Network Storage

Saracens welcomes Pax8 as Acronis #CyberFit Delivery Partner

Acronis has announced the Official Cyber Protection Partnership which will be supported by global cloud distributor, Pax8.Acronis will deliver innovative cyber protection solutions to ensure that Saracens’ data, applications, and systems are secure, authentic, and easily accessible, thus minimising the risk of downtime or disruptions to the team’s daily operations. Acronis’ technology and solutions are designed around a principle known as the Five Vectors of Cyber Protection, providing Safety, Accessibility, Privacy, Authenticity, and Security (SAPAS) for all workloads.Acronis Cyber Protect, an innovative solution that natively integrates cybersecurity with data protection, will provide the team with increased automation and productivity, including cloud enhancements, backup reports, and antivirus and antimalware protection. The team is one-step ahead of their competitors with Acronis products, decreasing cyber risk and simplifying deployment, configuration, and management tasks.“We are excited to join Acronis in the partnership with Saracens,” says Phylip Morgan, Chief Channel Officer at Pax8 UK. “Our technology marketplace will make it easy for Saracens to manage their IT solutions that help protect against ransomware and cyberattacks, and therefore offer a world-class experience.”Acronis will also work with the Saracens teams to deliver player career tracking using Machine Intelligence (MI), the next generation advancement inartificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). “We are proud to welcome Saracens to our #CyberFit Sports family. Saracens’ dedication to data protection and cybersecurity aligns with our goals to provide the best-in-class cyber protection to high-performing teams around the world. Together with Pax8, as Acronis Delivery Partner, we are committed to delivering the most innovative technology and support, helping Saracens realise its #CyberFit potential,” comments Ronan McCurtin, Acronis VP Europe, Turkey and Israel. The partnership will officially commence at the start of the 2021/22 campaign for three years until at least the end of 2023/24.Lucy Wray, Saracens CEO is delighted to welcome Acronis and Pax8 to the Saracens family: “We’re thrilled to have announced another new partner and signed a partnership with Acronis for the next three years. Technical innovation and research and development are both very important to us. We are excited that they will not only help us protect our data moving forward but, also, in working with their staff and affiliates, aid us as we move into new and unchartered waters. We both share similar values to constantly drive standards in our respective areas and search for new opportunities, so we see this is a perfect match.”

Creval deploys Pluribus for Data Centre Network modernisation

Pluribus Networks has announced that Credito Valtellinese (Creval), has completed deployment of a new multi-site data centre network fabric using Dell EMC Powerswitch S5200-ON series switches running the Pluribus Netvisor ONE operating system and Adaptive Cloud Fabric software. The fabric spans and enables two new active-active data centres which provide near-zero downtime for banking applications, ensuring a high-quality experience for Creval’s customers. The fabric was also extended to Creval’s two legacy data centres to support seamless migration of workloads to the new data centres with no service disruption to customers, eventually enabling Creval to decommission the legacy data centres after all workloads were migrated. With expanding business operations that include more than 3,400 employees in 11 regions through a distribution network made up of 355 branches, Creval needed to modernize its data center network to meet its ever-increasing IT workloads and respond to evolving customer expectations. Its legacy network consisted of two data centers, located approximately 150 kms apart, with applications announced over a private MPLS WAN towards the 300+ bank branches. With its data center architecture based on older switches, Creval faced multiple issues related to disaster mitigation and recovery, siloed services between single data centers and outdated storage systems and firewalls among the switches. The goal of the modernization project was to provide Creval with a highly scalable, agile and resilient data center architecture. An automated network fabric was critical to achieving these goals and, after investigating multiple networking solutions, Creval ultimately selected Pluribus Netvisor ONE running on high-performance open networking Dell 5200 series switches. Creval built two new modern data centers within 50 kms of each other and interconnected the new data centers with two 10G low latency DWDM links. Pluribus’ Adaptive Cloud Fabric solution, powered by Netvisor ONE,  enabled Creval to deploy an SDN-automated, overlay network fabric across the geographically separated data centers for operational simplicity, agility, ease of service migration and integrated analytics for visibility. “Creval was committed to moving ahead with a solution that supported disaggregated networking and a vendor that had local support and could meet our stringent testing and service migration requirements,” says Bruno Franchetti, Chief Architect at Creval. “Among the key benefits of this network refresh with Pluribus, is a drastic streamlining of our disaster recovery procedures which has reduced Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) to minutes.” “Creval’s application services can be distributed across both of our new data centres for resilience and there is complete flexibility in performing granular workload migration without impacting service performance,” comments Iacopo Salacrist, Head of Technology Division at Creval. “The IT team now has the choice to control when to move an entire service or all services from one site to the other by just reconfiguring a pair of firewall interfaces and with a minimal impact to the service availability.” Creval joins a growing number of enterprises deploying an active-active data centre with a virtualized network overlay. In the recent State of the Data Centre Networking 2021 Annual Report based on a survey of over 260 enterprises, Pluribus and Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) found that broad deployment of active-active data centre architectures to support private cloud will nearly double over the next two years from 44 percent to 81 percent. The survey also identified networking complexity as the biggest impediment to achieving this architectural goal.

