Pure Storage Joins OpenStack Foundation

Pure Storage, Inc. has joined the OpenStack Foundation as a corporate sponsor and committer, formalizing its commitment to open cloud computing standards.

The company has pledged to participate in the development of the OpenStack codebase, and will contribute its work and platform enhancements back to the open source community.

Concurrently, the company announced the 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 RESTful API, providing access to its commands and information. Together, they enable FlashArray to more tightly integrate with OpenStack, providing simplified storage management, rich automation and expanded features in a robust 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, 451 Research LLC. “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 to OpenStack Cloud
 FlashArrays are built to exploit the benefits of flash and deliver a 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, optimized storage management experience in the cloud.

The solutions include:

• OpenStack Cinder Driver for Purity OE: OpenStack is an open and extensible operating environment for cloud-based infrastructure. It has rapidly become a 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 Cinder Driver for Purity OE integrates directly with OpenStack-based private and public clouds via its sophisticated REST API, delivering an agile platform that supports developer operations, with support for OpenStack Juno volume commands. The driver comes with every FlashArray at no additional cost and is documented to simplify deployment, installation, configuration, and troubleshooting.
• Python automation toolkit for advanced storage workflows: Python, the open source programming language, provides a simple mechanism for achieving extended storage automation through the Purity REST API. When used in conjunction with the  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 create new Python workflows, and expand the monitoring, capacity, and DR 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, 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, VP of products, 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.“

The OpenStack Cinder Driver and Python Automation Toolkit are available and compatible with Purity 3.4 and all subsequent releases. Documentation for the Purity OE REST API is included with every FlashArray. Existing Pure Storage customers and partners can download the OpenStack Cinder Driver and Python Automation Toolkit for free here.

The Pure Storage Cinder Driver was also included in the OpenStack’s Juno release on October 16, 2014; the Juno release notes can be found here.

More on Pure Storage’s OpenStack solutions