The Pure Report

Latest Episodes:

Top of Mind: Navigating Massive Enterprise Infrastructure Shifts Now Jan 21, 2026

Show notes

This week we welcome Paul Joyce, who leads one of Pure Storage's largest Field Solution Architect (FSA) teams. Our discussion begins by exploring the philosophy behind building a team of super technical specialists and key capabilities for this specialized role. Paul highlights that in addition to deep technical expertise in areas like databases and virtualization, he seeks candidates who demonstrate passion, a willingness to be vulnerable to build their personal brand, and, most critically, empathy for customers. This empathy should be rooted in a foundation of hands-on experience, where the architects have "lived the pain" of IT operations and can truly understand the challenges faced by customers, allowing them to focus on delivering time and value back to the business. We then move to what's top of mind for Paul, focusing on two major industry dilemmas. First is the ongoing virtualization dilemma, the continuing need for customers to re-evaluate their virtualization strategy following changes to VMware licensing. Paul emphasizes that the key challenge is not just the technology conversion (like moving to another hypervisor) but the business risks involved—including the cost of retraining entire staff on a new enterprise-ready platform and the complications of creating complex, high-risk migration pipelines between different environments. The second dilemma, around Big Iron, covers the massive shift in mission-critical storage. Paul contrasts the legacy multi-controller, spinning-disk systems of the past, built primarily for high availability, with Pure Storage’s all-flash, two-controller architecture, which he attests delivers equal or greater availability with a simpler architecture and superior performance. This simplified approach enables massive consolidation for complex database environments. Finally, Paul shares his hot takes on database trends. He points to the growing importance of vector embedding, noting that major enterprise databases like Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server 2025 are building native vector capabilities into their platforms to bring AI/data lake functionality directly to the data. He also discusses the implications of Oracle's 23ai release, which has focused on cloud and engineered systems, prompting on-premises customers to consult with their FSA teams on their future database strategy. The episode concludes with a classic IT mess up story from Paul’s early career as a jack-of-all-trades network administrator, recounting a failed, all-weekend core switch replacement in a freezing data center. To learn more, visit https://www.purestorage.com/databases Check out the new Pure Storage digital customer community to join the conversation with peers and Pure experts: https://purecommunity.purestorage.com/ 00:00 Intro and Welcome 01:44 Building a Specialist Team 05:53 Prior Experience in IT 09:45 Working with Rockets 15:15 Virtualization Dilemma 24:09 Enterprise Storage for Databases 37:01 Hot Takes Segment

The Power of Observability: From Metrics to Business Outcomes Jan 14, 2026

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The world of IT is becoming increasingly complex, making the need for real-time visibility and intelligence more critical than ever. In this episode, we sit down with Principal Technologists Michael Sasse and Matthew Bednar to explore the expanding field of data observability. We dive deep into defining observability—moving beyond basic latency graphs to equating system metrics and machine data with actual business outcomes. Hear their perspectives on why observability is now at the forefront of every IT leader’s mind. Our conversation then veers to tackle the current state of "Shadow Observability," where an accumulation of different tools and creation of siloed teams leads to data fragmentation across cloud, data center, and security platforms. They underscore the necessity for a centralized, single point of truth and a unified strategy that prevents individual team decisions from negatively impacting the broader environment. Finally, our guests reveal how Pure Storage is participating in the movement toward standardization and centralization. We detail the evolution of Pure1 and a strategic shift from pull-based Open Metrics to real-time, push-based Open Telemetry, ensuring seamless integration across Pure’s platform of storage array products.. Learn how this foundational platform approach, championed by Fusion and the Enterprise Data Cloud vision, empowers IT to move from being a cost center to a critical business partner that can tangibly link infrastructure efforts to financial results. To learn more, visit https://blog.purestorage.com/products/enhance-visibility-with-our-new-data-observability-and-monitoring-service/ Check out the new Pure Storage digital customer community to join the conversation with peers and Pure experts: https://purecommunity.purestorage.com/ 00:00 Intro and Welcome 08:30 Defining Observability 13:52 Stat of the Episode 25:49 Pure1 and Observability 28:25 Using APIs for Open Telemetry Output 32:49 Key Native Observability Integrations 39:25 Hot Takes Segment