Pure Storage helps channel partners supercharge their subscription business

Pure Storage has announced updates to channel incentives and offerings to enable partners to grow their subscription business with Pure. To adapt and thrive in today’s environment, customers want complete flexibility, agility, transparency, and simplicity - benefits often best achieved through subscription services. With Pure’s suite of subscription offerings, including Pure as-a-Service, Evergreen program, Pure Cloud Block Store, and Portworx, partners are able to meet their customers' evolving needs while generating recurring revenue. “Two of Pure’s greatest strengths are our industry-leading subscription services and our partner-led approach - both are foundational to our business and the way we serve our customers. We are thrilled to see our partners’ continued momentum with Pure as-a-Service and are excited to deliver new opportunities for partners to make an impact through our unique and differentiated subscription offerings”, says Andy Martin, Vice President, Global Partner Sales, Pure Storage. Pure as-a-Service partner rebate Partner momentum in selling Pure as-a-Service is strong, with more than double the number of partners transacting this year versus last year. Only Pure delivers a true enterprise class utility with flexible storage consumption, a cloud experience on premise, and aligns spend with actual consumption. Pure has continued to advance its Pure as-a-Service offerings, reducing complexity by eliminating additional licenses and support costs and introducing a service catalogue with transparent pricing. Now partners can make even more money selling Pure as-a-Service. With a new partner rebate, partners earn 5% of the total contract value on closed eligible Pure as-a-Service wins up to US$100,000 per deal. Portworx transitions to 100% channel model As enterprises look towards modern, cloud-native applications to power the next phase of their business, channel partners will be critical advisors, helping customers navigate a Kubernetes and container-based world. With Portworx, which Pure acquired in late 2020, Pure delivers the industry’s most complete Kubernetes Data Services Platform for building, automating, protecting, and securing cloud-native applications. Customers are able to accelerate their digital transformation by easily running any cloud-native application, in any cloud, using any Kubernetes platform with built-in high availability, data protection, data security, and hybrid cloud mobility. With Portworx sales now 100% channel led - just like the rest of Pure’s products and services - partners are able to expand their subscription offerings to cover Kubernetes-based applications. New Pure1 partner portal for managing customer subscriptions  Pure has extended Pure1 to give partners access to manage subscriptions on behalf of their customers, empowering Pure’s partner ecosystem to bring a fully operational service with full transparency to joint customers. Customers using Pure1’s self-service portal are also able to buy new services or expand their as-a-Service footprint via their channel partner whenever they need.

Pure1 Digital Experience transforms the purchasing, management and optimisation of infrastructure

