Ease of setup and simplicity to use. The per VM metrics are something that isn't found anywhere else.
Network Administrator at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Easy to setup and use.
What is most valuable?
What needs improvement?
Backup integration with Veeam. I would really like to see a way to leverage storage side snapshots for this.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Technologist with 1,001-5,000 employees
Integration with hypervisor managers, "VM awareness" within the storage, and visibility into the behaviors of each VM container and virtual disc are the most valuable features for us.
What is most valuable?
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.
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've used it for a little over three years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
It was one of the simplest install and deploys I've been involved with.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's got reliable hardware plus seamless HA failover.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scaling is via a loosely-coupled "cluster" of independent VM store appliances.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
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.
Technical Support: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.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We switched to save cost, improve performance, free-up existing resources for other tasks, and to gain VMware and RHEV-M support.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
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.
What was our ROI?
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.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Ask for discounts. Ask for "Tintri Global Center" as a free licence to go along with the VM appliances.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We considered NetApp, Nutanix, and HP 3PAR.
What other advice do I have?
Try it, you'll like it.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Tintri VMstore T7000
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Tintri VMstore T7000. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
770,141 professionals have used our research since 2012.
IT Manager with 51-200 employees
The compression / deduplication numbers they advertise are probably accurate for a pure-VDI environment. In a mixed-workload environment, you numbers will definitely vary.
What is most valuable?
The insight into details such as latency at the VM level (disk, host, and network) is unmatched. At a quick glance you can significantly cut down troubleshooting time and quickly identify bottlenecks.
How has it helped my organization?
Almost no time is spent on maintaining storage. Since LUNs are no longer part of the storage infrastructure, there is no need to worry about performance, LUNs filling up, or optimizing snapshots.
What needs improvement?
None come to mind; the unit was a breeze to setup and I haven't come across any sort of setup issues at all.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
No.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
Excellent.
Technical Support:Excellent.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were using a NetApp, however its performance was severely lacking and we required a larger storage footprint.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
Implemented in-house.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We were considering options from NetApp, Dell, HP, and Nutanix.
What other advice do I have?
The compression / deduplication numbers they advertise are probably accurate for a pure-VDI environment. In a mixed-workload environment, you numbers will definitely vary.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
System Administrator at a agriculture with 501-1,000 employees
The dashboard makes things so easy to understand that you have a full grasp on what your VMs are doing and where the bottlenecks are.
What is most valuable?
The ease of administration is crazy good. The dashboard makes things so easy to understand that you have a full grasp on what your VMs are doing and where the bottlenecks are. The speed that you are able to achieve from this storage is better than what we have seen from any other vendor.
How has it helped my organization?
We are able to perform maintenance on all our VMs at the same time, backup multiple VMs at the same time, etc. without causing lag to our users.
What needs improvement?
Of course, a lower price would always be welcome. We were one of the first hyper-v adopters, so it was a bit more cumbersome for the initial setup, but the new OS has resolved these issues.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've used it for one year.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We had problems with performing backups straight from the Tintri when using Hyper-V as the hypervisor, but the fix is due 2nd quarter of 2016 and their support was great to work with.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The Tintri platform is rock solid. The increase in stability has been the major reason that we are so pleased with Tintri.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is not really an issue. When you run out of space, you just purchase another unit and create a new share.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
When we had backup issues, their support was great and we had actual engineers call us back and work through the problem with us.
Technical Support:If you have an issue, Tintri gets the right people on the call to get the problems fixed. You don't waste time getting transferred all over the place.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used NetApp and had nothing but problems with slow speeds, with stability, with needing to hire consultants for management and upgrades. It was an expensive solution that didn't deliver.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
There was no need for vendor help or consultants. The setup takes 15 minutes and is extremely straightforward.
What was our ROI?
