At the beginning of 2024, corporations equivalent to AdaniConnex, Reliance, Sify, Atlassian, Yotta, and AWS ramped up investments in India’s quickly increasing knowledge centre business. AWS alone had introduced a big dedication of $12.7 billion to bolster its presence within the nation.
In line with a report, India’s colocation (colo) knowledge centre capability throughout its prime seven cities reached 977 MW by the second half of 2023. This marks a considerable addition of 258 MW throughout 2023, reflecting a 105% year-on-year development in comparison with the put in capability in 2022.
The nation is poised for even better enlargement, with 1.03 GW of under-construction colo capability slated for completion between 2024 and 2028.
Towards the backdrop of such thrilling developments, Pure Storage India, a sophisticated knowledge storage platform, makes a daring prediction: Laborious drives will probably be phased out in three to 5 years.
In an unique interview with AIM, Shawn Hansen, common supervisor/VP at Pure Storage, in contrast this transition to DVDs, which have been as soon as in every single place, however have been shortly changed by streaming media.
“It felt like an in a single day shift,” Hansen expressed whereas anticipating the same trajectory for exhausting drives. He believes that Flash storage is more and more seen as the long run, providing effectivity, pace, and sustainability that tough drives simply can’t match.
What’s so Particular About Pure Storage?
Pure Storage’s core mission is to create essentially the most environment friendly and dense storage options. Hansen talked about that the corporate began with a 2-terabyte Flash module and has now developed a 75-terabyte one, with plans for a 150-terabyte module quickly.
Nevertheless, these upgrades include no improve in energy or cooling necessities. He explains that tough drives, in contrast, are restricted by their mechanical nature and eat far more energy.
“AI is extremely data-hungry, and conventional exhausting drives simply are usually not viable anymore,” Hansen explains. Flash storage, which makes use of one-tenth the facility of exhausting drives, is the clear winner.
This transition is particularly essential as knowledge centres face the problem of rising demand whereas managing prices and power consumption.
Pure Storage’s flash expertise permits corporations to cut back energy use, unlock area, and decrease cooling necessities. This effectivity interprets to extra capability for AI workloads with out the necessity to develop knowledge centres.
Flash storage just isn’t solely environment friendly but in addition turning into extra reasonably priced. “We’re reaching value parity with exhausting drives, and that’s driving a dramatic shift available in the market,” Hansen famous. Pure Storage is assured this shift will speed up as distributors exit the exhausting drive market, making manner for denser storage applied sciences like flash.
Why is Pure Storage in Bengaluru?
Hansen claimed that India, owing to its unimaginable pool of technical expertise, is on the coronary heart of this shift. Pure Storage credit Bengaluru, a metropolis recognized for its startups and innovation, for having discovered a few of its brightest engineers. “The expertise density right here is extremely excessive,” he remarked.
Over the previous two years, the corporate has doubled its staff dimension yearly in Bengaluru, specializing in initiatives that require deep experience in storage and AI. “The expertise right here isn’t just benefiting us however the world tech ecosystem. We’re extremely impressed with the leaders we now have met right here and stay up for persevering with our partnership with this area,” he mentioned.
Bengaluru isn’t just one other location for Pure Storage. It’s one among their three foremost innovation hubs, alongside Santa Clara in Silicon Valley and Prague in Europe. Every hub has its speciality, and Bengaluru performs to its strengths by tackling difficult storage and AI initiatives.
“It’s not nearly outsourcing,” Hansen shared proudly.
The corporate has developed applied sciences like DirectFlash, which makes storage options extra environment friendly and dependable. “All our firmware for DirectFlash is developed in Bengaluru. The staff right here offers us a multiyear lead over opponents,” he mentioned.
One other key innovation is Fusion, which lets corporations handle storage like a public cloud—easy, versatile, and scalable.
Pure Storage additionally works carefully with main gamers like NVIDIA, collaborating on options just like the SuperPod NGX, which mixes GPUs and storage for seamless AI infrastructure.
Apart from, the corporate has secured a partnership with one of many prime 4 hyperscalers (identify undisclosed) to combine flash storage into their knowledge centres, hinting at a significant milestone within the business’s shift from exhausting drives.
Meta’s AI Analysis SuperCluster (RSC), one of many quickest AI supercomputers globally, is constructed to coach next-generation AI fashions on large datasets spanning petabytes. Powered by Pure Storage’s FlashArray and FlashBlade, RSC effectively meets the GPU and storage calls for whereas conserving operational prices low.
“We contacted a lot of storage distributors of each disk and flash to guage their highest efficiency and highest density choices. From a mix of efficiency and energy and price, we ended up deciding on Pure Storage,” Vivek Pai, AIRSC storage lead at Meta, remarked.
“Right this moment, 80% of storage purchases are concentrated in a couple of corporations, however that’s about to alter,” Hansen defined. Pure Storage is able to present the storage options wanted to energy this subsequent section of AI.
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