Pure Storage has announced the new and improved Pure1 Digital Experience. These enhancements give customers additional control by delivering new automated monitoring and AI-driven recommendation capabilities with self-service management and digital procurement. IT teams are playing an increasingly central role in enabling the business, yet oftentimes remain saddled with burdensome IT management, troubleshooting, complex planning, and complicated purchasing processes. What they want is automation, self-service, and clear vendor SLAs to drive outcomes. Similar to how Pure redefined the business models that underpin storage infrastructure with Evergreen and Pure as-a-Service, the Pure1 Digital Experience is redefining the rest of the IT ownership experience, enabling IT teams to anticipate needs, acquire resources on their terms (and on their time frames) while eliminating risks to the business - around purchasing, data protection, and customer satisfaction. “Pure has always innovated for a better customer experience - an experience that is simple and streamlined with unparalleled support. By giving our customers more control over their environments and active recommendations for solving problems before they happen, we’re delivering on our Digital Experience vision and transforming the IT management experience yet again”, says Prakash Darji, VP and GM, Digital Experience, Pure Storage. Infrastructure observation and real time alerting Pure1’s AI-engine Meta delivers predictive service management that proactively identifies issues and prescribes resolutions so that issues are resolved before they become outages. Now, Meta can identify gaps in your strategy for safeguarding data. Key updates include: Intelligent monitoring and management of all data service platforms, whether on-premises FlashArray or FlashBlade, cloud-native on Portworx, or through Pure Cloud Block Store for AWS and Microsoft Azure.Predictive fault analysis and resolution using analytics gathered from across Pure's ecosystem - including VMs and containers - to quickly pinpoint potential challenges.Assessments for ransomware protection, with proactive recommendations for solutions like SafeMode snapshots.Real time troubleshooting using new search capability across storage and VMs. AI-driven performance, capacity, and expansion recommendations The new Pure1 Digital Experience not only tracks how resources are being used, but forecasts what will happen if you add or move workloads. Using AI, the planning capabilities of Pure1 delivers smart workload planning with recommendations on workload capacity and performance scaling. It also uses predictive analytics and alerting to ensure IT organisations meet SLAs and keep workloads operating in a healthy state, and is monitored by the Pure team to support pre-emptive service calls. Self-service management and digital procurement With the expanded offers in Pure1 service catalogue, users have full access to the broadest range of on-premise and hybrid cloud storage offerings and professional services from a single interface. Through this self-service catalogue, customers can:  Buy new systems and services - including Pure as-a-Service, Portworx, and Pure Cloud Block Store - or expand their as-a-service footprint on demand, whether on premises or in the cloud via AWS or Azure.Order from a rich set of professional services like advisory workshops, migration services, implementation strategy, and third party software integration services.Quote, order, and track new system additions from anywhere.Manage Pure as-a-Service subscriptions with easy add, upgrade, suspend, resume, limit, and renew functions.Schedule upgrades at your convenience, with pre-checks done automatically.