The Evolution of Data Lakehouses Dec 16, 2025

Show notes

It’s all about Data Pipelines. Join Pure Storage Field Solution Architect Chad Hendron and Solutions Director Andrew Silifant for a deep dive into the evolution of data management, focusing on the Data Lakehouse architecture and its role in the age of AI and ML. Our discussion looks at the Data Lakehouse as a powerful combination of a data lake and a data warehouse, solving problems like "data swamps” and proprietary formats of older systems. Viewers will learn about technological advancements, such as object storage and open table formats, that have made this new architecture possible, allowing for greater standardization and multiple tooling functions to access the same data. Our guests also explore current industry trends, including a look at Dremio's 2025 report showing the rapid adoption of Data Lakehouses, particularly as a replacement for older, inefficient systems like cloud data warehouses and traditional data lakes. Gain insight into the drivers behind this migration, including the exponential growth of unstructured data and the need to control cloud expenditure by being more prescriptive about what data is stored in the cloud versus on-premises. Andrew provides a detailed breakdown of processing architectures and the critical importance of meeting SLAs to avoid costly and frustrating pipeline breaks in regulated industries like banking. Finally, we provide practical takeaways and a real-world case study. Chad shares a customer success story about replacing a large, complex Hadoop cluster with a streamlined Dremio and Pure Storage solution, highlighting the massive reduction in physical space, power consumption, and management complexity. Both guests emphasize the need for better governance practices to manage cloud spend and risk. Andrew underscores the essential, full-circle role of databases—from the "alpha" of data creation to the "omega" of feature stores and vector databases for modern AI use cases like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Tune in to understand how a holistic data strategy, including Pure’s Enterprise Data Cloud, can simplify infrastructure and future-proof your organization for the next wave of data-intensive workloads. To learn more, visit https://www.purestorage.com/solutions/ai/data-warehouse-streaming-analytics.html Check out the new Pure Storage digital customer community to join the conversation with peers and Pure experts: https://purecommunity.purestorage.com/ 00:00 Intro and Welcome 03:15 Data Lakehouse Primer 08:31 Stat of the Episode on Lakehouse Usage 10:50 Challenges with Data Pipeline access 13:58 Assessing Organization Success with Data Cleaning 16:07 Use Cases for the Data Lakehouse 20:41 Case Study on Data Lakehouse Use Case 24:11 Hot Takes Segment

Nutanix and Pure Storage: Propelling Enterprise Virtualization Forward Dec 10, 2025

Show notes

In this exciting episode of The Pure Report, we sit down with Ketan Shah, VP Products at Nutanix, and Cody Hosterman, Sr. Director, Product Management at Pure Storage, to celebrate the General Availability (GA) launch of our joint solution. Driven by recent market disruption and the need for virtualization optionality, this partnership is founded on a mutual culture of customer-centricity and innovation. Our guests discuss how their teams achieved this milestone in just over a year, highlighting tight engineering collaboration, allowing them to build an architecture that will serve customers now and into the future. Our conversation dives into the core technical capabilities, which are focused on simplicity and a "better" solution, not just an alternative. The joint platform integrates the Nutanix Cloud Platform with Pure Storage FlashArray via the low-latency NVMe/TCP protocol. This integration delivers a highly efficient, VM-centric experience, where provisioning, snapshots, and cloning are automatically managed through the familiar Nutanix Prism interface, abstracting away the complexity of traditional management. A key takeaway from the early access program was the overwhelming positive feedback on the solution's resilience and the surprisingly easy adoption of IP-based storage. Shah and Hosterman also detail the solution's comprehensive cyber resiliency features, combining Nutanix capabilities like Flow micro-segmentation and disaster recovery orchestration with Pure’s data-at-rest encryption and SafeMode immutable snapshots to offer end-to-end resilience. For customers looking to transition, the Nutanix 'Move' tool is fully supported, providing a non-disruptive migration path. Looking ahead, our guests note that this is just the beginning, with an exciting roadmap planned to integrate more sophisticated array-level features, positioning the platform as a long-term investment for not only virtualization needs but also for future AI and cloud-native workloads. To learn more: go to https://www.purestorage.com/partners/alliances/nutanix.html and https://www.nutanix.com/purestorage Check out the new Pure Storage digital customer community to join the conversation with peers and Pure experts: https://purecommunity.purestorage.com/ 00:00 Intro and Welcome 02:35 Corporate Culture Similarities 04:54 Origin of the Partnership 06:13 Working Together on Innovation 09:08 Stat of the Episode on Future of Virtualization 14:10 Feedback from Early Access Program 18:00 Deeper Dive into Technical Capabilities 30:41 Closing Thoughts & CTA

