Announcing the Pure Storage FlashArray Management Extension for Windows Admin Center

Today Pure Storage is excited to announce new integrated capabilities to simplify the management and operation of Microsoft applications and databases running on Pure all-flash storage arrays. The new Pure Storage FlashArray Management Extension for Windows Admin Center provides the ability to manage Pure Storage FlashArrays on-premises and in the cloud with Cloud Block Store for AWS. Windows Admin Center is Microsoft’s next generation management tool for Servers, Clustering and Compute.

When Pure released the Technical Preview of this functionality last year at Microsoft Ignite 2018, many customers installed the ran the extension from the main Microsoft NuGet feed. The Technical Preview provided us opportunities to obtain critical feedback that enabled us to tweak certain features and enhance the overall user experience of this extension to deliver even more value. For deeper details, you can review a case study documenting our journey in developing this important integration with Windows Admin Center.

The new Pure Storage FlashArray Manager Extension will be showcased in the following Microsoft Ignite 2019 sessions:

Key features and capabilities included in the Pure Storage Extension include:

Ability to connect and manage multiple on-premises FlashArrays and Pure Cloud Block Store for AWS and Azure.
A comprehensive dashboard view of Pure FlashArray with all the key metrics the FlashArray Web Management tool provides – including IOPs, Bandwidth, Latency, Data Reduction and Space Management.
- Updated: ability to show IOPS, Bandwidth and Latency as individual tabs for consolidated viewing.
New: consolidated view for managing Host Groups and Hosts, including details around iSCSI Qualified Name (IQNs) and World Wide Names (WWNs)
New: Protection Group management capability
Volume Management — including the ability to create and destroy volumes. When a volume is destroyed, it will be placed in the Destroyed items bucket to eradicate it from the main FlashArray Management GUI.
Manage Initiators — one of the most interesting and powerful features available as it provides context to the individual servers being managed by the Windows Admin Center deployment. View connected disks (volumes) to individual Windows Servers and check if MultiPath-IO (MPIO) is installed/configured and create/mount new volumes.

Want to see more? The video below walks you through all of the new features that have been implemented in the extension.

If you can’t watch the video, check out some static screenshots of the new features:

Main Dashboard Overview

Managing Hosts and Host Groups

Manage Initiators

Checking Best Practices

Managing Protections Groups

Managing Volumes

Creating Volumes

Today we are announcing General Availability of Windows Admin Center Solution Extension. Fire up Windows Admin Center, go to Settings, click Extensions and Available Extensions.

For more information:

Enjoy the new single-pane of glass management with Windows Admin Center and Pure Storage FlashArrays!

Cheers — Barkz

2 comments

Pure

November 20, 2019 at 1:52 pm |

Where can we download the extension

Barkz

November 21, 2019 at 2:46 pm |

Hi Pure —

I completed an article on our support site that walks through all of the different features. See https://support.purestorage.com/Solutions/Microsoft_Platform_Guide/bbb_Microsoft_Integration_Releases/Pure_Storage_FlashArray_Solutions_Extension_for_Windows_Admin_Center

Quick answer is that the extension gets downloaded from the Microsoft NuGet feed which is built into Windows Admin Center. So it gets installed using the Extension Gallery. Check out the article and it explains everything.

Thanks, Barkz