Everpure Built a Proprietary Frankenstack
for AI.

You're building AI pipelines. Running lakehouses. Training models that need data at GPU speed. The last thing those workloads need is a proprietary hardware refresh cycle controlling your roadmap.

That is the Everpure model. FlashBlade runs on proprietary hardware and exposes a documented subset of the S3 API, not the full surface. FlashBlade//EXA splits the system in two: a Pure-supplied metadata core, plus a separate tier of data nodes you source yourself on hardware Pure specifies, license per usable terabyte, and operate as its own layer, while the Iceberg path still runs through an external Apache Polaris catalog you deploy and operate.

MinIO takes the opposite approach. Software defined and hardware agnostic, it runs on any commodity NVMe, even the ones you already own. One platform spans the full data layer: object storage, AIStor Tables with a native Apache Iceberg V3 catalog built into the store, and MemKV for inference context memory at the GPU tier. One operational model.

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See how MinIO AIStor compares to your current Everpure infrastructure.

Why Customers Choose MinIO AIStor vs Everpure Flashblade

Zero Lock-in

AIStor runs on any commodity hardware, any vendor, any generation. No proprietary flash, and no refresh cycle on someone else's schedule.

50% Lower TCO

Software on hardware you own. No hardware subscription markups, and no per-usable-terabyte data-node licensing layered on top.

GPU Maximization

Objects, tables, and context memory — all shipping today. Everpure has no answer at the G3.5 memory tier.

Tables Built In

AIStor Tables embeds a native Apache Iceberg V3 catalog and REST API in the data store. GA today. No separate catalog service to deploy, secure, or operate.

One Platform for Objects, Tables, and Context Memory.

S3 API Compatibility
AI & Lakehouse Performance
Operational Simplicity
TCO
Architecture & Design
FAQs

S3 API Compatibility

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Native S3 API
Everpure
Documented S3 Subset
Native S3 API. Every call, every SDK, every tool — just works.
S3 'compatible' with documented gaps. Some calls work. Some don't.
Full compatibility with AWS S3 SDKs across all languages. Drop-in replacement for Amazon S3.
Application modifications often required. Developers must account for FlashBlade implementation differences.
S3, S3 Express, Iceberg Catalog REST API, SFTP, and MCP protocols. All native, no gateways.
Everpure docs confirm FlashBlade lacks support for S3 Express, bucket notifications, and STS AssumeRole.
IAM-compatible policies and STS for identity federation. Multi-LDAP. Per-tenant isolation.
No STS federation. No multi-LDAP. Proprietary access controls sit alongside limited S3 IAM.
No tenant-count scaling wall. Performance holds whether you have 10 tenants or 10,000.
S3 compatibility gaps require development workarounds that slow every integration project.
Why It Matters: S3 gaps slow every integration. AIStor's complete compatibility means your teams ship without workarounds or surprise edge cases.

AI & Lakehouse Performance

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Built for Modern AI
Everpure
Proprietary Hardware Architecture
Built for AI. High throughput and low latency at exabyte scale. Native Iceberg. No bottlenecks.
High-throughput all-flash storage designed for enterprise block and file workloads, retrofitted for AI.
19.2 TiB/s aggregate throughput at 1 EiB (ExaPOD reference architecture, 640 servers). Linearly scalable. Published, reproducible.
FlashBlade//EXA claims 10+ TB/s, but //EXA is only the metadata core. The data tier is non-Everpure servers you source from a separate & verified vendor, splitting hardware procurement and the support model across two contracts.
AIStor natively implements Open Sharing. Databricks queries live on-prem Iceberg and Delta tables under full Unity Catalog governance.
FlashBlade has no native sharing protocol. Databricks access runs through an external Polaris catalog, with sharing bolted on outside the store.
End-to-end S3 over RDMA via NVIDIA cuObject, client SDK and server. Up to 5x lower latency than HTTP/S3.
No S3 over RDMA. No GPUDirect integration. GPU clusters access storage data via standard TCP/IP stack.
MemKV runs natively on NVIDIA BlueField-4 STX at memory speed. GPU effective utilization jumps from 50% to over 90%.
No answer at the G3.5 memory tier. Everpure spans block, file, and object — but the context memory layer for AI Inference doesn't exist.
Why It Matters: The fastest path from storage to GPU is the one with nothing in between — and no proprietary hardware tax on the way.

