Modernize without Compromise: Nutanix Cloud Platform Platform with Pure Storage FlashArray

Changes in the virtualization space have thrown a wrench into a lot of plans. Between licensing shifts, product roadmap uncertainty, and growing demand from workloads like AI and analytics, a lot of teams are struggling to chart their way through this.

Higher costs, complex contracts, and fast-changing requirements are making it difficult to move forward confidently. Nutanix and Pure Storage are joining together to help bring back that sense of control—not by forcing a big change, but by offering more optionality.

Figure 1: Capabilities of Nutanix and Pure Storage. 

Nutanix and Pure Storage share a common commitment to delivering exceptional customer experiences and best-in-class data center technologies, as reflected in multiple years of industry-leading NPS scores. Together, we are combining strengths to offer a comprehensive solution for compute virtualization, network virtualization, and enterprise-grade storage.

Introducing Nutanix Cloud Platform with Pure Storage FlashArray

This integrated solution brings together the best capabilities of the Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP) solution and Pure Storage^® FlashArray™ to deliver unmatched performance, resiliency, and simplicity for modern data centers.

Nutanix Cloud Platform highlights:

• Nutanix AHV: An enterprise-grade hypervisor certified for more than 1,400 popular enterprise ISV applications 
• Built-in flow network virtualization and security: Simple, scalable, and secure network virtualization and micro segmentation 
• Native replication and BCDR: Provides streamlined business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities
• Sophisticated data center-wide VM orchestration and policy-based administration with Prism Central 

Pure Storage FlashArray highlights:

• Unmatched performance: Industry-leading sub-millisecond latency and always-on data reduction 
• Data security: Built-in ransomware protection and advanced security and data protection features
• Extreme reliability: 99.9999% availability with non-disruptive hardware and software upgrades
• Ease of use: API-first design with unified AI-driven management (Pure1^®) and automation capabilities (Pure Fusion™) 

Pure Storage solution seamlessly integrates NCP features with the FlashArray’s Purity operating system features to deliver a VM-centric, easy-to-use solution that simplifies operations while enabling high performance, scalability, and resilience for your data center.

Hardware 

The solution supports a wide range of industry-standard servers from major server vendors, including Dell, Cisco, and HPE, offering you the freedom to use the vendor of your choice and even repurpose your existing investments. Refer to MyNutanix for an expansive list of supported servers with this solution.

The following Pure Storage FlashArray models are supported with the solution:

The Solution Architecture 

Figure 2: Architecture for the Nutanix and Pure Storage solution.

Virtual Disk-to-volume Architecture 

Nutanix and Pure Storage have gone beyond traditional protocol-based interoperability to deliver a tightly integrated solution designed for simplicity, scalability, and efficiency. At the heart of this integration is the virtual disk-to-volume architecture, which ensures that every virtual disk of an AHV VM is backed by its own dedicated volume on the FlashArray. These volumes are automatically provisioned and presented to the Nutanix cluster, creating a seamless experience for administrators.

Figure 3: Disk-to-volume architecture.

All VM operations—such as cloning and snapshots—are executed at the VM level and automatically translated into array-side operations. This approach provides true VM-level granularity and full automation across compute and storage resources.

Key Benefits of Virtual Disk-to-volume Architecture

1. Predictable Performance at Scale
   By isolating resources at the VM level, this architecture eliminates noisy neighbor issues, making it ideal for large-scale virtualization and mission-critical workloads.
2. Flexible, Coordinated Operations
   Operators can manage VMs and their associated storage as a single unit, simplifying day-to-day operations and improving agility.
3. Optimized Storage Utilization
   With application I/O streams kept separate, FlashArray controllers can effectively apply data efficiency, reduction, and security services. This can result in better resource utilization and improved overall performance.

This deep integration between Nutanix and Pure Storage delivers a solution that combines simplicity with enterprise-grade capabilities—perfect for organizations looking to consolidate workloads while maintaining predictable performance and operational flexibility.

NVMe/TCP 

External storage connectivity between Pure Storage FlashArray with NCP leverages the NVMe/TCP protocol for storage connectivity. This enables high-performance Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) storage to be accessed over standard TCP/IP Ethernet networks, combining the speed and efficiency of NVMe with the ubiquity and cost-effectiveness of TCP/IP.

• This approach allows organizations to leverage existing Ethernet infrastructure—no specialized networking hardware is required, unlike other NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) transports such as RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) or Fibre Channel.

• NVMe/TCP provides the performance benefits of NVMe, such as low latency, high throughput, and deep parallelism, while maintaining the flexibility and cost advantages of TCP/IP networking.

• The Nutanix-Pure Storage integration delivers a fully automated NVMe/TCP setup, eliminating the need for manual configuration at the Nutanix cluster level. All required NVMe/TCP initiators and the underlying network paths—including multiple redundant connections to the FlashArray system—are automatically provisioned and configured. This zero-touch approach allows for simplified deployment, enhanced reliability, and optimal connectivity without operational complexity.

Figure 4: Configuration of a Nutanix Compute Cluster

Easy Migration from Fibre Channel to IP

Pure Storage and Nutanix integration greatly reduces the barriers to modernizing your storage networks and standardizing on Ethernet as your data center network technology. Pure Storage pioneered the NVMe-oF technologies and especially NVMe/TCP since its ratification in 2021. Most recent generation FlashArray systems have built-in Ethernet ports that can be enabled for NVMe-oF targets. You can also non-disruptively add additional Ethernet front-end ports to run NVMe/TCP. Pure Storage supports co-existence of Fibre Channel and NVMe/TCP front-end ports, which makes migration non-disruptive to your existing infrastructure. 

To connect the FlashArray system to a Nutanix cluster, the solution supports using your existing network switches as long as they have sufficient bandwidth and ports to keep the storage traffic isolated from other network traffic. In case you need complete separation of the Ethernet network used for connecting to FlashArray from other networks, you can also choose to deploy a separate network segment with its own set of redundant switches. 

At the Nutanix cluster level, it is recommended to create a dedicated logical network (AHV vSwitch) with sufficient redundancy to connect to FlashArray. The NVMe/TCP initiators are automatically configured on the CVM with a maximum number of paths set up over the underlying network. The administrator does not need to design or manually configure the NVMe/TCP initiators on the Nutanix cluster.

Enduring Partnership and the Road Ahead

The solution is validated by multiple large corporations as part of an early access program. Nutanix and Pure Storage have collected healthy feedback from these participants and will continue to improve this solution. 

Nutanix and Pure Storage will maintain this partnership as we expand and deepen our integration across products and features. In the near term, here’s a glimpse into new features from our joint roadmap: 

• Nutanix Cross-Cluster Live Migration 
• Nutanix AOS Sync Replication 
• Nutanix AHV Metro

Pure Storage ActiveCluster 

ActiveCluster™ provides active‑active synchronous replication for FlashArray that mirrors writes across two arrays so both can simultaneously serve I/O. It delivers zero RPO/RTO with transparent failover for resilient dual‑site or metro deployments.

Next Steps

If you’re reevaluating your virtualization strategy or seeking to reduce risk, now is the time to explore Pure Storage + Nutanix. Engage with us as an alternative modern virtualization solution that delivers true compute and storage disaggregation, high performance, simple management, and built-in cyber resilience. 

Contact your Nutanix or Pure Storage representative to arrange for an executive briefing or start your own proof of concept at your data center using Nutanix evaluation software.

Join us at Nutanix .Next 2026, April 7-9 in Chicago to learn more about how this deeply integrated solution can accelerate your digital transformation.

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