BUILDING SECURE AND REDUNDANT STORAGE FOR FEDERAL, STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS Government doesn’t just require other entities to operate the FlashArray’s drives are separated and redundant. There securely, they also impose quite a few regulations and is never a need to power down to swap drives. Even in the mandatory best practices on themselves. And while those unlikely event of a flash drive failure, system operations are regulations can vary by state or even by department, in not disrupted. The failed drive can easily be swapped out for a general, government at any level can only work with new one while the FlashArray is still running and serving up all secure systems. its data to authorized users. There are so many different regulations in government that it would be difficult if not impossible for one system out of the box to work with all of them. There are so many different regulations in government that it Having no single point of failure extends to every aspect of would be difficult if not impossible for one system out of the the FlashArray, even the controllers, which are completely box to work with all of them. However, using a FlashArray is stateless. Should a controller fail, all operations can be good place to start for any of those requirements. With full maintained by the backup controller with no loss of operations AES-256 encryption, role-based access control and automatic or downtime. Pure Storage can deliver a new controller onsite generation of audit trail information, it can provide a stable within four hours of the failure too. Once the replacement base for any agency to build upon, and likely would be all that controller arrives, the old one is simply unplugged and the new some organizations need. one is cabled into place. Users won’t even know that a major Where government is unique compared to other sectors is component has failed, and operations can continue normally. their requirement for continuous operations. Some agency Because the clustered FlashArray controllers don’t store programs are so important or deal with real-time any persistent information, they can also be upgraded with applications such as air traffic control that they simply can’t new software and features without disrupting operations. have any downtime. Even at the state and local level, The FlashArray is active from every port on two controllers, programs designed to serve the public can’t crash or be even though performance-wise, the array is only using one made unavailable. When that happens too often or for a long controller at a time. Should one controller fail, the second period of time, the issue becomes a political as well as a automatically takes over, keeping performance at 100 percent technical liability. with no negative effects on any of the FlashArray’s users. Pure Storage understands the need for continuous availably But that non-disruptive architecture is not just limited to and as such, the FlashArray is built on a unique non-disruptive hardware redundancy. Pure Storage has designed their Purity everything model with no single point of failure. Unlike other Operating System to ensure that the software driving the flash arrays that lump all of their storage into the same space, FlashArray can also compensate and eliminate any single © Pure Storage 2014 | 7