It took less than an hour to get VMstore rack-mounted, installed, and starting to serve virtual machines, and the majority of that was unboxing.

We were apprehensive because it was a new device for us. We asked for some help in installing it and they said, "You're really not going to need any help, but our system sales engineer is going to come out to help." We thought it was going to be all about the configuration. Their engineer showed up with a pair of gloves and a strap to help protect his back when lifting it in but we had already racked it, plugged it in, and added it to our VLAN. 

We thought all the work was going to be around how we connect this thing. We didn't understand the NFS stores and how all this works. We wanted to set up replication and didn't know what that was going to be like. But he was expecting that the hardest part of his job was going to be helping us stick the thing in the rack. Once he settled in, we told him, "Hey, we're ready to turn it on." It was a matter of a set of questions, add some IPs and a replication channel. We carved out the storage and had our first VM. In an hour, we had migrated from one of our LeftHand HP storage test servers to this solution.

Maintenance consists of the occasional software upgrade, but every storage has that. We haven't had a flash drive fail or anything else fail and we haven't had to replace a controller on the 850s that we've had running for the last five years.

VMstore was one of the most impressive deployments I've seen. It took 30 minutes. I remember walking away thinking, "Wow! They've just installed and delivered a SAN, connected it, and we've got a VM on it in 30 minutes. That's ridiculous."

We also did some preparation and planning before we deployed. We readied the new network where it was going to sit. The Dell blade array chassis was installed, and the blades were ready. The Tintri had arrived in a box about three days before, but we didn't touch it. 

The Tintri engineer came, and I helped him rack it. He connected it, and within 30 minutes, we created our first VM. After that, the Tintri engineer remained on site for about three or four hours, going through stuff with my remote colleague and showing him how all the different features work.

After deployment, VMstore requires some maintenance like all solutions, but it is minimal compared to the more traditional SANs and a lot less maintenance relative to managing multiple individual servers.

The deployment model depends on the customer. We have Tintri deployed in customer data centers and, for really small customers, in their offices. We have it deployed in our own data center in a hybrid, co-location model, as well as a replication model for customers. We have about 500 terabytes of Tintri deployed at a Tier 4 data center in Massachusetts. And the cloud replication model is something that we're using as well.

Our most recent customer deployment was for a small to medium business that does about $100 million in revenue in the New England market. We deployed three new server hosts for them, some switching, and Tintri on the storage layer. It was a T Series deployment and from unboxing to rack-and-stack to IP addresses set and the storage being mapped into VMware, it took less than an hour.

For a small to medium business, the implementation strategy is to get the storage deployed in the customer's environment and map it into the VMware environment. If it's an implementation that requires a migration from another storage vendor, then there are storage vMotions that take place. Once the environment is up and running, we usually provide performance metrics to the customer. And we set up the RTO and RPO requirements in our data center. If the customer is taking advantage of the Tintri block-level or VM-level replication, we would match that to their business objectives related to application location delivery—tier one, tier two, or tier three— and what dependencies exist in their environment. 

But the implementation and deployment model is really straightforward because as soon as the IP addresses are assigned to the storage and any VLAN requirements are completed, it's just a matter of moving the virtual machines to the storage and then focusing on the business rather than the storage itself. We usually require one engineer for deployment.

In terms of maintenance, these are disks or SSDs or storage modules and there is predictive, and at times reactive, maintenance. With enterprise storage, there's a four-hour response and 24/7 hands-on if that's what is needed. That means there is nothing required from our team, but sometimes we want our team to be the face of the account to the customer. In those cases, one of our engineers may go onsite to meet the Tintri support person. A lot of our customers have no visibility into any maintenance because we're offering this as a service within our co-location environment. So generally speaking, there isn't really any management that has to happen. And if there is some alert that requires field service, we're contacted, sometimes proactively and sometimes reactively, by Tintri support.

You can order a pizza and set it up. You got two management cables, two data cables, and a replication cable. You just plug it in.

