It's a first for the podcast as we bring the Pure Report Unplugged to the Las Vegas Strip and record live on location in front of an audience at Pure Accelerate 2024.  New locale, same format and co-hosts JD Wallace and Andrew Miller as we navigate thru the highlights of the week at Pure's customer and partner event.  Up top, we hit on our favorite moments of Accelerate - behind the scenes of the Coz demo showcase, JD running FlashDrive demo labs, and Andrew hitting on 150 TB DFMs and Pure Fusion.  Plus much more around the exciting new announcements across fleet management, digital experience (DX). For more information on what went down at Pure Accelerate and to find an upcoming event near you: https://www.purestorage.com/accelerate.html

Unplugged: Live at Accelerate 2024

Join Matt Bradford and Don Poorman as they help me unpack an incredible year of technological advancement at Pure Storage, taking listeners on a thorough journey through our most groundbreaking announcements and product developments. From hardware innovations like the FlashArray//C20 to cutting-edge cloud solutions and AI reference architectures, this episode offers an insider's perspective on how Pure continues to push the boundaries of data storage and management.
Traveling through key solution areas including hardware, cloud, cybersecurity, AI, and digital experience, Matt and Don provide expert commentary on game-changing developments. Highlights include the expansion of Pure Storage Cloud for AVS, exciting enhancements to DRaaS, the transformative OVX reference architecture for AI initiatives, and the introduction of Pure1 assessments that are reshaping how enterprises approach technology evaluation and implementation.
Beyond the technical details, this episode celebrates Pure Storage's commitment to customer-driven innovation and continuous improvement. From the launch of Pure Skill's new subscription-based learning platform to the expansion of Evergreen subscriptions and the intriguing glimpse of an AI Copilot, Matt and Don paint a vivid picture of a technology company relentlessly focused on solving real-world challenges and empowering digital transformation. Whether you're a Pure Storage enthusiast, a technology professional, or simply curious about the latest in data infrastructure, this year-in-review episode is a must-listen.

ICYMI: A Year in Review of Pure Always-On Innovation

We finally chased down the smart and savvy Rob Quast, Principal Technologist at Pure, to discuss the latest trends in the tech world around AI, Networking and Cloud storage. Our conversation kicks off with Rob's journey, from his time at ePlus and working in sys admin roles, to a memorable experience at Pure's NYC Accelerate event where he saw the stock exchange firsthand. We touch on the various aspects of a PT's role, including Rob’s experience showing demos and helping customers understand complex solutions. 

Our conversation shifts to some of Rob's most passionate work, including involvement in a large AI solution for Coreweave. He walks through the intricacies of a massive deal and how it required close collaboration with the product management team, post-validation work, and strategic networking. Rob also shares insights from a hyperscaler win for Pure Storage, explaining what "hyperscaler" means and how they’re used in the industry. We dive into the technical details of large AI deals, such as GPUDirect, and discuss how Pure can better connect with networking professionals. A key theme here is the intersection of data storage and networking, with Rob revealing why NVMe TCP is a game-changer for the future of cloud infrastructure, particularly when compared to technologies like Infiniband.

We close with conversation looking toward the future, exploring the realities of cloud storage and hybrid cloud solutions, and what customers are trying to achieve and the challenges they face. The episode wraps up with a focus on object storage, where Rob discusses how Pure Storage's Fusion platform helps manage global namespaces and facilitates multi-tenant cloud environments.

Inside the World of Large-Scale AI Solutions, Networking, and Cloud Innovation with Rob Quast

Episode 4 of our series around Pure's fundamental design principles dives into aspects of Pure's technology that drive realistic efficiency for users. This episode tackles capabilities most Storage professionals are familiar with - snapshots, efficiency metrics and adaptive flexible RAID.

