Nutanix and Pure Storage integrate virtualization platform and flash storage

A new integrated solution from Nutanix and Pure Storage combines the Nutanix Cloud Platform with Pure Storage FlashArray. With this, both companies are focusing on business-critical, data-intensive workloads, including AI.

Nutanix and Pure Storage are jointly entering the market with a joint infrastructure solution. This combines the virtualization and management capabilities of the Nutanix Cloud Platform with the storage capacities of Pure Storage FlashArray. According to both parties, the combination makes it possible to scale flexibly, make applications more responsive and run business-critical workloads more efficiently.

The pleasures of 2-tier

The collaboration is the result of a more flexible positioning of Nutanix. The HCI specialist previously fully embraced hyperconverged infrastructure as the ultimate solution, and developed an extensive platform for it. Taking into account the real situation in the market, however, Nutanix has opened up its approach more to what can be seen as a 2-tier approach.

Storage can optionally be disconnected from the HCI story. This ensures that Nutanix can enter the market with storage specialists, and customers do not have to change their architecture to do business with Nutanix.

Deep coupling

That is exactly what is happening with this collaboration: the Nutanix platform with HCI DNA is linked to the high-performance storage of Pure Storage. In the joint solution, each virtual disk (vDisk) within Nutanix is linked to a separate storage volume on the Pure Storage FlashArray platform. This gives IT administrators granularity at the level of individual virtual machines. They can apply array services such as snapshots and Quality of Service per disk, without impacting other parts of the infrastructure.

Pure Storage FlashArray uses always-on compression and deduplication to keep storage efficient, often with less hardware than other solutions. The modular architecture makes it possible to manage storage independently of computing power, which is not exactly a plus in the context of HCI, but does come to the fore as an asset in the 2-tier story. The latency remains below one millisecond.

The full integration with Nutanix Prism offers management options within a single interface. Users can perform both initial configurations and operational tasks without additional tools. The built-in hypervisor Nutanix AHV is part of the solution and offers support for fast provisioning and scalability. Nutanix Flow, also integrated, makes it possible to segment network traffic within the data center based on policy.

Cough – Broadcom – cough

According to Nutanix and Pure Storage, the solution responds to a rapidly changing virtualization market. Organizations are faced with increasing license costs and the risk of vendor lock-in, it sounds like, without mentioning Broadcom by name. The joint solution is an alternative where compute and storage can be scaled separately. Nutanix integrates in a similar way with Dell’s storage portfolio.