We are able to fully patch our servers and run more VMs without having to purchase additional storage. Our ROI after switching to Tintri and Hyper-V is in the $40-$60K range.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Tintri is going to be a cheaper option that some others, but that doesn't mean you lose anything. It was built from the ground up to host VMs, and isn't an older solution retrofitted to work with VMs.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at upgrades to our Netapp, or going with an HP or EMC SAN. Neither was able to deliver what we got from Tintri.
What other advice do I have?
Hands down one of the best investments that we have ever done. We loved it so much we bought a second one for another site a couple of months later, and now we are buying a third.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
System Engineer Client & Server at Swisslos Interkantonale Landeslotterie
Web GUI for maintenance and resource monitoring purposes is easy to use
Pros and Cons
- "A very good support team that is available 24/7. They have real technical staff with strong knowledge."
- "Web GUI for maintenance and resource monitoring purposes is easy to use."
- "In sync and automated mirror between two Tintris is missing."
What is our primary use case?
VMware virtualisation for Client with VMware VDI & vCenter for server synchronised over two data centers.
How has it helped my organization?
- Easy installation, stable, and reliable operating with an almost zero-touch approach.
- Allows for more time to worry about real problems.
What is most valuable?
- The web GUI for maintenance and resource monitoring purposes is easy to use.
- If you have to reconfigure or check something, you will not be lost with too many unnecessary options.
- Excellent 24/7 support with good reaction times. A lot of first time contacts were to a technical person, not log and route.
What needs improvement?
In sync and automated mirror between two Tintris is missing. However, as far as I know, it is on their roadmap.
For how long have I used the solution?
Three to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Not a lot to do more on a Tintri. It is always monitored by the vendor, if you like, and their reaction time and quality are awesome.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Moving on to a synched and automated mirror between two data centers was not possible. We have been hearing for a month that this feature will become available. However, in the end, it was too late for us.
How are customer service and technical support?
A very good support team that is available 24/7. They have real technical staff with strong knowledge.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
HP EVA, which is not admin friendly.
How was the initial setup?
Five to 10 min to production.
What about the implementation team?
The vendor team's level of expertise is very good.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Make sure that you have all licenses in one go. Options afterwards can cost extra.
An "all-in-one" license model would be better at this price range.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Not applicable.
What other advice do I have?
Good, friendly sales, marketing, tech, and support teams, who are a pleasure to work with.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Systems Engineer with 51-200 employees
Review about Tintri VMstore
IT Challenges:
Migrating from one datacenter to another is never an easy challenge
especially when downtime must be minimal. There are a few tools I have
access to that could have been used to get the job done. These are
VMware SRM, Veeam Backup & Replication, and Zerto Virtual
Replication.
First, let’s take a look at the old datacenter. There are two
separate clusters. One is running vSphere 5.0 and the other is vSphere
5.5. Since I am building out a new datacenter and looking to use vSphere
6.0, using SRM was really out of the question. On the storage side,
there are multiple NetApp FAS arrays. I could use Veeam, but I am
looking for a very low RPO which can be a bit difficult to pull off as
constant snapshots can impact application and storage performance. Zerto
offers a low RPO and does not use snapshots. This sounds like a very
good use case for Zerto. Unfortunately, this is not the case and I know
from experience. In the past, I tried replicating a Microsoft 2012 R2
RDSH environment using Zerto and it failed miserably. I can’t completely
blame Zerto for the failure. The issue was with the seeding process
causing the RDSH servers so much latency when reading the VMDK’s from
the NetApp, that it was not possible to seed without impacting users.
Sure, you can preseed, but I still need to copy the entire VMDK to
another storage device. Plus I had a very short timetable to complete
this project and over 350 VMs to move.
Tintri ReplicateVM for the Win!
I already had some experience with Tintri’s ReplicateVM and it is
fantastic. And since we are building out a new datacenter, this was a
good time to purchase new storage. At a very high level, my plan was to
purchase a Tintri VMstore T850, get a loaner T850, replicate all VMs,
and perform the migration. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, nothing is
ever quite that easy, but with a little engineering, this was a project
I was eager to start.
