Editor’s Note: All technical features described in this post were introduced with Purity//FA 6.4.3 and have been validated as current through mid-2025. Refer to platform-specific documentation for any subsequent feature enhancements or release-specific variability. Where snapshot limits and behaviors differ across platforms (on-prem, cloud, VMware vVols), consult product documentation or reach out to Pure Storage support for guidance.
Snapshots have become a de facto tool in managing and protecting data on primary storage. With Pure Storage and Purity//FA, snapshots can be created in less than a millisecond and take up very little space since they are simple data structures filled with only pointers to actual data. This makes snapshots a simple and space-efficient mechanism to recover from short-term data loss events.
Given the ease of use, customers love to use snapshots for a wide range of use cases, from Dev/Test—where data can be quickly rolled forwards or backwards during automated testing sequences—to ransomware recovery. Protection from ransomware attacks is a primary driver in the need to take more, and more frequent, snapshots.
With Pure Storage, snapshots are immutable and with SafeMode enabled, they are ineradicable. This means that an attacker cannot delete the snapshots to prevent recovery – a common attack vector that increases the likelihood an attacker can force a ransom payment. With a feature that is so easy to use and valuable to an organization, you could see how the number of snapshots in use could increase quickly over time especially in large enterprises.
Get Four Times the Snapshot Capacity
Starting in Purity//FA 6.4.5, we upped our snapshot scale by four times—from 100,000 total snapshots to 400,000. Now, we can replicate those 400,000 snapshots giving customers even more options for protecting their data.
For example, you could have four FlashArray//X systems each with 100,000 snapshots that are all replicating to a single FlashArray//C™ system to take advantage of its economics and larger capacities. While it may not be the case for everything, in this scenario, more is better.
Note: Starting with Purity//FA 6.4.3, you can create up to 400,000 snapshots per array on large platforms—including FlashArray//XL, //X70, //X90, //C70, and //C90—and up to 200,000 snapshots per array on medium platforms such as FlashArray//X20, //X50, and //C50.*
*For details on platform-specific snapshot limits, refer to the current FlashArray Capacity and Feature Limits documentation.
Use Snapshots for More than Recovery
It’s not just about cyber threats. Organizations are taking advantage of automation to quickly test workflows, data, and applications. The faster you can test, reset, and test again, the quicker you can get back to innovating.
For example, let’s say you have a specific data set on an application volume. You want to test out different scenarios against that data set to determine how a change to application logic affects an outcome. In this scenario, changes can be made to the application, the application can be tested against the data, and then the data can be rolled back quickly to enable further iterative testing. It’s like performing a science experiment and you always need to run that experiment from the same starting point.
Also like a science experiment, you can try out other options or ideas by snapshotting a volume multiple times to try different methods of data analysis or development. You have all sorts of powerful options with a storage snapshot. The best part? Nothing happens to the actual data—Pure Storage snapshots are read-only.
Less interesting, but maybe more important is that a snapshot can be a form of backup. Since it’s portable, you can take a volume snapshot and send it elsewhere like a Pure Storage Cloud™ instance or S3 via CloudSnap, allowing you to catalog different moments in time.
Conclusion
Scaling up our snapshot limits is more than just increasing numbers. It’s about keeping up with the needs of our customers and enabling them to innovate and protect their data in the process. Enhancing the Purity//FA snapshot capabilities continues to enable customers to not only take more snapshots on FlashArray but to also do more with those snapshots. Upgrade to Purity//FA today to take advantage of these snapshot enhancements and more.
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