Pure Storage redefines storage for modern applications

Today at Pure//Accelerate Digital, Pure Storage announced the release of Portworx Enterprise 2.8. With new integrations across Pure’s portfolio of products and services and with VMware Tanzu, customers can now use Portworx to scale their Kubernetes usage to greater levels with unprecedented simplicity.  With new capabilities such as dynamic storage provisioning on FlashArray and FlashBlade, and unified visibility and support via Pure1, Portworx enables containerised workloads to run seamlessly across the cloud, bare metal infrastructure, Pure Storage arrays, and even competitive storage solutions.  Gartner predicts that by 2025, 40% of infrastructure and operations leaders will implement hybrid cloud storage architectures, up from 15% in 2021. As customers adopt hybrid cloud strategies, they still need a consistent environment to run their modern applications. That means they need the same level of storage and data management capabilities, regardless of if they are in the cloud, or on-premises.  With the latest release of Portworx Enterprise 2.8, customers get the same cloud-like experience for Kubernetes apps wherever they live, with broad Kubernetes ecosystem support. New capabilities include: Portworx delivers the simplest way to run Kubernetes applications at enterprise levels of scale and resiliency: The 2.8 release of Portworx Enterprise goes significantly beyond the capabilities offered by other storage solutions who are limited to the ‘connector’ approach facilitated by the Kubernetes Container Storage Interface (CSI), resulting in least common denominator features and limited scale. With a Kubernetes-native software approach built to support enterprise levels of scale and resiliency, Portworx combines cloud-native storage management and data protection services with best-of-breed Pure Storage FlashArray and FlashBlade for seamless deployment. Now when users provision container-native volumes through Portworx, storage volumes or file systems are automatically created on FlashArray and FlashBlade. This allows true storage-as-code, as volumes and file systems can be provisioned using Kubernetes without the need to directly interface with the backing storage arrays. Container-native volumes receive the full suite of Portworx container storage management features, including backup, disaster recovery, security, auto-scaling, and migration - features that aren’t tied to hardware and travel with the containerised application as it moves between on-prem and cloud deployments. With this new integration, customers can manage their modern applications in a Kubernetes-native way, while taking advantage of the enterprise capabilities of their Pure arrays such as deduplication and compression, achieving data reduction levels up to 10:1 depending on workload and a demonstrated 99.9999% reliability across 40,000+ arrays. Predictive-capabilities of Pure1, now for Kubernetes apps running on Portworx: With the latest Portworx release, Kubernetes cluster and volume usage metrics collected by Portworx will be sent to Pure1, providing a unified observability stack and support experience for a customer’s Kubernetes applications with Portworx in the Pure1 portal, allowing customer to see their deployments end-to-end and troubleshoot issues with Kubernetes applications. Additionally, as Pure1 collects data necessary to understand deployment patterns, it enables customers to benefit from the predictive support capabilities of Pure1, powered by the Meta AI engine, which aims to detect anomalies and suggest resolution advice before issues become outages. With Portworx fully integrated with the global Pure support organisation, this end-to-end data gives a highly-trained support team the tools necessary to provide market-leading predictive support to all Portworx customers. Protect Kubernetes applications and achieve fast recovery with Portworx and FlashBlade: PX-Backup was validated to work with FlashBlade - Pure’s unified fast file and object platform - to provide high-performance backup and recovery of Kubernetes-based workloads. By combining PX-Backup with FlashBlade, customers can protect their entire Kubernetes applications, including data and configuration, and benefit from FlashBlade rapid restore of up to 270 TB/hour. Pure released a Reference Architecture for this solution, which will be the first of many validated solutions. A better container-native storage experience for VMware Tanzu as well as any CSI-compatible storage system: The latest release extends Portworx support for leading Kubernetes platforms with addition of VMware Tanzu (TKG) support via the native Tanzu CSI driver. This means that customers can benefit from container-granular data management such as backup and recovery, encryption, and migration regardless of the storage backing their VMware environment including with vSAN, VVols, and VMFS datastores, or cloud block storage providers. Additionally, with Portworx Enterprise 2.8 supporting the latest CSI specification, Portworx can provide a consistent, Kubernetes-native experience for applications running on any enterprise storage that supports CSI. A unified experience for all Kubernetes apps running on Pure: With this release, Pure FlashArray and FlashBlade customers can use Portworx Enterprise 2.8 to achieve the highest levels of performance, scale, automation, data protection, and data security for production applications running on Kubernetes. For customers starting their Kubernetes journey without all of these advanced requirements, they can take advantage of a new offer starting this summer. Pure’s first generation Kubernetes offering, Pure Service Orchestrator (PSO), will become a part of Portworx Essentials, Portworx’s freemium offering, to provide customers with a unified storage orchestration offering for Kubernetes. The new Portworx Essentials offering enables widespread use for customers using FlashArray and FlashBlade and is both included and fully-supported in a customer’s Evergreen subscription or Pure as-a-Service subscription with more functionality than the current PSO. Additionally, customers can easily upgrade to Portworx Enterprise for additional security, data protection, and scale, while continuing to benefit from the deep integration with Pure. PSO will remain supported through the end of January 2022 at which point all customers will have to be transitioned to Portworx. “Pure and Portworx together are redefining what storage for modern, cloud-native applications looks like. By delivering storage that can be orchestrated entirely through Kubernetes, Pure is delivering a seamless hybrid cloud experience and changing outcomes for customers”, says Murli Thirumale, VP and GM, Cloud Native Business Unit, Pure Storage.

