Pure Storage this week released the next-generation of its AI-ready infrastructure developed in conjunction with NVIDIA.
The launch of AIRI//S is a follow-up to AIRI, which was released in 2018 following the signing of a technology agreement between the two companies. The ultimate goal, according to Pure Storage, was to allow “organizations to achieve better utilization and uptime, and ultimately scale their AI and data science investments without complexity.
“Enterprises across industries have recognized the power of AI to speed innovation and gain a competitive edge with critical business insights,” the company stated in a press release. “However, the complexity and rigidity of legacy infrastructure technology – both on premises and in the cloud – is a barrier for enterprises looking to achieve the promise of AI-based data science.
“Too many AI initiatives are stalled by the intricacies of a ‘do-it-yourself’ approach, leading to significant delays and idle time. Instead, AI requires a completely new infrastructure to facilitate faster innovation and obtain actionable modern analytics.”
Vaughan Stewart, vice president of global technology alliance partners with the firm, wrote in a blog posted on Wednesday that “organizations across virtually every industry are eager to learn how AI can empower their business and drive innovation.
“However, successfully implementing and using AI is not as easy as installing a program or buying equipment, and organizations need help to make this transition as smooth as possible.”
Based on NVIDIA’s Quantum and Spectrum networking platforms, AIRI//S is designed to provide a scalable infrastructure for an AI data pipeline.
Launched at Pure//Accelerated techfest 22, it is made up of the NVIDIA DGX A100 system, the NVIDIA Spectrum Ethernet storage fabric, and the new FlashBlade//S, the cutting-edge and modular scale-out storage platform for unstructured data from Pure Storage.
“Traditional approaches to AI infrastructure often result in silos of servers and storage that are either overspent on capacity or starve AI workloads,” said Amy Fowler, the company’s vice president of strategy and solutions, FlashBlade.
“AIRI//S enables global enterprises to achieve better time to insights and make the most out of their data with AI.”
Charlie Boyle, vice president, DGX systems at NVIDIA, said enterprises are turning to AI to “grow top-line results, while enhancing customer experiences and reducing costs. These complex challenges require integrated, full-stock computing optimized for AI.”
AIRI//S will be available in all locations globally where FlashBlade//S and NVIDIA DGX A100 are available in Q2 of its fiscal 2023, which, since Pure’s fiscal 2023 started in February of this year, means sometime in May, June or July of 2022.
There were two other launches at the conference — the FlashBlade//S line of storage products and the expansion of Pure Storage’s portfolio of Evergreen offerings.
FlashBlade//S is a modular architecture that Pure Storage said “disaggregates compute from capacity.
“According to IDC, disaggregation of storage platforms provides more flexibility in creating highly efficient IT infrastructures. It not only enables administrators to assemble the right balance of IT resources for a given workload to minimize costs, it also allows them to perform upgrades on different resources independently as needed.
General availability of FlashBlade//S products is scheduled for same time as the AIRI//S.
The Evergreen launch, meanwhile, involved the introduction of Evergreen//Flex, which the company said unlocks and moves stranded storage capacity to where it is needed most. It says it creates an operational middle ground, lowering initial costs by up to 70 per cent while providing ownership and pay-as-you-go capacity usage. With fleet-level management, customers can see their entire hardware and subscription footprint across their enterprise, and site-level subscriptions give them the flexibility to move capacity between arrays to better address changing needs.
Pure Storage also introduced new names for existing members of the Evergreen portfolio. Evergreen Gold is now Evergreen//Forever, and Pure-as-a-Service has been rebranded Evergreen//One.
Evergreen//Flex is now available globally wherever Pure Storage previously sold CapEx with Evergreen Gold (now Evergreen//Forever) subscriptions, including in markets where Evergreen//One is unavailable.