Pure learned from the challenges created by legacy architectures to build better versions of these features into our all-flash array portfolio. Hear about how Pure Storage’s snapshot architecture focuses on instant, efficient, and immutable copies that serve both operational and security needs. Snapshots can be created instantly with no performance overhead and used for rapid recovery, cloning, or replication—each one functions as a “gold copy version” and maintains group consistency, enabling rollbacks to any point in time without dependencies or data duplication. Their design is tightly integrated with metadata, enabling efficient thin provisioning and consistent protection, while SafeMode extends these benefits by enforcing privileged access and retention policies for ransomware resilience. Around realistic efficiency metrics - we deliver transparent and realistic efficiency metrics by directly reporting space consumption trends and physical storage utilization, rather than relying solely on claims about thin provisioning or data reduction. Our user interface distinguishes between budgeted capacity, usable capacity, and used space, with a focus on showing only live user data (volumes and snapshots), and hiding internal system overhead, RAID overhead, and reclaimable space until critical thresholds are reached. Finally, we tackle RAID - Pure’s RAID architecture is built for flash, utilizing a flexible, adaptive structure that never requires manual configuration while continuously ensuring optimal data protection and performance.

Series Overview: Pure Storage’s foundational approach to product engineering is guided by 15 architectural decisions that were established at the company’s inception and have shaped both the technical and user experience across its product lines. These architectural choices were not made arbitrarily—they stem from a deliberate focus on simplicity, efficiency, and scalability, ensuring Pure could deliver storage solutions that break away from legacy complexity and enable continuous innovation without compromise.  This series will guide viewers through all of the 15 principles, helping you understand why certain choices were made, how they impact your operations, and how they compare to other industry features and products. Join Pure Report podcast hosts Rob Ludeman, Andrew Miller, and J.D Wallace for this fun technical retrospective on Pure Storage.

15 Architectural Decisions Series: Snapshots, Realistic Efficiency Metrics, and Adaptive RAID

Data management in high-performance computing (HPC) and AI environments presents unique challenges, especially with heavy file usage and evolving data lifecycles. This edition of the Pure Report podcast delves into these complexities, exploring how data transitions through development, simulation/training, inference/optimization, and long-term retention phases. Together with Pure technologists Bikash Choudhury and Don Poorman, we’ll tackle the critical problem statement: reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) by automatically moving inactive data to different tiers without sacrificing accessibility or performance during crucial operational stages.

Join us as we introduce Pure Storage's innovative Zero Move Tiering (ZMT) solution. Discover how ZMT delivers dynamic Service Level Agreements (SLAs) across performance and capacity tiers without data movement, leading to lower TCO and zero operational overhead. We'll also examine how ZMT fits into various data lifecycle stages, from development build workloads to AI-augmented modeling and simulation, and compare Pure's approach to the common deficiencies seen in other vendor solutions.

Taming the Beast: Managing HPC & AI Data at Scale with Zero Move Tiering on FlashBlade

Welcome to episode 2 of our special launch series of the Pure Report podcast!  In this episode, Chadd Kenney joins again to help us dive into the critical foundation of the Enterprise Data Cloud: the Unified Data Plane. We start with a discussion on why a truly unified data plane is essential for organizations today, managing everything from archive to AI workloads.

Chadd shares insights into the latest innovations across the FlashArray family, including the new FlashArray/XL 190 and FlashArray//ST, enhancements to FlashArray//X and FlashArray//C, and how Pure's platform supports diverse virtualization landscapes and continuing data growth driven by core databases and business workloads.

We then talk about how the virtualization landscape is still in flux, and many customers are evaluating their options. The good news is that Pure's platform is designed to support them, whether they choose to continue with VMware, transition to a new hypervisor like Nutanix, or modernize with containers. Additionally, we delve into new innovations within Pure Storage Cloud, including the Azure Native integration, which rounds out the portfolio and provides comprehensive support across the board.

We also touch on the new Pure KVA integration with NVIDIA Dynamo, Purity Deep Reduce, and how Pure's Evergreen architecture ensures customers can leverage all our Unified Data Plane announcements  without disruption. Don't miss Chadd's "Hot Takes" on future data drivers and common data infrastructure mistakes.