Siemon launches LC BladePatch fibre jumper for data centre patching

Siemon is pleased to introduce an innovative enhancement to their proven LC BladePatch duplex fibre optic jumper. Equipped with Siemon’s new space-saving, one-piece UniClick housing, the enhanced jumpers build upon LC BladePatch’s patented push-pull latch design to provide unmatched accessibility and ease of operation in ultra-high-density fibre patching environments. The UniClick housing features a one-piece body with an integrated switch to make it faster and easier to change polarity, with no loose parts. This reduces the LC BladePatch’s already small footprint, simplifying jumper installation and patching administration in even the tightest, side- stacked server, switch, and SAN port configurations. The UniClick housing also improves on the jumpers patented, user-friendly fibre polarity change process by eliminating multiple components and steps by incorporating a single polarity reversal switch. “Most fibre jumpers on the market do not support field polarity changes” explains Alex Yao, Siemon Senior Product Manager, “and those that do typically require a technician to disassemble the housing and physically move and twist the fibres, creating a strong risk of damage. With LC BladePatch’s UniClick housing, you simply engage the polarity reversal switch and rotate the latches. The fibres themselves never move from their factory- terminated locations.” These new UniClick enhancements work in conjunction with LC BladePatch’s exclusive, patented push-pull latch. This popular and proven design allows the connectors to be securely engaged and removed via a finger grip on the end of the strain relief boot rather than defeating traditional LC latches that can be extremely difficult to access in high-density applications. To further simplify jumper installation and future patching field management, LC BladePatch jumpers feature reduced-diameter uni-tube cable and bend-insensitive glass fibre. This space- saving, flexible cable reduces cable pathway congestion for improved airflow, energy efficiency and simplified cable routing. Siemon’s new LC BladePatch jumpers are compatible with any standard duplex LC adapter opening or LC small-form pluggable (SFP) module. They feature superior connector polish that meets stringent Telcordia and ISO/IEC end-face specifications and exceeds all ANSI/TIA and ISO/IEC insertion loss and return loss requirements. Available in OM3 and OM4 50/125 Multimode and OS1/OS2 Singlemode, in both UPC and APC configurations, and in OFNR, OFNP and LSOH jacket constructions, every LC BladePatch is 100% factory inspected to ensure precise optical performance and defect-free operation.

Data centre leader OFFSITE selects Infinidat to increase data storage at scale

Infinidat, a provider of enterprise-class storage solutions, has announced that OFFSITE, a national provider of hosted, managed services and data centre operations based in Wisconsin, has selected Infinidat’s storage technology to support the growth of its business. Infinidat’s storage technology displaced the existing all-flash arrays that OFFSITE had been using to meet the enterprise technology requirements of its customers.  While catapulting OFFSITE into the petabyte scale for the first time, the Infinidat solution was only one third the cost of all-flash arrays for the same amount of usable storage, yet without the need to rely on compression and deduplication. OFFSITE adopted Infinidat’s elastic pricing and flexible consumption model. “With the Infinidat storage solution, we have been able to meet the enterprise technology requirements of our customers and deliver ultra-fast, yet more cost-effective services,” says Joseph G. Rickard, CEO, at OFFSITE. “By building our on-premises, private cloud for us, Infinidat gives us the flexibility to only pay for the storage we use, allowing us to scale when more capacity is needed on demand. The capabilities that Infinidat has with VMware also make provisioning or expanding storage take only minutes.” Steve Sullivan, EVP of Sales, North America, at Infinidat, says, “The favourable economics of Infinidat’s on-premises storage solution are changing the economics of the storage industry and what enterprise customers and cloud service providers are expecting. The success of OFFSITE is a great example of a company discovering how Infinidat delivers high performance, 100% availability and reliability at a lower cost than the all-flash product from an incumbent vendor. An increasing number of companies are making this same discovery.”  OFFSITE was founded in 2001 as a disaster and workplace recovery data centre. It has grown from a regional customer base in Illinois and Wisconsin to a national provider of private cloud services, shared and dedicated colocation services, disaster recovery services, and network operations centre (NOC) solutions to mid-market IT enterprise companies. With redundant operations in Chicago and Denver, OFFSITE’s strong suit is its ‘always available’ and 24x7 network operations centre. The company’s reliability, which its storage platform needs to ensure, continues to attract a diverse base of enterprise customers.   Infinidat’s solution aligns with OFFSITE’s goal to redefine the data centre experience. OFFSITE provides a high-performing environment for its customers to manage their data operations with a guarantee of security, a powerful infrastructure, industry-leading technology, and comprehensive expertise.   Storage consolidation was a key consideration in selecting Infinidat. OFFSITE can now fit four petabytes in one rack, allowing the company to expand its footprint and scale quickly (minutes versus weeks) from 300 terabytes up to one petabyte  ̶ all while using generally available hardware that is not proprietary.  