Step one, procuring the storage. Luckily Tintri is an excellent
company and always willing to help out. When I explained my plan,
getting a loaner to use as a swing system was not an issue. After the
loaner was installed, I started to Storage vMotion all the VMs to the
Tintri datastore. This took approximately a week given the number of VMs
and performing most migrations after hours.
Step two, replicating all the VMs to the T850 at the new datacenter
over a 1Gbps link. I decided to use a default protection policy applied
to all VMs using an hourly schedule replicated every 15 minutes. Meaning
it would start at 5 minutes past the hour and replicate every 15
minutes. I didn’t actually time how long the initial seed took, but it
was less than two days to replicate 16TB of data. This is by far the
fastest replication I have seen when compared to other storage vendors
or products such as Veeam and Zerto. Best part, absolutely no
performance impact to either environment!
Now for the fun part. As I mentioned, I won’t be using SRM. So some
PowerShell automation will be required. Using RVTools was a great way to
capture all the VM information I needed and save to a CSV file. The
first part of the script was just a simple VM shutdown, but I added a
loop to confirm the VM was shut down before proceeding to the next step.
The next two steps use the Tintri Automation Toolkit. First, it would
connect to the source Tintri and pause the VM replication.
foreach ($item in $vmlist) { $vmname = $item.vmname Suspend-TintriVMReplication -Name “$vmname” -TintriServer $SourceTintri -Verbose}
Next, the script connected to the destination Tintri to perform a
“restore” of the VM. There is also a cloning option that I will explain
later.
foreach ($item in $vmlist) { $vmname = $item.vmname $destination = $item.destination Restore-TintriVM -Name “$vmname” -DestinationDirectory “$destination/$vmname” -UseLatestSnapshot -TintriServer $DestTintri -Verbose}
Using the restore option does not register the VMs in vCenter, so I
added a section to my script for registering, updating, and powering on
the VMs.
foreach ($item in $vmlist) { $vmname = $item.vmname $filepath = $item.filepath $vmx = $item.vmx $vmhost = $item.vmhost $pool = $item.pool $folder = $item.folder $network = $item.network New-VM -VMFilePath “$filepath” -Name $vmname -VMHost $vmhost -ResourcePool “$pool” -Location “$folder” Get-VM -Name $vmname | Get-NetworkAdapter | Set-NetworkAdapter -NetworkName “$network” -Confirm:$false Start-VM -VM $vmname}
Once completed, all VMs were in their correct resource pool, folder,
networking was configured, and VMs powered on. There was a bit of trial
and error in the beginning, but the outcome was a single script that
worked perfectly for the datacenter move.
So why did I go with the restore option instead of cloning? For one,
simply to keep the Tintri UI nice and clean. Instead of having the
replicated VM and clone listed in the UI, the restore command makes the
replicated snapshot available. More importantly, I wanted to keep all
the VMs identical to the originals including the UUID and MAC. For
Windows, this meant no needless re-activations and also the ability to
restore domain controllers without any issues.
For more information about Tintri’s ReplicateVM, visit https://www.tintri.com/resources/productinformation/replicatevm-data-sheet.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Unix System Administrator at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
You can restore a VM from an existing snapshot, and if you have Tintri OS 4, you can attach the snapshot as a attached disk to an existing VM.
What is most valuable?
The feature I like the most is SyncVM. With a few clicks, you can restore a VM from an existing snapshot, and if you have Tintri OS 4, you can attach the snapshot as a attached disk to an existing VM!
The must have features are: Per VM QOS et Replication.
The new Scale Out option since TintriOS 4.2 is another feature and really useful when you have two VMStores and more. You don't have to manually balance VMs between VMstore, this feature do it for you!
How has it helped my organization?
VMStore does the job very well. I was a bit curious about how this box could perform like the big names, but after the POC, I was very impressed! It has simplicity, performance, and the best support team.
V.M...A.W.A.R.E. This is the new aspect we didn't have before. We have a lot of internal monitoring component to maintain good performances. With Tintri, the device does it by itself.
