Pure Storage sponsors OpenStack

Concurrently, the company announced the immediate availability of two new solutions for OpenStack-based private and public clouds: an OpenStack Cinder Driver that integrates with its Purity Operating Environment (OE) to deliver expanded storage performance, functionality and management simplicity for customers deploying cloud services on the OpenStack platform; and a Python Automation Toolkit that extends its FlashArray family of products’ out-of-the-box automation via Python scripts. This enables users to create advanced storage workflows beyond OpenStack’s Cinder Block Storage services, such as automation of snapshot policies, replication, IO statistics, and capacity management. Both the OpenStack Cinder Driver and Python Automation Toolkit utilize Purity OE’s comprehensive RESTful API, providing full access to its commands and information. Together, they enable FlashArray to more tightly integrate with OpenStack, providing radically simplified storage management, rich automation and expanded features in a robust, high performance, production-ready cloud.

“Snowballing interest in OpenStack has made support for the cloud management platform an important -- and in some cases, vital -- competitive feature for infrastructure products such as Pure’s all-flash storage systems,” said Tim Stammers, senior analyst at 451 Research. “Through its extensive commitment to OpenStack, Pure has done more than just tick a checkbox, and is providing OpenStack support designed to increase the platform’s functionality, ease complexity, and make it simpler to implement.”

Extending the All-Flash Storage Revolution to the OpenStack Cloud
Pure Storage FlashArrays are purpose-built to fully exploit the benefits of flash and deliver a highly performant and scalable foundation for cloud computing environments. Through its integration with OpenStack and Python extensions, Pure Storage is providing easy customization and expanded functionality for customers leveraging OpenStack-based clouds, and furthering its vision to redefine storage simplicity and deliver a streamlined, highly optimized storage management experience in the cloud. The new solutions include:
· OpenStack Cinder Driver for Purity OE
OpenStack is an open and extensible operating environment for cloud-based infrastructure. It has rapidly become the leading platform on which to build private and public cloud computing environments that support infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). Cinder is the infrastructure for managing block-based storage in OpenStack. The Pure Storage Cinder Driver for Purity OE integrates directly with OpenStack-based private and public clouds via its sophisticated REST API, delivering a highly agile platform that supports developer operations, with full support for OpenStack Juno volume commands. The driver comes with every FlashArray at no additional cost and is fully documented to simplify deployment, installation, configuration, and troubleshooting.
· Python Automation Toolkit for Advanced Storage Workflows
Python, the popular open source programming language, provides a simple mechanism for achieving extended storage automation through the Purity REST API. When used in conjunction with the new Pure Storage Cinder Driver, the Python Automation Toolkit provides enhanced out of the box automation and extends the functionality of Cinder. FlashArray customers can use the toolkit to easily create new Python workflows, and expand the monitoring, capacity, and disaster recovery capabilities of their OpenStack deployments.

"We are happy to welcome Pure Storage to the OpenStack community as a corporate sponsor,” said Jonathan Bryce, executive director at the OpenStack Foundation. “The collaboration of the Pure Storage engineering team will help our global developer community advance open storage standards in the enterprise, powered by OpenStack."

“OpenStack is one of the most vibrant and significant open source projects of our time, and is rapidly emerging as the de facto standard for the creation and management of private and public cloud environments for service providers, in the enterprise, and beyond,” said Matt Kixmoeller, vice president of products at Pure Storage. “We are delighted to expand and formalize our support for OpenStack as both a corporate sponsor and collaborator, and look forward to joining the thriving community of developers and technology innovators that are contributing to the platform’s maturation and adoption.”