FlashArray Cloud Drives

When you deploy Portworx with FlashArray or Everpure Cloud Dedicated (formerly Cloud Block Store) as a cloud storage provider, Portworx runs on each node and creates a storage pool using volumes provisioned from FlashArray, as defined in the StorageCluster specification. When a user creates a Portworx volume PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC), Portworx provisions the volume from this pool.

Cloud drives offer on-premises storage using FlashArray or cloud storage using Everpure Cloud Dedicated, while supporting:

• Automatic provisioning of block volumes from the Portworx storage pool
• Dynamic cluster expansion by adding or growing FlashArray-backed drives
• Full support for PX-Backup, Autopilot, and PX-StoreV2

Portworx manages the lifecycle of storage pool volumes on registered FlashArray devices, similar to how it operates with cloud-based block storage.

Limitations

• Volume groups are not supported.
• FlashArray host sharing with realms is not supported when using Secure Multi-Tenancy (SMT). You cannot mix hosts within a realm with hosts outside a realm on the same node. For example, using Boot from SAN with a host outside the realm is not supported.
• When using SMT with CSI topology, the same pod name must exist on all FlashArrays in your pure.json configuration. The Portworx Operator applies the pod value from the first matching deviceSpecs entry cluster-wide as the system metadata device spec. Nodes in zones where that pod does not exist will fail to provision storage.