 

Thursday

On Thursday morning I ran into Craig Waters and Justin Warren and joined them for a coffee at Houndstooth Coffee (I had the iced latte to try and fight off the heat). This was paid for by Craig. We then headed to Fareground. I had a burger with bacon and cheese from Contigo. It was delicious. This was also paid for by Craig.

Returning to the hotel, I bumped into my old mentor Andrew Fisher and he bought me a few Modelos in the bar while re-booking his flights due to some severe weather issues in Houston. I then took a Pure-provided car service to the airport and made my way home to Brisbane via LAX.

Big thanks to Pure Storage for having me over for the week, and big thanks to everyone who spent time with me at the event (and after hours) – it’s a big part of why I keep coming back to these types of events.

Pure Storage Expands Portfolio, Adds Capacity And Performance

Posted on by

Disclaimer: I recently attended Pure//Accelerate 2019.  My flights, accommodation, and conference pass were paid for by Pure Storage. There is no requirement for me to blog about any of the content presented and I am not compensated by Pure Storage for my time at the event.  Some materials presented were discussed under NDA and don’t form part of my blog posts, but could influence future discussions.

Pure Storage announced two additions to its portfolio of products today: FlashArray//C and DirectMemory Cache. I had the opportunity to hear about these two products at the Storage Field Day Exclusive event at Pure//Accelerate 2019 and thought I’d share some thoughts here.

 

DirectMemory Cache

DirectMemory Cache is a high-speed caching system that reduces read latency for high-locality, performance-critical applications.

  • High speed: based on Intel Optane SCM drives
  • Caching system: repeated accesses to “hot data” are sped up automatically – no tiering = no configuration
  • Read latency: only read performance is affected – no changes to latency
  • High-locality: only workloads that reuse often a dates that fits in the cache will benefit
  • Performance-Critical: high-throughput latency sensitive workloads

According to Pure, “DirectMemory Cache is the functionality within Purity that provides direct access to data and accelerates performance critical applications”. Note that this is only for read data, write caching is still done via DRAM.

How Can This Help?

Pure has used Pure1 Meta analysis to arrive at the following figures:

  • 80% of arrays can achieve 20% lower latency
  • 40% of arrays can achieve 30-50% lower latency (up to 2x boost)

So there’s some real potential to improve existing workloads via the use of this read cache.

DirectMemory Configurations

Pure Storage DirectMemory Modules plug directly into FlashArray//X70 and //X90, are inserted into the chassis, and are available in the following configurations:

  • 3TB (4x750GB) DirectMemory Modules
  • 6TB (8x750GB) DirectMemory Modules

Top of Rack Architecture

Pure are positioning the “top of rack” architecture as a way to compete some of the architectures that have jammed a bunch of flash in DAS or in compute to gain increased performance. The idea is that you can:

  • Eliminate data locality;
  • Bring storage and compute closer;
  • Provide storage services that are not possible with DAS;
  • Bring the efficiency of FlashArray to traditional DAS applications; and
  • Offload storage and networking load from application CPUs.

 

FlashArray//C

Typical challenges in Tier 2

Things can be tough in the tier 2 storage world. Pure outlined some of the challenges they were seeking to address by delivering a capacity optimised product.

Management complexity

  • Complexity / management
  • Different platforms and APIs
  • Interoperability challenges

Inconsistent Performance

  • Variable app performance
  • Anchored by legacy disk
  • Undersized / underperforming

Not enterprise class

  • <99.9999% resiliency
  • Disruptive upgrades
  • Not evergreen

The C Stands For Capacity Optimised All-Flash Array

Flash performance at disk economics

  • QLC architecture enables tier 2 applications to benefit from the performance of all-flash – predictable 2-4ms latency, 5.2PB (effective) in 9U delivers 10x consolidation for racks and racks of disk.

Optimised end-to-end for QLC Flash

  • Deep integration from software to QLC NAND solves QLC wear concerns and delivers market-leading economics. Includes the same evergreen maintenance and wear replacement as every FlashArray

“No Compromise” enterprise experience

  • Built for the same 99.9999%+ availability, Pure1 cloud management, API automation, and AI-driven predictive support of every FlashArray

Flash for every data workflow

  • Policy driven replication, snapshots, and migration between arrays and clouds – now use Flash for application tiering, DR, Test / Dev, Backup, and retention

Configuration Details

Configuration options include:

  • 366TB RAW – 1.3PB effective
  • 878TB RAW – 3.2PB effective
  • 1.39PB RAW – 5.2PB effective

Use Cases

  • Policy based VM tiering between //X and //C
  • Multi-cloud data protection and DR – on-premises and multi-site
  • Multi-cloud test / dev – workload consolidation

*File support (NFS / SMB) coming in 2020 (across the entire FlashArray family, not just //C)

 

Thoughts

I’m a fan of companies that expand their portfolio based on customer requests. It’s a good way to make more money, and sometimes it’s simplest to give the people what they want. The market has been in Pure’s ear for some time about delivering some kind of capacity storage solution. I think it was simply a matter of time before the economics and the technology intersected at a point where it made sense for it to happen. If you’re an existing Pure customer, this is a good opportunity to deploy Pure across all of your tiers of storage, and you get the benefit of Pure1 keeping an eye on everything, and your “slow” arrays will still be relatively performance-focused thanks to NVMe throughout the box. Good times in IT isn’t just about speeds and feeds though, so I think this announcement is more important in terms of simplifying the story for existing Pure customers that may be using other vendors to deliver Tier 2 capabilities.

I’m also pretty excited about DirectMemory Cache, if only because it’s clear that Pure has done its homework (i.e. they’ve run the numbers on Pure1 Meta) and realised that they could improve the performance of existing arrays via a reasonably elegant solution. A lot of the cool kids do DAS, because that’s what they’ve been told will yield great performance. And that’s mostly true, but DAS can be a real pain in the rear when you want to move workloads around, or consolidate performance, or do useful things like data services (e.g. replication). Centralised storage arrays have been doing this stuff for years, and it’s about time they were also able to deliver the performance required in order for those companies not to have to compromise.

You can read the press release here, and the Tech Field Day videos can be viewed here.

Random Short Take #21

Posted on by

Here’s a semi-regular listicle of random news items that might be of some interest.

  • This is a great article covering QoS enhancements in Purity 5.3. Speaking of Pure Storage I’m looking forward to attending Pure//Accelerate in Austin in the next few weeks. I’ll be participating in a Storage Field Day Exclusive event as well – you can find more details on that here.
  • My friends at Scale Computing have entered into an OEM agreement with Acronis to add more data protection and DR capabilities to the HC3 platform. You can read more about that here.
  • Commvault just acquired Hedvig for a pretty penny. It will be interesting to see how they bring them into the fold. This article from Max made for interesting reading.
  • DH2i are presenting a webinar on September 10th at 11am Pacific, “On the Road Again – How to Secure Your Network for Remote User Access”. I’ve spoken to the people at DH2i in the past and they’re doing some really interesting stuff. If your timezone lines up with this, check it out.
  • This was some typically insightful coverage of VMworld US from Justin Warren over at Forbes.
  • I caught up with Zerto while I was at VMworld US last week, and they talked to me about their VAIO announcement. Justin Paul did a good job of summarising it here.
  • Speaking of VMworld, William has posted links to the session videos – check it out here.
  • Project Pacific was big news at VMworld, and I really enjoyed this article from Joep.