Pure Storage demos how your NAS stays connected and data usable even under the worst conditions

Within the framework of a presentation several days ago, the Pure Storage brand made a demonstration of how their system of networked NAS, in physically different locations, could withstand both the downing of an entire system such as losing several of your flash storage drives. Pure Storage NAS stand out for using all-flash devices, to save electricity and reduce noise, in addition to significantly increasing transfer speeds.

In the demonstration that was made in Madrid, two units were shown, one representing a server in a building in Madrid, and another, although in the same physical location, connected using the Pure Storage NAS connection protocol. This represents a server in Cuenca.

This is how the data of a server is maintained even in the worst conditions

To demonstrate the integrity and operation of the storage systems, Pure Storage performed a live simulation using a payroll management program. The idea is that if the program detected a server failure beyond a possible delay, or could not find the data with which to manage the payroll, it would stop completely, «and no one charges this month«. A use case that simulated a company based in Madrid and a considerable-sized office in Cuenca.

The Cuenca server, which is where the payroll software was running, was taken completely offline to simulate the impact of a lightning storm surge, even though the server already has a redundant power supply for these issues, but the idea is to simulate an extreme problem and demonstrate that even in this situation, the system of interconnected NAS in different places, manages not to lose a moment of productivity of an entire ecosystem.

On behalf of the Madrid server, several units were manually disconnected to simulate reading failures. All of this, combined, would be a fatal outcome for a company that needs to have its data server fully operational.

Full activity while data is retrieved and synced

But Pure Storage's data copy and sync system was able to fix this problem quickly, and there was never a time when the payroll program could report errors. First, the program in Cuenca was immediately able to operate with the data on the server in Madrid, using data that had been backed up across multiple flash drives for greater integrity.

This use of several units, and even several systems, is ideal in companies that handle large amounts of data. This way you have numerous backup copies in the same place, and in several in case problems occur. While the demo was an exaggerated case where if you were simulating a total power issue on one server, and read issues on a few drives on another, these are issues that result in a fairly common result: not having immediate access to data in a live environment. the one that needs to have that access to that large amount of data.

According to the data provided by the monitoring software via the web, there were barely a few milliseconds of disconnection in the system between the payroll program and a server with the data. On the other hand, the synchronization did not drop below 90%, an amount of synchrony that indicates that the minimum amount of data will be lost, and with which it can be operated.

After a few minutes with the Cuenca unit disconnected, and with the Madrid unit with storage disconnected, they were plugged in again to simulate that the problem was fixed on a physical level. At the moment in which the physical integrity of the servers was recovered, the Cuenca server was used again in just a few minutes to be able to operate the payroll program, and the Madrid server carried out the necessary data distribution and backup to to be able to have 100% integrity.

With this demo, PureStorage demonstrated with a physical test how an interconnected NAS system can be critical to business stability. It was a case of a medium to large company, which manages numerous payrolls, and if there had been a failure, there would have been problems with the payments that would have taken several hours of time to solve and would have caused an employee to have discovered for the delay in paying your salary. It was a live example that it is not just having everything saved on a NAS to have it accessible, but enough backup copies, on different devices and that they were interconnected to thus that the disconnection time is the minimum and that this does not lead to bigger problems.