What needs improvement?
iSCSI could be a nice add-on. Dedupe is a nice to have! At this moment, compression does a very good job, but I'm sure dedupe could be the next big thing for VMStore.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for more than 1 year.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Yes, we got a faulty DIMM, but got it replaced the next business day.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
VMStore is fully redundant. We tested all kinds of failures and the box is very stable. If you upgrade the firmware, you don't have to worry about downtime -- you don't have any! We also had some network problems but the HA did very well.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
For now we don't have scalability issues, but It would be nice to add an external bay for additional storage space. If you need more space, you need to buy another full VMStore.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
The support team is available 24/7. If your ticket is critical, you can pick up the phone and you have the right answer very quickly!
Technical Support:For any kind of problem, you can expect the right guy. You can escalate the problem very quickly if you need it. You don't have to talk to a thousand tech guys to get the right answer. Tintri support gave us the right facts and responded very quickly.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used Hitachi VSP, but the support renewal is very costly. We got good feedback with the first contact with the Tintri sales team and we did a POC right after that!
How was the initial setup?
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!
What about the implementation team?
We got the solution from a vendor team and they knew the box really well. We did a comparison in-house to be sure, and we don't regret this step.
What was our ROI?
At this moment, the ROI is really good for us. We bought additional VMStores in the first year for additional storage space and DR site. We are looking to add more and more in the following year.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
You pay for what you get. You will have the performance you need and you will not be disappointed at all! About licensing, you get the essential options for the smaller price. Some killer add-ons are available, but it's all your choice.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at Tegile because they offer multiple protocols (iSCSI, NFS, SMB, etc.), but their replication process is very disappointing. Tintri is the best for a VMWare solution and its simplicity is a must!
What other advice do I have?
Tintri has the best solution in the storage world. Virtualization and storage is a good match and they are always adding new stuff with each new firmware release. I don't hesitate to recommend Tintri to my friends!
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
it_user400461Senior Technical Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
The VMStores currently do have Deduplication - on the SSD layer, not the HDD. the addition of iSCSI would be very welcome though - I agree! (although given the architecture, it would be difficult to implement)
Senior Systems Engineer with 51-200 employees
It offers per-VM queuing, QoS, and most importantly was designed specifically for virtualization.
For the original Tintri Does "IT" Better review, visit https://tactsol.com/tintri-does-it-better/
IT Challenges:
Recently I had been trying to solve a problem with latency in a Microsoft 2012 R2 RDSH environment hosted on NetApp FAS storage and vSphere 5.5 Enterprise Plus. Storage was fast in terms of hard drive standards using 15k RPM SAS drives, and latency on the aggregate and volumes was relatively low. Although when connecting to RDSH any amount of latency is very noticeable.
NetApp has two different types of Flash technology to make use of intelligent caching. One is called Flash Cache which are PCIe cards that fit directly into the NetApp controllers and provide improved “read” performance. Flash Cache is a very good idea, but based on my metrics; I was seeing about 50/50 split between read and write latency. Another technology that NetApp offers is called Flash Pool and unlike Flash Cache, both read and writes can be cached on the Flash Pool SSDs. I went ahead and procured a brand new disk shelf with a combination of 10k RPM SAS drives and SSDs. The disk shelf was configured as a hybrid aggregate to take advantage of NetApp’s Flash Pool. Initial testing and benchmarking proved to have increased performance and lower latency. Once I was satisfied, I proceeded to Storage vMotion the RDSH environment to the new datastore. Users saw a much-improved performance at first, but as the environment grew and more VMs were added to this datastore, the latency increased and performance dropped.
Another idea that was new to vSphere 5.5 is the vSphere Flash Read Cache (vFRC). This seemed like a possible solution to at least reduce some of the read latency and was worth a shot. I went with a single 200 GB SSD for each ESXi host to keep the cost down since this is a new vSphere feature that we had not tested yet. Initial tests showed improvement and two Virtual Machines were upgraded to VM Version 10 and vFRC enabled. Soon afterwards I started seeing issues with Veeam backups either failing or VM Snapshots constantly needing consolidation. This was before Veeam v8 that has NetApp integration and the ability to take storage snapshots. After working with VMware and Veeam and not being able to find a resolution, I was forced to disabled vFRC.
