Tintri VMstore T7000 Reviews

I no longer have to think about our storage or managing it. Tintri solved all those problems for us while improving performance.

The ease and use and the great performance are why we went with our 2nd Tintri VMstore. Tintri arrays are cheaper then other vendors while still providing an excellent level of performance.

I would like to be able to add more storage capacity to our 2 units down the road with out buying an additional seprate array. I hear that their newer models may solve that issue though.

The SAN was purchased for our VDI environment. As soon as we put it in place, we noticed a threefold speed increase in the overall system.

It has greatly improved the performance of our VDI environment to start. Since the initial deployment we also attached it to our "Server VM" vsphere and even placed some of our virtual server workloads on it and it has handled that load very well.

The overall speed of the system is the main feature that is valuable for us. The metrics and analytics it provided is great also.

This product was purchased for our VMware View VDI environment . At the time we were having disk latency issues and were looking for an all Flash array. This is a Hybrid unit. At first we were skeptical it could provide the same performance as an all Flash Array, but when we tested it against one it did. So speed was our primary feature we were looking for and we certainly got. We also find the detail per-vm reporting at the ability to see reports from the hypervisor straight back to the storage useful. Another other nice feature is the vmware aware granular abilities to provide QOS to each VM.

On the physical side, I would suggest adding a light to each of the controllers that would indicate which is the active and with is the passive.

On the software side, I suggest adding integration with backups software like CommVault Simpana or Veeam where these products can integrate with the array and trigger things like snapshots for backup, etc. We are considering buying another to host more of our virtual server workload.

The unit has been very stable since it came on-line.

We currently only have one device, so have not scaled it.

Customer Service:

The customer service is excellent.

Technical Support:

The only time we ever had an issue was when we were converting our storage infrastructure from 10GB Base-T to 10GB fibre. We inserted the wrong style Gbic into t he unit and a port would not come up. Support called us before we even thought to call them.

We have an all Flash Equallogic unit and the Tintri is much faster. The Equallogic also does not de-dupe the data or have any other feature like the Tintri does.

The initial setup was very easy.

1. Rack the unit
2. Plug in power and network.
3. Assign an IP via the cli.
4. Login via a web interface and complete the set-up.
5. Load the needed module on each hyper-visor.
6. Mount the storage.

We implemented it ourselves.

The ROI is very good and will continue to grow as we scale our vdi

Compared to other products in the same area, it's cost effective. The price is the price and is reasonable for the class of storage. Licensing is not a factor as there are no additional license costs.

In addition to Tintri we also did a proof of concept on Pure Storage. While the Pure Storage was slightly faster it was 40% more expensive and provided 70% less useable storage.

We also met with SolidFire, NetApp, Dell, and HP.

A lot of people get spooked by the word hybrid. Don't be. This thing is a hybrid but has all-flash speed.

The most valuable features for us are the reliability and it's ease of use.

It's the most stable storage unit since the much more expensive HP 3PAR unit was released.

Our first unit – the T540 - was bought at the beginning of 2012.

We encountered no issues with deployment.

There were stability issues only when we exceeded the operational limitations. We found that the number of running VM’s advertised per device is not consistent with what we experience due to the workload each of our VM’s generates.

We encountered no issues with scalability.

The customer service is very good. We have active interactions with the technical support and development teams

Technical support has been excellent so far.

We switched because we encountered reliability problems. The cost of scaling out the solution to overcome these issues was excessive.

The initial setup was extremely simple.

The implementation was done in-house.

We evaluated Nutanix.

Just give it a try, even via POC, to see how much simpler it is to implement and how well it performs.

The most valuable features for me are the cloning and snapshot recovery functions.

Cloning new VMs using Tintri has saved me hours of waiting/work. It is the one feature that I use on a regular basis. Snapshot recovery is amazing as well. We rely on Tintri snapshots over VMware snapshots. They are so much easier to manage.

That’s tough. The thing is rock solid and easy to manage. Can’t think of anything right now, but reserve the right to revisit this.

The licensing model, however, is disappointing as each feature requires a license.

We've used it for three years.

The deployment was straightforward and easy! We had a POC and never sent the box back. We really didn’t even need an engineer, but it was nice to get the knowledge transfer of tips and tricks after setting the box up.