Acronis launches partner portal to empower service providers

Acronis has introduced a new partner portal that delivers greater support and enhanced marketing and sales capabilities to the service providers, distributors, and resellers in the #CyberFit Partner Program. The new portal was developed to enhance partner enablement, providing easy access to the content, tools, and training that will help them build a successful cyber protection business. Given the dramatic growth of the Acronis cloud ecosystem – which has doubled since 2018, including a 30% increase in partners last year – the company wanted to revitalise its partner portal with a familiar, easy-to-use interface while providing new capabilities that help partners maximise the potential and profitability of their cyber protection portfolio. “Acronis knows that our success is tied directly to the success of our partners, which is why we do all we can to accelerate their business growth. We recently introduced our flagship Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud with a no-charge licencing model to allow for incremental margins, as well as enhanced incentives for our newly announced #CyberFit Partner Program,” says Jan-Jaap “JJ” Jager, Chief Revenue Officer, Acronis. “With our new partner portal, we’re making it even easier to leverage those initiatives, putting the knowledge, tools, and support needed to deliver comprehensive cyber protection at our partners’ fingertips.” Available in six languages and accessible through the existing partner portal URL, the new portal puts even more power in the hands of Acronis’ service provider, reseller, and distribution partners. Among the featured enhancements are: Easier navigation with a central dashboard that provides a partner an account overview at a glance with customisable widgets that show support cases, MDF, deal registration, renewal opportunities, and more. Partner programme benefits and requirements are immediately accessible, as are special promotional offers. With an interface that mirrors the existing Acronis Management Console, access can be set based on roles and responsibilities. Enhanced marketing and sales support, including built-in marketing automation tools that streamline the ability to promote and sell, share email blasts, and offer renewals pipeline management for resellers. Partners also gain access to Acronis’ NFR Program as well.Ready-made and DIY marketing content that can be executed directly from the portal, including campaigns-in-a-box, email nurture flows, social media content, email blasts, customisable web banners and landing pages, and more provide partners with flexible, self-service marketing opportunities.  Increased support visibility for both technical and sales ticketswith a new Support section that streamlines case submission and provides easily tracked support tickets. Managing sales and renewals opportunities is also made easier.Specialized training from the Acronis #CyberFit Academy – including product training, technical certifications, etc. – can also be accessed directly through the new partner portal. Partners who have participated in testing the new portal agree that the new capabilities will benefit their go-to-market efforts and help them streamline their sales and marketing initiatives. “Acronis has created a seamless and exceptional user interface with its new Partner Portal. From product management to technical support, we feel more connected than ever to Acronis’ team of advisors and continue to learn how to improve our own sales experience on the new platform,” comments Evangelos Tselios, Cloud Product Manager at interworks.cloud. “This outstanding development is well-organized and filled with useful content and information, truly honoring one of Acronis’ true core values of transparency. This new portal is a great example of how Acronis values its partners.”

CTERA announces File Access Solution for the post-COVID workplace

CTERA has introduced a new remote work suite for its global file system featuring a small form factor edge filer and a new lightweight file access agent. The product suite enables enterprises to securely extend LAN-speed access to corporate file shares for small regional teams and data-intensive home users while preserving consistent folder structures, permissions, and access control. The pandemic forced an overnight shift to work-from-home that has raised serious data management challenges in enabling remote NAS access, scaling distributed VDI platforms, and combating a steep rise in ransomware attacks. According to Gartner, 48% of employees will work remotely after the pandemic, compared to 30% pre-pandemic.1 As a result, IT organisations are rethinking long-term remote workforce IT strategies to ensure fast and secure access to corporate data from any location. The CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform enables organisations to connect remote sites and users over a single namespace and and deliver HQ-grade data access experiences from any edge location or device. By unifying local file sharing with multi-cloud object storage, CTERA’s global file system technology allows enterprises to modernise every aspect of their distributed file services delivery – including remote offices, work-from-home laptops, VDI, and mobile – without compromising performance or security. The CTERA remote work suite features the CTERA Edge HC100, a desktop-sized edge filer with 1TB of high-speed NVMe cache delivering fast network storage access for small workgroups, coupled with the CTERA Drive Connect agent for Windows and MacOS that provides desktop-integrated cached access to corporate file shares. The new suite provides a unique solution for organisations that seek to roll out managed file services to many remote locations, eliminating the need for expensive servers and backup systems. “CTERA’s multi-cloud global file system allows us to provide secure and familiar file services to users anywhere,” said Brian Zwart, IT Manager at American Engineering Testing. “The HC100 filer provides the right balance of performance, security, and sleek form-factor to support our small offices around the country and enables global access without forcing our users to learn a new way to work with their file shares.” “Demand for modern data storage services is going up, and CTERA offers one of the most complete solutions in the market,” says Enrico Signoretti, Senior Data Storage Analyst, GigaOm. “Enterprises must address urgent challenges related to providing access for small remote offices and work-from-home scenarios. CTERA’s ability to extend cloud file services to any office or endpoint while preserving organisational security and control fits a lot of distributed enterprises’ needs in the post-Covid era.” “CTERA has always been the leader when it comes to providing a holistic data management solution across large-scale deployments with heterogenous access clients across laptops, VDIs, and filers,” comments Oded Nagel, Chief Strategy Officer at CTERA. “With the new remote work suite, we are bringing unlimited data access to the far edge of the enterprise, enabling remote workgroups and data-intensive users such as video editors and designers to enjoy HQ-grade productivity from their home offices.”