Tintri Does “IT” Better
When it comes to high-performance flash storage, there are a lot of players in the market. It was no surprise to hear vendors tell me that an “All-Flash” array was necessary for my type of workload. While All-Flash would indeed solve the challenge I was having, was it the appropriate solution and does it make sense from a cost versus performance standpoint? The short answer was no. In this situation, a “Hybrid-Flash” array made the most sense. But you may be saying to yourself, we just spoke about NetApp’s hybrid solution that did not work out. So what makes Tintri different? Well, just about everything.
Let me just say, this is not Tintri versus NetApp. This is Tintri versus aging storage technologies that have seen very limited improvements over the years. These traditional storage arrays use file systems that were designed long before virtualization hit the market, and the same file systems are still used today. Tintri, on the other hand, has a brand new file system that was created from the ground up, offers per-VM queuing, QoS, and most importantly was designed specifically for virtualization. One of the reasons I learned about Tintri was from looking into VMware VVols for more VM-level management at the storage layer. Unfortunately, VVols is still in its infancy, and Tintri created VM-aware storage several years before the release of VVols.
But it is not just about who came up with the idea of VM-level management first. It is about how each technology was designed and implemented. As I said before, Tintri was built from the ground up and is purpose-built for virtualized environments. VVols is just an API and does not change the underlying storage architecture. Point being, not all storage systems are created equal and traditional storage systems cannot deliver such VM-level data services as they don’t fundamentally understand VMs and vDisks.
Enough with the comparisons. You just want to know how well the Tintri VMstore performs, and I can tell you it performs great! The RDSH environment that experienced latency now lives on a Tintri VMstore T820. Latency is consistently sub-millisecond, and the flash hit ratio is always 99-100%. The performance with the RDSH environment is so much improved that I can work more quickly when logging into the RDS Farm when compared to using my local laptop. But Tintri is not just an RDS or VDI solution. It works great with all types of workloads whether it be websites, databases, Exchange, and much more. If you are looking to increase performance and save money in your virtualized infrastructure, then you need to check out Tintri.
For more information about Tintri’s unique Operating System, visit https://www.tintri.com/resources/productinformatio...
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Well our backups are a mess and we need something that will take care of everything. We use Symantec and Veeam together at the moment. I love Veeam but hate Symantec which does our Exchange environment. Also we use a Data Domain for our storage which does not restore the fastest either. Rubrik offers an appliance that contains everything and is easily scalable. They offer many features including Cloud Backup (I know Veeam does too). The overall solution seems sound and they are moving towards physical backup too.
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Tintri VMstore T7000 Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Updated: April 2024
Product Categories
All-Flash StoragePopular Comparisons
VMware vSAN
Pure Storage FlashArray
Dell PowerStore
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)
NetApp AFF
Dell Unity XT
HPE Nimble Storage
Dell PowerMax NVMe
Pure Storage FlashBlade
DDN IntelliFlash
Oracle FS1 Flash Storage System
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Tintri VMstore T7000 Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Quick Links
Learn More: Questions:
- DataCore vs. Nexenta vs. Tintri - which should we choose for our exclusively Citrix shop?
- Dell EMC XtremIO Flash Storage OR Hitachi Virtual Storage F Series
- Pure Storage or NetApp for VDI?
- When evaluating Enterprise Flash Array Storage, what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?
- IBM vs. EMC vs. Hitachi Compression
- Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
- What is the difference between thick and thin provisioning?
- What are the advantages of all-flash storage over other types of storage?
- What is VDI?
- Do you have an RFP template for Enterprise All-Flash?
We used 1.7x space saving instead of the 2.4x Tintri says which as you say seems reliant on VDI. The clone technology is great unless you already have 800 VMs which are not clones.