An Implementation Engineer is going on site to complete a data pack evacuation and perform...

Performing a simultaneous data pack evacuation (capacity migration) and a Hardware Non-Disruptive Upgrade (HWNDU, such as a controller swap) introduces a high degree of complexity. Pure Storage heavily emphasizes a sequential, risk-averse methodology during these major dual-maintenance events.

The standard operating procedure dictates that these two major operations must not overlap. First, the data pack evacuation is executed. The Purity operating system transparently moves all data blocks from the targeted legacy drives to the remaining free space in the array or to a newly installed swing shelf. Once the UI and CLI explicitly show the evacuation is 100% complete and the drives are marked as "empty" or "evacuated," the Implementation Engineer can safely unlatch and physically remove those old drives.

At this precise juncture— after removing the fully evacuated drives and before starting the physical controller replacements for the NDU —the engineer must contact Pure Storage Support. Support will log into the array remotely, run pre-flight health checks (such as hardware_check.py), verify that the array has cleanly stabilized from the drive removal, and ensure the cluster is perfectly healthy before granting the "go-ahead" to initiate the first controller failover. Proceeding into an NDU without this verification risks taking a controller offline while the storage fabric is still normalizing, which could compromise data availability.