None so far in three years.

It scales as promised. You run out of resources, you buy another one. We have not hit the limit on any of our boxes yet.

A+ excellent! Love my Tintri guys. They understand our use case and help us find the best solution. They keep their finger on the pulse and get in touch with me when something is going on that I need to know about. Our vendor relationship is outstanding.

Maybe even better than customer service!!! I don’t want to hurt any feelings here but I probably talk to technical support a little more often than I do customer service so I am giving them A++. So far, I have always gotten a person when I called. None of that they will call me back stuff. I really appreciate that. I need to talk with someone when I call, not 4 hours from when I call.

We did – NetApp. We switched for a variety of reasons – cost, we felt like the technology was old and they were trying to retrofit to keep up with emerging technologies, we didn't like the licensing model they used (every feature seemed to require a license).

The initial setup is very straightforward.

We had a vendor team help us. Well, we lucky enough to have Trent Steele help us. That guy is just amazing.

Pricing is fair, but the licensing model is disappointing. Initially, we thought Tintri was going with a “you buy our box, you buy everything” to simplify the licensing, but they have gone down the NetApp road of licensing features. We really don’t like that. Big disappointment.

We evaluated several options, including

• Tegile
• EMC
• Nimble Storage
• Nimbus
• NetApp

Do it. If you are in the NFS virtual world, there is no better device.

We have 300 virtual desktops running on VMware Horizon. While many VDI deployments (like call centers) are able to take advantage of non-persistent desktops, licensing and other application issues forced us to use more IO-intensive persistent desktops. The T650 allowed us to cost-efficiently provide very high performing desktops by optimizing the use of Flash. We're currently using 19 TB of storage space for the desktops, but their optimization has consistently given us a 100% flash-hit ratio.

For my company, Tintri's most valuable feature is it's TCO. This system is easy to install, requires no training, and is easy to upgrade. I've worked on both EMC and NetApp SANs, and this is by far the easiest system to maintain. As a SysAdmin, I really appreciate the built-in monitoring capabilities as well as the PowerShell and REST API toolkits.

I would love to see improvements in their replication engine. Their current replication is really just enough to "check the box" that they do replication. We'll probably implement Actifio, Zerto or EMC RecoverPoint for VMs for more critical data replication.

We've had no problems at all with stability. At this point, we've done several upgrades of the system which uses the High Availability features to restart each head during the upgrade.

We've had no issues with scalability.

Customer Service:

As I mentioned above, their level of customer service is extraordinary.

Technical Support:

Technical support has been very responsive. A few weeks ago we upgraded some switches at a remote site, causing the T650's management interface to go offline for a few minutes. Within a few minutes, we got a few emails from tech support and my sales engineer offering any help. They're also very good about keeping us informed about any new upgrades or patches.

This system was used for a new project.

Initial set-up was very easy and was probably finished in 30 minutes. I was surprised that the initial set-up required a keyboard, mouse and monitor rather than just a serial connection.

We purchased through a vendor called Datalink, but our Tintri sales engineer came in and installed the system at no additional cost.

With any SAN purchase, the sizing procedure is the most important step. I'd suggest going through exactly how you will use the system with your sales engineer and get their approval in writing.

We evaluated EMC, NetApp, Nimble Storage, and Pure Storage. At the time the "all-flash" options were still very expensive and we hoped that a hybrid approach would be sufficient for our performance needs. We're very happy with the decision.

With the drop in flash prices, there are a lot more options on the market than when we first started our research for this project. In particular, I'm currently very interested in hyper-converged solutions. However, if are looking for an easy, but high performing storage platform for VMware, then you can't go wrong with Tintri.

Some of the most valuable features we've found are the thin provisioning, deduplication, and VMware View/VDI support.

We purchased the T540 for our VMware View/VDI deployment. When we chose Tintri, it was the only product to offload the VDI cloning to the array. This reduced the provision by 8-15 minutes depending on which system we were on. Other systems now have this same feature, but the Tintri is rock solid.

We have tested the replication piece – it actually works well, but is expensive based on our limited needs – if we were utilizing the Tintri for more of our VM workload it may be more cost effective.