Operational Simplicity

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Built for Modern AI
Everpure
Proprietary Hardware Architecture
Single binary. No external dependencies. No proprietary controllers. Deploy without specialists.
Everpure's offering spans FlashArray, FlashBlade, Portworx, and Pure Fusion. Four products, four operational models.
Zero-downtime rolling upgrades. Add capacity on the fly. No rebalancing, no resharding.
Hardware refresh cycles built into the Evergreen//One subscription — you're on Everpure's upgrade schedule, not yours.
Kubernetes-native: full Operator, DirectPV CSI driver, Helm charts. Cloud-native from day one.
Fleet management runs through the Pure Fusion control plane, a separate layer over distinct product lines.
Self-healing at every layer. Drives, nodes, racks, sites. Non-blocking healing preserves foreground I/O.
Reliability depends on proprietary DirectFlash Modules. Module end-of-life means hardware procurement risk, not software-defined recovery.
OpenTelemetry + eBPF observability. Prometheus-native metrics. Full operational visibility with your existing toolchain.
Management through Pure Fusion fleet control. Full observability across all four EDC tiers requires platform-wide integration.
Why It Matters: Four Everpure products mean four contracts, four upgrade cycles, and four operational disciplines. AIStor is one binary. Your team already knows how to run it.

Total Cost of Ownership

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Built for Modern AI
Everpure
Proprietary Hardware Architecture
Up to 50% lower three-year TCO versus proprietary AI storage. No lock-in, no hardware markups.
Evergreen//One ties cost to proprietary hardware and its refresh cycle. It tracks Everpure's margins, not your data growth.
Software only. Run on any commodity NVMe, any vendor, any generation. No refresh cycle on someone else's schedule.
FlashBlade and FlashArray performance is tied to proprietary DirectFlash. Capacity expansion means re-signing hardware terms.
Capacity-based subscription. No per-operation, access, or egress fees. Predictable billing.
Evergreen//One bundles hardware subscription and refresh. Software cost cannot be separated from hardware margin.
Objects, Tables, and Context Memory on one foundation, one operational model. One way to run all three.
Everpure’s offering spans four products: FlashArray, FlashBlade, Portworx, Fusion. Four architectures, four operational disciplines.
One product to learn, deploy, and operate. Your existing DevOps team runs it. No specialists required.
Iceberg lakehouse requires an external Polaris catalog license in addition to FlashBlade. Add-ons stack the total cost.
Why It Matters: Proprietary hardware subscriptions and forced refresh cycles are where legacy margins hide. AIStor's software-only model has nowhere to hide them.

Architecture & Design

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Built for Modern AI
Everpure
Proprietary Hardware Architecture
Stateless. Metadata stored atomically with each object. No external catalog, no proprietary metadata layer between you and your data.
Every performance and reliability claim is tied to DirectFlash hardware. Pull the proprietary DFMs, and the architecture unravels.
Single-tier scale-out. No gateways. No protocol translation. Native S3 end to end. Double the nodes, double the throughput.
FlashBlade//EXA disaggregates metadata from data using a Pure metadata core, mandatory proprietary appliance, with proprietary data nodes on the roadmap.
Go + SIMD-optimized assembly (AVX512, NEON, VSX) for erasure coding, encryption, and hashing. Near wire-rate natively.
Four distinct storage engines — block, file, object, Kubernetes — each with its own upgrade cycle and operational discipline.
Inline erasure coding + bitrot detection. No SAN. No NAS. No POSIX. Purpose-built for objects from the ground up.
No native Iceberg catalog — requires external Apache Polaris, adding architectural complexity and a new failure domain.
Flat namespace to exabytes. Performance scales linearly. Software-defined reliability travels with your data, not your hardware.
SafeMode snapshots and WORM capabilities are hardware-dependent. Compliance posture is a hardware purchase, not a policy outcome.
Why It Matters: Every DirectFlash dependency, every Polaris requirement, and every //EXA proprietary node is a consequence of hardware-first architecture. AIStor was designed to have none of those consequences.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can MinIO AIStor really replace our Everpure FlashBlade deployment?