H2 Launch Series: One Platform, All Workloads - The Power of Pure's Unified Data Plane

In our latest episode, we sit down with Ken Hui, Field Solutions Architect, to discuss his journey at Pure Storage and the evolving landscape of data management. Ken shares his unique perspective on Pure Storage's culture, highlighting the emphasis on collaboration and innovation. The conversation delves into the critical role of unstructured data in today's AI-driven world, exploring how enterprises can strategically manage and protect their ever-growing data assets without falling prey to common pitfalls.

Ken, a seasoned veteran in the storage and cloud space, offers valuable advice on approaching new technologies, stressing the importance of starting with the desired end-state and aligning technology with people and processes. He also revisits his early career frustrations with file storage, explaining how Pure Storage's advancements, particularly with FlashBlade and FlashArray, have transformed the experience, making data management simpler and more efficient. The discussion touches on the power of continuous innovation, self-service upgrades, and the multi-tenancy capabilities that empower customers.

Our episode concludes with Ken's "hot take" on industry trends, where he champions object storage as a scalable solution for large-scale data workloads, especially in the AI and analytics space. He also shares a memorable "oops" moment from his career and offers crucial advice for IT professionals: learn programming to effectively leverage automation and APIs in the future of data management. 

Check out the new Pure Storage digital customer community to join the conversation with peers and Pure experts:
https://purecommunity.purestorage.com/


From File Frustration to Flash Freedom: How a Technologist Learned to Love File at Pure Storage

This episode of the Pure Report features a conversation with Eugene McGrath, a nine-year veteran of Pure Storage and a Field Solution Architect. Our discussion delves into Gene’s diverse background, starting from his early days in IT racking and stacking servers at companies like Microsoft and Pixar, and how that hands-on experience shaped his career. We compare the evolution of his role and the industry, emphasizing the importance of a versatile skill set in the ever-changing tech landscape, particularly with his focus now on converged infrastructure solutions like FlashStack.

We then dive into the partnership between Pure Storage and Cisco, specifically around the FlashStack converged infrastructure solution. Gene explains why this decade-long collaboration works, attributing it to a shared philosophy of simplifying infrastructure and improving the customer lifecycle. Our conversation also touches on the recent shift in Cisco's mindset, with Pure Storage taking a more prominent role, including the recent Nutanix partnership announcement. We further explore the concepts of "Day Zero" and "Day One" challenges in infrastructure deployment, emphasizing how Cisco Validated Design and automation mitigate risks and accelerate implementation for customers.

Our discussion concludes with the "Hot Takes" segment, where Gene discusses the growing trends of "hypervisor fatigue" and the repatriation of workloads from the cloud due to cost and performance issues. He predicts a significant shift towards containerization as companies seek more agnostic and flexible approaches to their IT infrastructure. Gene also shares a memorable "oops" moment from his career, involving 3,000 servers racked upside down, and offers advice to his younger self about the explosion of data and the increasing importance of data management.

For more information, visit: https://www.purestorage.com/products/integrated-platforms/flashstack.html

Check out the new Pure Storage digital customer community to join the conversation with peers and Pure experts: 
https://purecommunity.purestorage.com/

00:00 Intro and Welcome
04:55 Cisco and Pure Relationship
06:48 Stat of the Episode on Cloud Repatriation
12:35 Solving Day 0 and Day 1 Challenges
17:25 Using Cisco UCS in FlashStack
24:37 Cisco Validated Designs
26:54 Nutanix and Pure Partnership
32:35 Hot Takes Segment

FlashStack: A Decade of Converged Infrastructure Innovation

In this episode, we welcome Lead Principal Technologist Hari Kannan to cut through the noise and tackle some of the biggest myths surrounding AI data management and the revolutionary FlashBlade//EXA platform. With GPU shipments now outstripping CPUs, the foundation of modern AI is shifting, and legacy storage architectures are struggling to keep up. Hari dives into the implications of this massive GPU consumption, setting the stage for why a new approach is desperately needed for companies driving serious AI initiatives.

