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Hurricanes Harvey and Irma have pummeled the Southern United States this season. Pure customers in this region have had a lot to worry about. However, we wanted to ensure that their Pure arrays were not on that list of concerns. So, to help customers mitigate the risks from hurricane impact, our support team implemented several proactive measures:

  • Identify customers at risk: We’ve been tracking the hurricanes from our 24×7 Pure Command Center in Utah, and reaching out proactively to customers in the hurricanes’ path to let them know that we were monitoring their arrays, so they didn’t have to.
  • Monitor closely: All Pure arrays send back rich telemetry to Pure1® every 30 seconds. We get a real-time view of array health, and our support team has kept a close eye on customers’ systems for any potential problems.
  • Communicate across channels: We’ve been maintaining open communication with customers, tracking every case closely, and sharing status updates internally with all company executives every 4 hours. We also posted a banner in Pure1 to reinforce our message to customers at risk that we are monitoring their systems and are available to help.
  • Protect infrastructure and data: We’ve been helping customers shut down arrays or replicate data off them to other locations.

Putting these proactive measures in place gave our customers further assurance that they can count on Pure. Still, given the magnitude of the hurricanes, we expected that we would need to help some customers recover from flooding and other disasters. Thus, despite the difficult conditions that these hurricanes would create, we have been committed to supporting customers on-site and providing any replacement parts as soon as physically possible.

One of our customers most severely impacted by hurricane Harvey is a company in Houston. The city had been flooded, and we knew that customers in this area would need all the help they could get. With this particular customer, the A/C went out during the hurricane, causing their Houston datacenter to heat up to over 160 F. This in turn caused the fire suppressant systems to kick in, bringing their entire datacenter down suddenly. Since the backup site was a third the size of their main site, the customer could only move a fraction of its equipment. This customer also had storage from two other major vendors but called on Pure to help migrate off these other solutions.

“Although we’ve participated in disaster recovery readiness drills and have a solid plan, the REAL DEAL has proven a mighty foe. We are looking at Pure to take this opportunity to shine” – Customer IT Head

Under these conditions, our support team did not know the exact state of the Pure array as it had been heated to over 160 F, so we proactively shipped a replacement array. Additionally, our support team went to the customer’s site to help the customer migrate data off its legacy storage to Pure and get their business up and running as quick as possible. This customer had just experienced a complete shutdown, and we not only showed up but delivered when the customer needed it most. By the way, the Pure array turned on and started serving data immediately.

This story highlights how our support truly lives and breathes a customer-first philosophy under any and all conditions. As you think about your storage vendor, is their support one that puts your needs first? If you are looking for a better support experience, we would love to chat.

To learn more about Pure1, our cloud-based management and support platform, visit our website. Also watch this video to hear from Colin Mead, our VP of Support, on how we are re-defining six nines availability.

Beyond providing industry-leading support to our customers, we are also committed to helping those affected by Harvey and Irma. Through the Pure Good Foundation, our employees have been donating to the Red Cross, the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida, and a gofundme for Puritans directly affected.