Reimagining Data Excellence: SQL Server 2025 Accelerated by Pure Storage

The arrival of SQL Server 2025 marked a pivotal moment in the evolution of enterprise data management and modern AI application development from ground to cloud. Designed to transform data into actionable intelligence, it aligns perfectly with the Pure Storage mission to simplify, accelerate, and modernize data infrastructure. Together, we’re redefining what “better together” means for data-driven organizations.

The AI Inflection point

SQL Server 2025 marks a structural leap forward. It has evolved from a traditional database engine into an intelligent data platform designed for AI-driven operations for mission critical Enterprise workloads. It’s positioned as enterprise AI-ready, unifying analytics, modern AI application development, and mission-critical engine capabilities like security, high availability and performance.
In practical terms, that means features like built-in vector search, semantic search over your data, smart indexing, tighter REST API integration, and T-SQL hooks into what historically were external AI tools. For businesses already running SQL Server, and those ready to grow into AI workloads, this is a major inflection. SQL Server 2025 extends this capability to edge and enables customers to work with any OpenAI compatible inferencing servers. This is combined with the robust security capabilities of SQL Server like auditing, ledger, encryption and data security that customers have trusted for decades.
At Pure Storage, we asked ourselves: “How can storage not just be the foundation, but the accelerator of those new capabilities?” Because when the database engine becomes smarter, the storage layer must keep pace—modern, agile, consistent, intelligent, and your partner.
We’ve found that the challenge clients have is integration with existing data. SQL Server 2025 eliminates that. The AI features run where your data is stored, leveraged, and secured. This simplifies integration and reduces the learning curve for teams,  bringing Copilot integration into SSMS and providing AI-assisted code completion into a commonly used tool.

Get started: SQL Server 2025: Enterprise AI without the Learning curve.

Meet the Challenge: Snapshot scale and automation

Every DBA and infrastructure team member knows the pressure. Data volumes continue to expand, workloads become more dynamic and AI-driven scenarios are now part of the mix. In many organizations the traditional backup and snapshot routine relies on manual scripts, cross-team coordination and the anxious “did it finish yet?” check-in is becoming a real risk. Enter SQL Server 2025’s new T-SQL capability: sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint. It allows SQL Server to call external REST APIs directly from T-SQL.

Pure Storage® FlashArray™ supports a rich REST API that combines these two, and you get something powerful: The database can orchestrate the storage snapshot. No external scripting, no tool chain, no manual bridge.

• Here’s how the story plays out in a typical environment:
  The DBA issues a T-SQL command to freeze write I/O or make the database consistent.
• SQL Server 2025 calls the REST endpoint of the FlashArray system and takes a snapshot application consistent with no external tools.
• Metadata flows back: which database, which instance, a timestamp, and tags.
• That snapshot becomes a first-class asset, that is replicable, queryable, manageable,and automated.  This isn’t hypothetical—it’s real. 

The benefit is faster snapshot creation, less pause, and reduced cross-team friction. More confidence in your recovery. And when you layer AI workloads over that, you free up time to innovate rather than babysit backups.

The synergy: A unified story

One of the standout advantages is the ability to scale SQL Server environments efficiently while maintaining high availability and reliability. Customers benefit from faster backups and restores, which is critical for minimizing downtime and ensuring business continuity.
Together, this partnership has helped many customers to modernize their data infrastructure, accelerate analytics, and support mission-critical applications with confidence.

1. Modern workloads run on SQL Server 2025
   You are building AI beside your enterprise data. You’re embedding vector search, semantic search, and perhaps retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)  and agentic scenarios . SQL Server 2025 gives you that capability in the engine you already know, reducing years of learning curve.
2. Storage must evolve, act, and simplify
   FlashArray isn’t just a backend; it becomes a partner in orchestration. It can be guided from within T-SQL. It’s aware of SQL metadata via tagging. It supports snapshots, replication, and automation. Providing less manual action brings you faster value.
3. Operational friction drops
   With T-SQL REST calls, topology tagging, and metadata-rich snapshots, all the stovepipes between DBA, storage admin, and backup admin begin to collapse. That means decisions don’t get held up by “who owns this step.” You move faster, recover faster, innovate sooner. For faster results.
4. Risk goes down, confidence goes up
   Ransomware, DR, large DB scaling… these remain giants to contend with. But when your storage layer acts with full knowledge of your database topology, when your DB engine can call storage directly, and when snapshots are consistent and tagged, you reduce the unknowns. Your recovery time improves. Your test/dev refreshes accelerate. Your data estate becomes more agile.

A short narrative: "The Monday when everything changed"

Imagine this: On a Monday morning, the lead DBA walks into the operations center. Overnight, an AI-driven feature launched for a key application. They spin up a new database instance on SQL Server 2025, ingest a petabyte of event data, build vector indexes, and launch semantic search features. Meanwhile, the storage team sees a named snapshot triggered automatically—metadata showing database name, instance, tag = “AIFeatureProd 2025-10-20.” No manual ticket. No separate backup window. Just timing and automation.
Three months later, in a DR test, the team fails over to a second site. Because topology tags flowed through, the volumes replicated correctly, the instance context came back automatically, and the DR site was ready within minutes. Snapshots are cataloged, queryable by database/instance/time. The AI feature continued unaffected. The business had changed, but nobody noticed downtime.
That’s the story of what happens when SQL Server 2025 meets Pure Storage.

Why this matters for you

If you’re running SQL Server today, especially at scale (terabytes, petabytes, multiple instances, strong SLAs), this isn’t “just another release.” It’s a pivot. With SQL Server 2025, you get a modern engine that embraces AI, hybrid architectures, and integration with cloud/edge for your business critical data. Pure Storage gives you the storage platform that isn’t merely keeping up, but enabling this next chapter.

Next steps

We’d love for you to see how this works in practice. Explore SQL Server 2025 in a test environment. Experience FlashArray REST API automation and tagging workflows. We’ve got a newly released TestDrive offering stand-up SQL Server 2025. Connect it to a FlashArray or FlashBlade® system, and test snapshot automation, tagging, and replication. Reach out to us at Pure Storage for access.
Together, SQL Server 2025 and Pure Storage aren’t just better, they're transformational. Let’s take your enterprise data center into the next chapter.