Yes. AIStor implements the native S3 API with high fidelity to AWS behavior, so applications built on FlashBlade's S3 interface move to AIStor without modification. FlashBlade exposes a documented subset of S3, with gaps such as STS AssumeRole, bucket notifications, and S3 Express, so applications that rely on those today need workarounds. On AIStor they are native. Organizations have migrated petabytes from proprietary object stores with applications running unchanged.

How does AIStor performance compare for AI training workloads?

AIStor is built for AI and ML throughput and latency. The ExaPOD reference architecture delivers up to 19.2 TB/s aggregate throughput at 1 EiB, scaling linearly across 640 commodity servers. AIStor also supports GPUDirect RDMA for S3-compatible storage, a direct storage-to-GPU memory path. Everpure's FlashBlade//EXA claims 10+ TB/s, though its object support is in limited preview, and both vendors' figures are reference architecture numbers rather than independent benchmark submissions.

Everpure offers Evergreen//One with 99.9999% uptime SLAs. Doesn't that close the reliability gap?

Evergreen//One is a meaningful SLA model that resonates with ops teams. But ask what that guarantee actually covers: does it follow the data, or just the array? AIStor's erasure coding tolerates hardware failure in software across any commodity NVMe. Reliability is architectural, not a proprietary module spec. Software-defined reliability travels with your data regardless of which hardware generation you are on.

We need Apache Iceberg for our lakehouse. How do the two compare?

This is one of the sharpest differentiators. AIStor Tables provides a native Apache Iceberg V3 Catalog REST API built directly into the data store — the first in the industry. Tables are first-class citizens with views, multi-table transactions, and no additional software or licensing. With AIStor, adding Dremio, Trino, or Spark is a choice. With FlashBlade, an external Apache Polaris catalog is a prerequisite before you can write your first Iceberg table — an added dependency to deploy, secure, and manage.

What about enterprise security and compliance — SEC 17a-4, WORM, encryption?

AIStor provides enterprise-grade security as standard: encryption with a built-in Key Management Server, active-active replication, erasure coding with bitrot healing, IAM policies, S3 Object Lock, and a purpose-built data firewall. AIStor has been assessed Awardable for Department of Defense work in the CDAO's Tradewinds Marketplace. SEC 17a-4 compliance is an audit outcome, not a hardware purchase, and AIStor provides the controls required to support it. Redirect that proprietary hardware budget to compute

Is AIStor suitable for large enterprise deployments?

Absolutely. AIStor runs in production at some of the world's largest enterprises, serving exabytes within a single flat namespace that scales horizontally. Its S3-compatible object storage is among the most widely adopted in the industry, and AIStor is the commercial platform built for production AI scale.

Why Teams Choose AIStor

The world's most demanding AI workloads run on MinIO. Here's why.
Own the Stack
Software on the hardware you choose. No proprietary flash, no forced refresh, no hardware vendor controlling your roadmap.
check-circle-broken
True S3 Compatibility
Every SDK. Every tool. Every framework. No 'with some limitations' footnotes. Every S3 operation just works.
Unmatched Performance
19.2 TiB/s read throughput on commodity NVMe. Published, reproducible, third-party verified. No proprietary hardware required.
Enterprise Security
FIPS 140-3. Built-in KMS. Data Firewall. IAM. Object Lock. Security built in, not bolted on and not a hardware purchase.
GPU Native
MemKV runs natively on NVIDIA BlueField-4 STX. RDMA transport. Microsecond KV retrieval. The G3.5 tier Everpure can't reach.
Radical Simplicity
One binary. No specialists, no professional services, no four-product fleet to operate. Your team can run this from day one.

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