Data Sovereignty: A New Era Dec 02, 2025

Show notes

Data sovereignty is a hot topic of the year, driven by the massive proliferation of data, the rise of multinational hyperscalers, and the increasing use of AI. The Pure Report podcast welcomes Pure Field CTO for EMEA, Patrick Smith, to define this critical concept—data being subject to the laws and governance of the country in which it is created or stored—and to explain why enterprises must now focus not just on location, but on who manages, accesses, and controls their data. We discuss how a confluence of circumstances, including recent cloud provider outages, has highlighted the interconnected world and the risks inherent in where data resides, propelling this issue to the forefront for IT leaders globally. Patrick dives into the three prevailing factors driving the need for a data sovereignty strategy: increasing data sensitivity and regulation (like GDPR), the massive growth and reliance on public cloud environments, and unpredictable geopolitical issues that create risk. He shares key findings from the recent University of Sydney survey, revealing a heightened sense of urgency: 100% of respondents are reconsidering their data’s location due to sovereignty concerns, and 78% are actively adopting strategies for sovereign capabilities. We also break down the strategic options available, ranging from doing nothing or too much (and accepting the risk) to the preferred middle-ground approach of a thorough risk assessment to guide placement decisions. Our conversation shifts to actionable steps, with Patrick emphasizing that good data governance is the essential underpinning for any successful sovereignty strategy. We explore the necessity of a hybrid multi-cloud architecture that embeds sovereign capabilities, allowing organizations to run the right application in the right location based on its risk profile and move it easily if regulation changes. Finally, Patrick explains how Pure’s Enterprise Data Cloud—focused on simplicity, automation, and industry-leading energy efficiency—directly intersects with and helps solve the challenges of delivering sovereign capabilities, leading to the crucial, easy win: understand the domain, track regulation, and above all, don't ignore the changing data landscape. To read the report about Data Sovereignty, visit https://www.purestorage.com/resources/type-a/data-sovereignty-a-new-era.html Check out the new Pure Storage digital customer community to join the conversation with peers and Pure experts: https://purecommunity.purestorage.com/ 00:00 Intro and Welcome 02:17 A Day in the Life of a Field CTO 05:15 Defining Data Sovereignty 08:22 Trends around Data Sovereignty 11:36 Results from a User Survey on Data Sovereignty 16:25 Options for Managing Data Sovereignty 19:24 Getting Started with Data Sovereignty Actions 23:40 Evaluating Sovereign Data Providers 26:10 How Pure’s Enterprise Data Cloud Helps

Accelerating Enterprise AI Inference with Pure KVA Nov 25, 2025

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In this episode, we sit down with Solution Architect Robert Alvarez to discuss the technology behind Pure Key-Value Accelerator (KVA) and its role in accelerating AI inference. Pure KVA is a protocol-agnostic, key-value caching solution that, when combined with FlashBlade data storage, dramatically improves GPU efficiency and consistency in AI environments. Robert—whose background includes time as a Santa Clara University professor, NASA Solution Architect, and work at CERN—explains how this innovation is essential for serving an entire fleet of AI workloads, including modern agentic or chatbot interfaces. Robert dives into the massive growth of the AI Inference market, driven by the need for near real-time processing and low-latency AI applications. This trend makes the need for a solution like Pure KVA critical. He details how KVA removes the bottleneck of GPU memory and shares compelling benchmark results: up to twenty times faster inference with NFS and six times faster with S3, all over standard Ethernet. These performance gains are key to helping enterprises scale more efficiently and reduce overall GPU costs. Beyond the technical deep dive, the episode explores the origin of the KVA idea, the unique Pure IP that enables it, and future integrations like Dynamo and the partnership with Comet for LLM observability. In the popular “Hot Takes” segment, Robert offers his perspective on blind spots IT leaders might have in managing AI data and shares advice for his younger self on the future of the data management space. To learn more about Pure KVA, visit purestorage.com/launch. Check out the new Pure Storage digital customer community to join the conversation with peers and Pure experts: https://purecommunity.purestorage.com/ 00:00 Intro and Welcome 02:21 Background on Our Guest 06:57 Stat of the Episode on AI Inferencing Spend 09:10 Why AI Inference is Difficult at Scale 11:00 How KV Cache Acceleration Works 14:50 Key Partnerships Using KVA 20:28 Hot Takes Segment

