Practical storage tactics can make restores faster and more reliable in 2026. A Pure Storage Flash Array delivers NVMe performance and inline data reduction, which make frequent snapshots, instant restores, efficient replication, and quicker recovery testing practical and cost effective for many teams.
Now for practical actions you can take. The nine tactics below are written so each starts with a simple explanation of the benefit, followed by short, actionable notes you can use or discuss with your storage team and vendors. Read them in order, or skip to the items that match your most urgent recovery needs.
Why storage matters for RTO and RPO in 2026
Put simply, RTO (recovery time objective) is how quickly systems must be back online after a problem, and RPO (recovery point objective) is the amount of data you can afford to lose. Both are business measures, not just IT targets, because slow restores or large data loss can interrupt customers and damage trust.
The storage layer sits at the heart of both goals because it creates and stores the snapshots and replicas that recovery relies on. When storage can take frequent snapshots quickly and store them efficiently, you have more recent recovery points and you can recover faster. That directly improves RPO and RTO without forcing risky changes to applications.
A pure storage flash array helps by combining NVMe performance with inline data reduction. That means snapshots consume less space and mounts or clones are faster, so teams can keep more recovery points and run more realistic recovery tests. In short, better storage lets you practice recovery more often and achieve faster, more reliable restorations.
4 Pure-differentiated recovery features to prioritize
When things go wrong, certain storage capabilities make the real difference between a long outage and a quick recovery. Below are four Pure Storage features that customers often point to as the ones that cut recovery time and reduce uncertainty.
SafeMode immutable snapshots
SafeMode provides a way to keep snapshots truly untouchable for a set period, so you know a recovery point has not been altered. That clarity matters when you investigate an incident or restore after ransomware, because you can pick a snapshot and be confident it contains the original data you need. In practical terms this can shave hours off an investigation that would otherwise be spent verifying backup integrity.
SafeMode marks snapshots as tamper resistant and enforces retention, and the management interface reflects that state. You should see protected snapshots clearly labeled, retention details attached to each point in time, and audit logs that record any attempts to alter or remove snapshots. Those visible indicators make it easier to trust a snapshot as a reliable recovery source during an incident.
ActiveCluster synchronous replication
ActiveCluster lets two sites act as peers so certain applications can continue to run even if one site has a failure. For teams that cannot tolerate data loss, this symmetric replication means transactions are preserved across both locations and failover is a controlled switch rather than a long rebuild. The payoff is less data loss and less time spent rebuilding services after a site incident.
ActiveCluster is powerful, but it depends on fast, reliable networking and careful site configuration. Look for vendor documentation and customer examples that show how it behaved in real deployments so you can judge whether your network and application mix will work as expected.
Purity data reduction for practical retention
Purity’s data reduction helps you keep many more snapshots without buying proportional raw capacity. That simple effect lets teams retain closer recovery points and hold them longer, which directly reduces potential data loss and gives more options when choosing a restore point. For many businesses, better reduction changes a recovery plan from theoretical to practical.
Request example reduction figures for workloads similar to yours and, if possible, run a short trial or demo with a sample of your data. Seeing how your actual datasets compress and deduplicate is the fastest way to set realistic retention and restore expectations.
CloudSnap and Protect for clean off-array copies
CloudSnap and Protect let you copy snapshots off the array into cloud storage while keeping the details that explain what each snapshot contains. That makes it safe to test restores or run forensic checks in a separate environment without risking production systems. For most teams the benefit is straightforward: a reliable, isolated copy you can use for compliance or recovery testing.
Cloud exports should preserve snapshot metadata and work with the cloud provider you plan to use. Check which cloud targets are supported, how metadata and restore context are carried with the export, and what the practical steps are to retrieve and mount a snapshot from the cloud. Vendors often publish documentation or example runs that show the full export-and-restore flow; reviewing those materials helps you judge the time and effort required.
Partnering with CT Link for implementation
CT Link is a local IT Solutions Provider with a long track record of implementing Pure Storage in a variety of enterprise settings. If you are interested in learning more, we have documented one of the past case study where we helped a health organization improve their PACS and SAP application performance.
If you prefer practical help evaluating features for Pure Storage Flash Arrays or learning more about Backup, set up a consultation with us today!