Hari dismantles three critical myths that hold IT leaders back. First, he discusses how traditional storage is ill-equipped for modern AI's millions of small, concurrent files, where metadata performance is the true bottleneck—a problem FlashBlade//EXA solves with its metadata-data separation and single namespace. Second, he addresses the outdated notion that high-performance AI is file-only, highlighting FlashBlade//EXA's unified, uncompromising delivery of both file and object storage at exabyte scale and peak efficiency. Finally, Hari explains that GPUs are only as good as the data they consume, countering the belief that only raw horsepower matters. FlashBlade//EXA addresses this by delivering reliable, scalable throughput, efficient DirectFlash Modules up to 300 TB, and the metadata performance required to keep expensive GPUs fully utilized and models training faster.

Join us as we explore the blind spots in current AI data strategies during our "Hot Takes" segment and recount a favorite FlashBlade success story. Hari closes with a compelling summary of how Pure Storage's complete portfolio is perfectly suited to provide the complementary data management essential for scaling AI. Tune in to discover why FlashBlade//EXA is the non-compromise, exabyte-scale solution built to keep your AI infrastructure running at its full potential.

For more information, visit: https://www.pure.ai/flashblade-exa.html

Check out the new Pure Storage digital customer community to join the conversation with peers and Pure experts: 
https://purecommunity.purestorage.com/

00:00 Intro and Welcome
04:30 Primer on FlashBlade
11:32 Stat of the Episode on GPU Shipments
13:25 What is FlashBlade//EXA
18:58 Myth #1: Traditional Storage Challenges for AI Data
22:01 Myth #2: AI Workloads are not just File-based
26:42: Myth #3: AI Needs more than just GPUs
31:35 Hot Takes Segment

Tackling Myths Around AI Data and FlashBlade//EXA

In this episode, we sit down with Solution Architect Robert Alvarez to discuss the technology behind Pure Key-Value Accelerator (KVA) and its role in accelerating AI inference. Pure KVA is a protocol-agnostic, key-value caching solution that, when combined with FlashBlade data storage, dramatically improves GPU efficiency and consistency in AI environments. Robert—whose background includes time as a Santa Clara University professor, NASA Solution Architect, and work at CERN—explains how this innovation is essential for serving an entire fleet of AI workloads, including modern agentic or chatbot interfaces.

Robert dives into the massive growth of the AI Inference market, driven by the need for near real-time processing and low-latency AI applications. This trend makes the need for a solution like Pure KVA critical. He details how KVA removes the bottleneck of GPU memory and shares compelling benchmark results: up to twenty times faster inference with NFS and six times faster with S3, all over standard Ethernet. These performance gains are key to helping enterprises scale more efficiently and reduce overall GPU costs.

Beyond the technical deep dive, the episode explores the origin of the KVA idea, the unique Pure IP that enables it, and future integrations like Dynamo and the partnership with Comet for LLM observability. In the popular “Hot Takes” segment, Robert offers his perspective on blind spots IT leaders might have in managing AI data and shares advice for his younger self on the future of the data management space. 

To learn more about Pure KVA, visit purestorage.com/launch.

Check out the new Pure Storage digital customer community to join the conversation with peers and Pure experts: 
https://purecommunity.purestorage.com/

00:00 Intro and Welcome
02:21 Background on Our Guest
06:57 Stat of the Episode on AI Inferencing Spend
09:10 Why AI Inference is Difficult at Scale
11:00 How KV Cache Acceleration Works
14:50 Key Partnerships Using KVA
20:28 Hot Takes Segment


Accelerating Enterprise AI Inference with Pure KVA

Bringing you direct access to Pure Storage thought leaders, technology experts, alliance partners, customer insights, and our latest product news.

New tracks tagged #flashblade