Tackling Myths Around AI Data and FlashBlade//EXA Nov 18, 2025

Show notes

In this episode, we welcome Lead Principal Technologist Hari Kannan to cut through the noise and tackle some of the biggest myths surrounding AI data management and the revolutionary FlashBlade//EXA platform. With GPU shipments now outstripping CPUs, the foundation of modern AI is shifting, and legacy storage architectures are struggling to keep up. Hari dives into the implications of this massive GPU consumption, setting the stage for why a new approach is desperately needed for companies driving serious AI initiatives. Hari dismantles three critical myths that hold IT leaders back. First, he discusses how traditional storage is ill-equipped for modern AI's millions of small, concurrent files, where metadata performance is the true bottleneck—a problem FlashBlade//EXA solves with its metadata-data separation and single namespace. Second, he addresses the outdated notion that high-performance AI is file-only, highlighting FlashBlade//EXA's unified, uncompromising delivery of both file and object storage at exabyte scale and peak efficiency. Finally, Hari explains that GPUs are only as good as the data they consume, countering the belief that only raw horsepower matters. FlashBlade//EXA addresses this by delivering reliable, scalable throughput, efficient DirectFlash Modules up to 300 TB, and the metadata performance required to keep expensive GPUs fully utilized and models training faster. Join us as we explore the blind spots in current AI data strategies during our "Hot Takes" segment and recount a favorite FlashBlade success story. Hari closes with a compelling summary of how Pure Storage's complete portfolio is perfectly suited to provide the complementary data management essential for scaling AI. Tune in to discover why FlashBlade//EXA is the non-compromise, exabyte-scale solution built to keep your AI infrastructure running at its full potential. For more information, visit: https://www.pure.ai/flashblade-exa.html Check out the new Pure Storage digital customer community to join the conversation with peers and Pure experts: https://purecommunity.purestorage.com/ 00:00 Intro and Welcome 04:30 Primer on FlashBlade 11:32 Stat of the Episode on GPU Shipments 13:25 What is FlashBlade//EXA 18:58 Myth #1: Traditional Storage Challenges for AI Data 22:01 Myth #2: AI Workloads are not just File-based 26:42: Myth #3: AI Needs more than just GPUs 31:35 Hot Takes Segment

FlashStack: A Decade of Converged Infrastructure Innovation Nov 11, 2025

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This episode of the Pure Report features a conversation with Eugene McGrath, a nine-year veteran of Pure Storage and a Field Solution Architect. Our discussion delves into Gene’s diverse background, starting from his early days in IT racking and stacking servers at companies like Microsoft and Pixar, and how that hands-on experience shaped his career. We compare the evolution of his role and the industry, emphasizing the importance of a versatile skill set in the ever-changing tech landscape, particularly with his focus now on converged infrastructure solutions like FlashStack. We then dive into the partnership between Pure Storage and Cisco, specifically around the FlashStack converged infrastructure solution. Gene explains why this decade-long collaboration works, attributing it to a shared philosophy of simplifying infrastructure and improving the customer lifecycle. Our conversation also touches on the recent shift in Cisco's mindset, with Pure Storage taking a more prominent role, including the recent Nutanix partnership announcement. We further explore the concepts of "Day Zero" and "Day One" challenges in infrastructure deployment, emphasizing how Cisco Validated Design and automation mitigate risks and accelerate implementation for customers. Our discussion concludes with the "Hot Takes" segment, where Gene discusses the growing trends of "hypervisor fatigue" and the repatriation of workloads from the cloud due to cost and performance issues. He predicts a significant shift towards containerization as companies seek more agnostic and flexible approaches to their IT infrastructure. Gene also shares a memorable "oops" moment from his career, involving 3,000 servers racked upside down, and offers advice to his younger self about the explosion of data and the increasing importance of data management. For more information, visit: https://www.purestorage.com/products/integrated-platforms/flashstack.html Check out the new Pure Storage digital customer community to join the conversation with peers and Pure experts: https://purecommunity.purestorage.com/ 00:00 Intro and Welcome 04:55 Cisco and Pure Relationship 06:48 Stat of the Episode on Cloud Repatriation 12:35 Solving Day 0 and Day 1 Challenges 17:25 Using Cisco UCS in FlashStack 24:37 Cisco Validated Designs 26:54 Nutanix and Pure Partnership 32:35 Hot Takes Segment