Pure Storage brings industry leading block storage to Microsoft Azure

Pure Storage has announced the general availability of Pure Cloud Block Store on Microsoft Azure Marketplace. With a common dataplane across multicloud environments, customers can move to the cloud on their terms, allowing for seamless application portability to the cloud or the ability to complement on-premises workloads with Dev/Test, Disaster Recovery and High Availability solutions in the cloud. While enterprises increasingly desire cloud attributes including simplicity of management, pay-as-you-go consumption, and non-disruptive upgrades, they know the best way to achieve their goals is to implement a hybrid approach to IT. According to predictions from IDC, by the end of this year, more than 90% of enterprises worldwide will meet their infrastructure needs with a mix of on-premises/dedicated private clouds, several public clouds, and legacy platforms. “Pure has been delivering the cloud experience from day one. With Pure Cloud Block Store on Azure, we are continuing to bridge the cloud divide, helping customers achieve the reliability, resilience, performance, and operational simplicity they expect from Pure wherever their data lives.” -- Dan Kogan, VP of Product, FlashArray, Pure Storage “Pure and Microsoft Azure share the belief that our customers deserve a seamless experience whether their infrastructure is on-premises, hybrid, multicloud, or at the edge. Pure Cloud Block Store on Azure, which is built with unique Azure capabilities including shared disks and Ultra Disk Storage, provides a comprehensive high availability and performant solution. We are pleased to welcome Pure Cloud Block Store to the Azure Marketplace to bring increased data mobility and protection to our joint customers.” – Aung Oo, Partner of Director Management, Microsoft Azure Storage Pure Cloud Block Store provides seamless data mobility across on-premises and cloud environments with a consistent experience, regardless of where data lives - on premises, cloud, hybrid cloud, or multicloud. Pure Storage works collaboratively with Microsoft to support joint customers on their cloud journey by addressing their diverse needs, including: A common dataplane across environments: Because Pure Cloud Block Store runs the same operating system as Pure’s industry-leading FlashArray systems, customers are able to get all of the benefits of an enterprise-grade storage platform including data reduction, built-in snapshots, thin provisioning, and high availability, natively in the cloud and with the added benefit of seamless data mobility between clouds. It delivers consistent APIs and automation between on-premises and cloud, enabling developers to build once and deploy across their hybrid cloud. Resilience and reliability: Pure Cloud Block Store enhances cloud storage reliability by ensuring that applications and data are resilient to single points of failure. Also announced today, the Pure Validated Design for Microsoft SQL Server Business Resilience delivers business continuity for mission critical SQL Server databases running on premises and enables disaster recovery in the cloud by leveraging the new Pure Cloud Block Store for Microsoft Azure as a high availability target. With SQL Server and the combination of FlashArray//X, FlashArray//C, and Pure Cloud Block Store, customers can achieve the highest levels of application availability, ensuring business continuity for their most important SQL Server workloads. Cost efficiency: Cloud-native customers can see meaningful cost savings through Pure’s industry leading data reduction capabilities and via reduced management overhead typically associated with cloud-native block storage by eliminating the need to manage IOPS, bandwidth and capacity of individual volumes. Its industry-leading data efficiency means customers can buy less capacity in the cloud without compromising on enterprise storage features and flexibility. Pure’s Subscription Services include the Evergreen program and unified subscription, which delivers on-premises solutions and Pure’s Cloud Block Store under a single consumption experience. Pure’s unified subscription is a true enterprise class utility that delivers ultimate flexibility for storage consumption.