A "shelf evacuation" is a non-disruptive capacity consolidation feature. When a customer upgrades to denser flash modules or decommissions older hardware, the Purity operating system transparently migrates all active data blocks off the target DirectFlash Shelf and redistributes them onto the remaining chassis capacity.

Once the GUI and CLI report that the evacuation is 100% complete and the drives are officially empty, the physical data migration is done. However, the Implementation Engineer cannot simply power off the shelf and rip out the cables. The FlashArray's internal database and topology map still retain historical references, WWNs, and hardware associations to that specific shelf and its empty drive bays.

To cleanly purge the shelf from the cluster's active topology and prevent persistent "missing hardware" alerts, Pure Storage Support must execute restricted, backend completion commands (such as the hidden purehw shelf remove script). Because these commands are locked behind advanced engineering privileges, the onsite Implementation Engineer must explicitly Enable Remote Assist (RA) . Remote Assist opens a secure, outbound SSH tunnel from the array's Callhome Connection Manager directly to the Pure Storage support cloud, allowing the remote engineer to log in, run the cleanup scripts, and give the onsite engineer the final green light to physically disconnect the hardware.