I've used it for two years.

Installation was maybe an hour including racking the equipment and setup. It's one of the simplest SANs I have touched. We have been eliminating new arrays all of 2015 and still, Tintri is the easiest to configure.

We encountered no issues with stability.

We currently have about 240TB of data and add about 60TB a year. Ideally, we prefer to have a single array to manage for our primary workload. Our VDI environment is stored separately and Tintri more than fits the need of this environment.

Customer service is great to work with.

Technical support has been excellent. We did a beta test of the T850. This involved us in weekly conference calls with their engineering dept. They are extremely knowledgeable and great to work with.

We were utilizing an EMC VNX which worked well for our day to day workloads, but was not optimized for VDI. That was what lead us to the Tintri solution in 2013.

It had the simplest setup of any SAN I've worked with.

For the first T540, the Tintri engineer came up and walked us through the setup. I think this was mostly a good will gesture and to meet us in person. The second one my team did themselves. We had both communicating with the VMware environment in less than an hour.

I think for the money, Tintri is a great solution.

We looked at other solutions. When we purchased this, it was the only solution offering the features we needed.

Buy it.

We've found that its VM-related features are very valuable: integration with hypervisor managers (VMware and RHEV-M), "VM awareness" within the storage, and visibility into the behaviors of each VM container and virtual disc. It has very hands-off, detailed visibility and control mechanisms for issues or questions of VM performance.

It's also very reliable and has an overall ease-of-use.

By providing a domain-specific, virtualized, storage solution, Tintri helps me -

• Move VM storage off general-purpose arrays and re-use that resource more appropriately; and
• Free up engineering resources to do more-useful work, versus managing and analyzing VM storage.

It needs current RHEV-M support (v2.5) which is slated for 2016. It also needs dedupe on the spinning media for the hybrid array. Change the UI to use something other than Adobe Flash.

We've used it for a little over three years.

It was one of the simplest install and deploys I've been involved with.

It's got reliable hardware plus seamless HA failover.

Scaling is via a loosely-coupled "cluster" of independent VM store appliances.

Excellent; the appliance does phone-home and auto-support uploads, so Tintri support knows when there are issues. On-site support (used once in 3+ years) was efficient and professional.

Excellent; I have direct contact and touch-based communication with my SE, and timely response with support for any question or issue we've had.

We switched to save cost, improve performance, free-up existing resources for other tasks, and to gain VMware and RHEV-M support.

It's super-simple. We were already an NFS-attached VM storage shop, so I just added the Tintri appliances as a data store, then live-migrated VM images to it. From opening the box to initial testing took 30 minutes.

I purchased from a VAR, but we did the install and integration ourselves, not for any lack of expertise from the VAR, but because the product is simple to install and deploy.

ROI is hard to quantify, but we gained visibility and optimization of the VM execution environment, freed up more-valuable resources (equipment and people) and improved reliability and stability of the VM execution environments.

Ask for discounts. Ask for "Tintri Global Center" as a free licence to go along with the VM appliances.

We considered NetApp, Nutanix, and HP 3PAR.

Try it, you'll like it.

There are several features we find valuable, but the most important to us are its low latency, the high performance, and the per-VM QoS.

With VMstore, we're able to perform better and have better insight into our data storage infrastructure.

It lacks deduplication, and dedupe on all data is something that would be a big improvement that we need.

We've used it for one year.

We didn't encounter any issues with deployment.

It's been very stable for us.

We've been able to scale without any problems.

10/10

10/10

We switched to VMstore get better performance, VM-aware storage, and improved QoS.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

We anticipate that our ROI will be around three years.

Before choosing Tintri, we evaluated solutions from Nimble Storage and Equalogic.

I think this is a perfect product if you need a VM-aware storage solution. As a service provider we love the possibility to look at the virtual environment from the storage perspective, to see which VMs are using IOPS/capacity and to analyze where the latency is produced (host/network/storage). With the new QOS features we can guarantee to meet customer demands and we don’t have to use different storage platforms for different performance alternatives. For example; if the customer wants spinning-SATA-RAID5 performance we can set a limit on the IOPS and if the customer wants Hybrid-SSD-spinning we can guarantee 5000 IOPS.