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A data center admin once asked me a seemingly simple question: “Can I swap a Pure Storage® FlashArray™ into my older converged infrastructure platform?”

The obvious answer is, “of course you can.” But a better question is, “Why would you want to?” FlashStack™ environments offer a tight integration and software ecosystem that adds so much additional value. Pure Storage and Cisco have spent years optimizing FlashStack for performance, scalability, and availability.

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FlashStack is a Modern Data Infrastructure Solution with Benefits of Joint Engineering and Continuous Innovation

FlashStack is virtual machine-aware and hybrid cloud-ready, while retaining the predictability and efficiency advantages of dedicated compute and storage tiers. With FlashStack customers can modernize their operational model, stay ahead of business demands, and protect and secure their applications and data, regardless of the deployment model on premises, at the edge, or in the cloud.

Top 10 Reasons Why FlashStack

#1. Risk-Free Deployment

The first obvious benefit we offer is more than 25 Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs) for FlashStack. CVDs are step-by-step technical “cookbooks” that help ensure successful, rapid deployments of even the most complex workloads on FlashStack.

#2 Industry-leading Performance and Availability

Aren’t performance and reliability why you’re considering an all-flash solution in the first place? Pure FlashArray—the world’s first 100% all-flash end-to-end NVMe and NVMe-oF array—includes a storage-class memory boost to address the sub-millisecond latency requirements of the most demanding enterprise applications. FlashStack’s Purity operating environment features built-in and always-on data services for data reduction (up to 2x better than other mid-range arrays); always-on encryption for data-at-rest; and simple, no-cost business continuity with ActiveCluster™ data replication. And like all of Pure’s solutions, FlashStack delivers 99.9999% availability for no unplanned downtime.

#3 AI-powered Storage

Pure1® simplifies ongoing maintenance, monitoring, and troubleshooting with an AI-based platform that solves problems before they occur so you can keep mission-critical operations up and running. Administer storage and capacity growth with intelligent, predictive planning, and workload analysis.

#4 Integrated Systems Management

Cisco Intersight for FlashStack offers integrated management of the entire stack, with a single-pane-of-glass view for the storage, compute, and network components, whether on-premises or across multicloud landscapes. Managing hybrid environments has never been easier.

#5 Evergreen™ Storage

No more data migrations. The Pure Evergreen portfolio allows you to independently upgrade capacity and components on the fly, including controllers, to take advantage of industry innovations in CPU and flash. Our Evergreen subscription service eliminates risky and disruptive forklift migrations to deliver the agility your modern business demands. 

#6 Flexible OPEX Consumption¹

Traditional IT purchasing and capacity-planning practices are changing. Smart enterprises recognize that shifting to Evergreen//One™ provides greater flexibility and choice in how to consume storage. This added agility improves your ability to meet business demands while controlling costs and streamlining the path to hybrid-cloud services.

#7 Best-in-Class Application Monitoring

FlashStack supports AppDynamics from Cisco. AppDynamics is the most sophisticated application performance management solution available for mission critical-workloads like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft. In an SAP environment for example, only AppDynamics offers ABAP code-level SAP visibility and business transaction monitoring.

#8 Intelligent Workload Optimization

FlashStack supports Cisco’s Workload Optimization Manager (a.k.a. Turbonomic), which automatically scales compute resources up and down, on-prem and in the cloud, based on changing demand to assure workload performance.

#9 Cybersecurity

Pure and Cisco have partnered to ensure that FlashStack safeguards your most valuable asset: your data. In addition to always-on, end-to-end data encryption, FlashStack supports Cisco’s award-winning suite of cybersecurity solutions, guarding against intrusion, viruses, malware, and ransomware.

#10 Satisfied Customers and Recognized Leadership

Pure Storage is consistently named a leader by analyst firms, including ranking in the Leader’s Quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for six consecutive years. As amazing as this record is, we consider our customers’ experience as our most important measure of success by far. We’re extremely proud that our customers have awarded Pure Storage the industry’s highest Net Promoter Score—currently 82 as measured by Medallia—more than four times higher than our nearest competitor.

All of these factors beg these questions:

  • Does your current platform deliver this level of value?
  • Does your infrastructure simplify your job instead of complicating it?
  • Are you confident your current platform will easily scale on-demand and grow as needed?

Explore how FlashStack can help power your storage refresh. 


  1. OPEX treatment is subject to customer’s auditor review.