Redefining Virtualization: The Pure Storage and Nutanix Full-Stack Modern Solution Nov 04, 2025

Show notes

In an era where enterprises are undergoing a significant re-evaluation of virtualization strategies, our episode dives into the new strategic partnership between Pure Storage and Nutanix. Join industry experts Don Poorman and Erin Stevens as we unpack the latest trends in virtualization strategies and why the timing is perfect for a new approach, and how Nutanix, with its AHV hypervisor, is well positioned with Pure to deliver a solution designed from the ground up for high-performance and enterprise scale. This episode explores the "what" and "how" of the jointly engineered Pure and Nutanix solution, detailing how Nutanix AHV hosts can leverage Pure FlashArray for shared storage, offering an apples-to-apples replacement for traditional setups. We'll cover the details around joint integrations, including the NVMe/TCP connection between Nutanix and Pure FlashArray, and how VMs are managed through Nutanix Prism for a granular vVols-like experience. Learn about the specific workloads and use cases this solution targets, particularly environments needing a balance of computing and networking, and those with high transactional database demands. Gain insights into the current state of the project, including its early access phase with customer feedback, and what to expect regarding general availability coming soon. Finally, get their "Hot Takes" on industry trends, memorable customer screw-ups, and their predictions for the future of data management. For more information, visit: https://www.purestorage.com/partners/alliances/nutanix.html Check out the new Pure Storage digital customer community to join the conversation with peers and Pure experts: https://purecommunity.purestorage.com/ 00:00 Intro and Welcome 04:49 Stat of the Episode 09:53 Current Virtualization Landscape 14:46 Primer on Pure Nutanix Relationship 23:28 Target Use Cases and Workloads 28:12 Details on Integrations and APIs 36:15 Early Feedback on Early Access 40:20 Hot Takes

Pure Fusion: Unified and Automated Data Management enabling the Enterprise Data Cloud Oct 28, 2025

Show notes

Join Pure Storage Technical Evangelists Don Poorman and Mike Nelson as we dive into Pure Fusion and how Pure Storage is enabling users to focus less on managing storage and more on managing their data. We start by examining the complexities of managing storage and application workloads in today's rapidly evolving IT landscape. We expose the challenges posed by legacy vendor "portfolios" which often consist of disparate products lacking unified GUIs and APIs. Learn why a fundamental shift is necessary to eliminate silos in enterprise storage, moving beyond mere federation to true integration – a unified management plane with common APIs that seamlessly operate across the entire storage ecosystem. Poorman and Nelson underscore how this integration and automation are not just valuable for traditional workloads but will be absolutely critical for the future of AI implementation, especially for inference. Our discussion pivots to Pure Storage's groundbreaking solution: Fusion. Learn what Fusion is – a powerful capability included in the latest versions of the Purity operating environment that provides an intelligent control plane for a centralized, unified management experience across an entire fleet of arrays. Our experts explain how Fusion inherently adopts Pure's API-First strategy, offering robust automation capabilities through PowerShell SDK, Ansible, and Python. They highlight how Fusion drives management, compliance, and workload configuration consistency from a single pane of glass, and how it's a vital foundation of Pure's Enterprise Data Cloud (EDC) vision. Listeners and viewers will gain invaluable insights into the tangible benefits of Fusion, including the ability to provision storage on any array from any array within the same UI, search and manage storage resources globally, and reconfigure resources without needing to access a specific array. Poorman and Nelson also explore how Fusion simplifies and standardizes workload deployments with pre-configured definitions, enabling end-to-end workload orchestration. They touch upon future enhancements like seamless interoperability across file, object, and block storage in on-site, hybrid, and cloud environments, and the exciting prospect of workload mobility.   Check out the new Pure Storage digital customer community to join the conversation with peers and Pure experts:  https://purecommunity.purestorage.com/

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