Pure Storage Inc. today introduced two new software products, Fusion and Portworx Data Services, to reduce the amount of manual work involved in managing a company’s information and the hardware on which it’s kept.

Publicly traded Pure Storage supplies flash storage arrays for on-premises data centers. It also sells software that companies use to manage information across their in-house and cloud infrastructure. The new products enhance both the on-premises and cloud components of Pure Storage’s product portfolio, while aligning them more closely together in some respects.

Fusion, the first offering, is a software platform aimed at making on-premises storage more similar to renting capacity in the public cloud. Platforms such as Amazon Web Services enable customers to provision storage space on a self-service basis. Pure said Fusion will bring the same kind of flexibility to companies’ internal data centers. 

In on-premises data centers, provisioning storage capacity for an application has historically been a manual task. Developers have to open a ticket with the information technology teams every time they require storage capacity and wait for an administrator to prepare the necessary infrastructure. With Fusion, Pure Storage says, developers can spin up capacity on a self-service basis, which should allow software teams to move faster and free up IT teams for other tasks.

In the cloud, provisioning storage is not only managed as a self-service process but can also be automated in some respects. Fusion will offer similar capabilities. According to Pure Storage, the platform comes with an application programming interface that allows developers to connect popular automation tools such as Ansible and Terraform to their companies’ storage infrastructure. 

Fusion offers features for IT teams as well. The platform allows administrators to manage their companies’ Pure Storage systems through a cloud-based interface. A complementary artificial intelligence tool helps optimize storage infrastructure and finds the best way of allocating capacity for new applications. When needed, the AI assists with adjusting the storage capacity assigned to an existing application. 

“Customers want a new experience from infrastructure,” said Pure Storage Chief Product Officer Ajay Singh. “One that prioritizes flexibility, agility and speed to access without sacrificing reliability and performance, where storage is automated, self-service and pay-as-you-go.”

The second new offering Pure Storage introduced today is Portworx Data Services. It’s a software service designed to ease the management of databases running on Kubernetes. The service is based on technology that the company obtained through the $370 million purchase of startup Portworx Inc. last year.

Kubernetes is widely used to manage software container application environments in the enterprise. However, the framework provides a relatively limited set of features for managing applications’ data. Through the Portworx deal, Pure Storage gained software that expands Kubernetes with essential data management capabilities to make running applications easier.

The newly launched Portworx Data Services offering takes the concept a step forward. Pure promises it will automate the management of the databases in which Kubernetes-powered applications store their information. Pure Storage says that developers can spin up a new SQL or NoSQL database with the click of a button.

Once a database is deployed, Portworx Data Services automates much of the day-to-day work involved in maintaining it. The service provides cybersecurity features and ensures information remains available even in the event of an infrastructure outage. Storage capacity is added or removed as the amount of information in the deployment changes.

Portworx Data Services can manage databases running both on cloud infrastructure and on-premises hardware. Moreover, Pure says, the offering assists with setting up the other software components that are often deployed alongside databases to help manage information. Those components include, among others, search engines and message queues used to share information between applications.

“Now we don’t just give IT teams the tools needed to run data services in production, we are providing an as-a-service experience for the data services themselves so our customers can focus on innovation, not operations,” said Murli Thirumale, vice president and general manager of Pure Storage’s Cloud Native Business Unit.

Pure Storage is also updating an existing offering, its Pure1 Meta tool for monitoring storage environments. A set of new features will make it easier for administrators to track the health of Portworx-powered container infrastructure and applications that use Pure Storage’s SafeMode feature. SafeMode creates read-only copies of an application’s data that can’t be modified or deleted by ransomware, which reduces the impact of cyberattacks.

Photo: Pure Storage