I moved one the other day because we moved our lab, and it took under 10 minutes. There are two rails that pop in. The toughest part is the rails. You got to lift the box out. You have another person there to help you, and in five to seven minutes, you're in. It takes you longer to plug in cables and power cords and run them than it does to do anything else.

In terms of maintenance, we upgrade the software once every six months.

The initial deployment was straightforward. We had a plethora of questions that we were eager to ask, primarily concerning the migration process to our new Tintri system. Tintri personnel were consistently prompt in their availability, which we found to be quite beneficial. They are always approachable, a quality that we have come to appreciate about Tintri. They are always eager to hop on a call and swiftly connect us with the appropriate individuals when the need arises.

Getting the VMstore in racks took one day but getting it up and running took some time because we had to move the data from the old box to the new box which took a couple of weeks. Two people were involved in the deployment.

It was easy to setup.

It took three to four hours to get VMstore rack-mounted, installed, and starting to serve the virtual machines.

In terms of maintenance, I just rely on the notifications and check on it from time to time. It has been pretty self-reliant.

Initial setup is very easy. The whole process from unboxing to adding to vCenter is 20-30 minutes. There are no LUNs to carve and no zoning required!

The initial setup is straightforward, no advanced knowledge is required to do it.

The initial setup was very straightforward, especially compared with iSCSI solutions from other vendors.

The initial setup was very simple and it took 45 minutes to get fully up and running. Unboxing and racking took the longest.

Initial setup was very straightforward.

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.

The initial setup was easy. This tool took longer to mount in-rack than to have it ready to start moving VMs to it. It was a very easy configuration.

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.

Very easy. It took longer to mount it in the rack than it took to setup.

Setup is easy. The storage is only for virtualization so it is ready to go. Add some basic configuration information, add the datastore, move VMs. No knobs to turn to tune it in.

The setup was easy. We had the Tintri up and running in 60 mins with everything.

It took more time just to rack and cable the Netapp...

The setup is very straightforward. We were setup in no time and ready to start migrating VMs onto the device.

The initial setup was absolutely straightforward. We found Tintri more than ready to support us during the installation.

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.

Extremely simple - you are prompted for a management IP to get things going, and then via a web GUI you can add your vCenter hosts. After you add the datastores to your hosts, you are done - not paritioning, no RAID groups, etc.

Tintri is probably the easiest SAN that you will ever encounter. 15 minutes and you are up and running. You need very limited information, and the setup poster gave any information to get you going.

Five to 10 min to production.

The initial setup was really simple. You read the quick start manual and got a working solution in under one hour. No complicated setup at all!

Initial setup was very easy. Just fill in some information including IP addresses, jumbo frames, LACP, and you are good to go.

As I indicated earlier the initial setup was very straight forward. Tintri have a setup guide that gives admin's a planning checklist to ensure that your install works right from the get go.

Straightforward. As said, within 45 minutes from unboxing to production.

The setup was straightforward and quick to deploy. It took under an hour from racking to being available for use.

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

The initial setup was straightforward.

The initial setup was extremely simple.

The initial setup was really intuitive. It was easy to install.

The initial setup was straightforward.

The initial setup was incredibly simple. The whole system was installed and running in less than an hour. It took longer to rack and plug the cables in than to configure the software! We have VMware mainly, and adding it was a cinch.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The initial set up is very straightforward, almost plug-n-play.

The initial setup was very straightforward. We gave VMstore the addresses, told it where the vSphere vCenter was, and it literally did the rest. It took us about 30 minutes, including racking the unit.

It's been smooth, asked for a couple of ports from our network guys, installed the needed SFP-- et voilà.

The initial setup is straightforward. It didn't take that long to deploy. 

It is straightforward. Plug it into the power and network, give it an IP address, add the vCenters, then add the storage to VMware.

Really simple. Just rack the box and insert network cables, assign ip-adresses, mount the one single datastore on your vmware hosts and GO!