Pure Storage launches FlashBlade, aims to grab big data workloads

Pure Storage launched an all-flash blade system along with a flash array aimed at capturing big data workloads and expanding the company's footprint among small and midsized businesses.

The company launched FlashBlade and a FlashArray in an effort to grab "multi-petabyte-scale data sets." Pure's launch comes as giants such as EMC are moving to all-flash systems and noting that traditional disk storage systems are likely to be relegated to archiving in the future.

Matt Kixmoeller, vice president of marketing and product management at Pure, said the company's systems initially were used to crunch structured data, but are increasingly being used for unstructured information. "Unstructured data expands our categories," said Kixmoeller, who added that Pure's latest systems are designed to scale to 15 FlashBlades in a rack.

Pure Storage delivers solid Q4, revenue up 128 percent | Pure Storage adds 3D memory, Oracle and SAP systems, predictive support | EMC goes all-in on Flash storage, launches DSSD D5 rack system

He also said that Pure can get costs down to less than $1/GB usable storage.

With Pure's move it's going after the network attached storage market. Kixmoeller's argument is that workloads for science and engineering, analytics and the Internet of things will all go cloud scale.

The FlashBlade will combine power to process data as well as metadata and have 8TB and 52TB capacities. Pure's Elasticity software runs the FlashBlade and can handle multiple protocols used in big data.

Here's a look at the key takeaways for FlashBlade.

In addition, Pure launched a new system in its FlashArray/m family of products designed to court smaller businesses. The FlashArray//m10 will start at less than $50,000 with a full year of support.

Pure is hoping that the m10 becomes a starter system that will grow with companies. The m10 could also be used for large enterprise remote offices.

The company also launched a system called FlashStack Mini, which is converged and designed to start at less than $100,000. Pure's FlashStack is preintegrated with Cisco's UCS servers as well as virtualization tools from VMware and Microsoft.

The m10 and FlashStack Mini will be available in June. FlashBlade is open for early access release with general availability in the second half. Pure has shipped alpha systems to co-development customers.