Pure Introduces First External Block Storage for Azure VMware Solution

Pure Storage announced that the Pure Storage Platform now delivers the first generally available external block storage for Microsoft’s Azure VMware Solution, to improve TCO for VMware workloads in Azure. For customers with storage-intensive VMware workloads, Pure Cloud Block Store provides the flexibility to match the organisations’ Azure VMware Solution compute needs with its storage capacity needs—optimising spend in the cloud.

Industry Significance:

Microsoft’s Azure VMware Solution allows customers to move or extend VMware-based workloads from on-premises data centers to Azure. Yet, some existing storage-intensive VMware workloads can be cost prohibitive to move. Pure’s solution helps bridge this gap, allowing organisations to optimise their storage footprint and spend on Azure VMware Solution, unblocking VMware migrations to Azure, and bringing the on-premises VMware experience that customers have relied on for decades to the public cloud.

How It Works:

Pure Cloud Block Store for Azure VMware Solution is a software-defined storage array built on native Azure resources. Pure Storage and Microsoft co-engineered automated integrations to ensure storage is correctly provisioned to an organisations’ Azure VMware Solution environment, ensuring consistent management without any customer tuning. Native Azure services such as a database volume can be hosted in parallel with Pure Cloud Block Store for Azure VMware Solution. In addition, replication connectivity to an on-premises Pure Storage FlashArray or additional Pure Cloud Block Store instances is fully supported.

Azure customers can leverage their Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) to purchase and attach Pure Cloud Block Store capacity to their Azure VMware Solution environment.

Benefits of Pure Cloud Block Store for Azure VMware Solution:

Better Efficiency and Cost Optimisation in the Cloud

• Organisations can gain efficiency and better cost optimisation when running VMware workloads on Azure VMware Solution. Pure Cloud Block Store decouples storage and compute resources, allowing organisations to scale storage capacity independently of compute nodes. Pure Storage also brings sophisticated data reduction with deduplication, compression, and pattern removal to the cloud. That, along with thin provisioning, ensures efficient, optimised storage.

Unblocking VMware Migrations to Azure VMware Solution

• With the ability to decouple storage and compute resources, IT teams can move VMware workloads to Azure VMware Solution that may have been cost-prohibitive to migrate in the past. This allows organisations to take advantage of the benefits of Azure VMware Solution, without overextending costs.

Enabling Hybrid Deployments and Data Mobility

• Organisations can realise true data mobility and create a hybrid VMware deployment when using Pure Storage both on premises and on Azure. Pure Storage customers can leverage their Evergreen//One subscription to relocate capacity from on-premises FlashArray systems to Pure Cloud Block Store in Azure as needed.

Premium Storage in the Public Cloud

• Get access to premium storage features in the public cloud. Pure Storage’s data reduction and thin provisioning provide efficient storage that optimises an organisations’ cloud storage footprint and spend. IT teams can protect the organisations’ data with ease using Pure Storage’s snapshot capabilities—including instantaneous snaps and clones, immutable snapshots, snapshot scheduling, continuous replication, active-active replication, and offload to Azure blob storage. And with always-on data-at-rest encryption and SafeMode, storage is secure by default.