text: Pure Storage FlashArray Review: A simple, reliable, and high-performance solution for hosting VMware workloads | IT Central Station
  This solution seems to be fairly reliable. I haven't had any issues personally, or outages or anything of that nature.
  The flash array scales up well, but it doesn't really scale-out. I think that's more where Pure's FlashBlade comes into play. You'd have to replace it with the next model up controller, in order to scale.
  Prior to this solution, our customer used Dell EMC, but there were several problems. They were not happy with it because of the performance of the array, and also the complexities around engaging the support teams. Their solution had also reached end-of-life, so they had to move to a new platform anyway. Ultimately, they wanted to move to something simpler than their existing platform, so they moved to Pure.
  This initial setup and deployment are pretty straightforward.
  For the setup, it is very simple to populate the information. We had a workbook that was provided by Pure to give to the customer to gather all of the details. That made the implementation very straightforward.
  The one thing that was a little bit annoying was the fact that we still had to come back through Pure to get the software. A lot of our other partners, we can just download it ourselves, and as long as we've got the process, we can go and do it ourselves. But, in this scenario, we still had to come back through Pure to actually get the software.
  We implement this solution for our customers. We are a partner and we're certified to do deployments.
  I think that our customer has seen ROI because their existing solution was getting into extended maintenance, so it was costing a lot of money for that service. Also, with less time spent managing that old array, they had more time to do other things.
  In addition to this solution, our customer considered another Dell EMC option, as well as one by Hitachi. They chose this because of the simplicity, and the fact that it is all-flash meant that they didn't have to worry about performance.
  We are using the VMware plug-in for Pure. It's meant more rapid provisioning of volumes for VMware, and it gives the customer more visibility of the storage.
  Both the ease of setup and the reliability of the array makes it quite simple to manage for the customer.
  My advice to anybody who is researching this solution is to consider that things are changing a lot in the industry at the moment. So, obviously, looking for things that are going to take less time to manage, are easy to implement, and give a good return on investment are important success criteria.