Tintri VMstore T7000 Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

Senior Technical Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Mar 10, 2016

With the VM Visualization feature, we get fast troubleshooting when we have a performance issue with our VMs.

What is most valuable?

With the VM Visualization feature, it gives us extremely fast troubleshooting when we have a performance issue with any of our VMs.

How has it helped my organization?

The performance of the array is superb, but for us it's the time saving we get - the IT staff don't need any special SAN training to fully operate the Tintri unit, and it saves huge amounts of time when provisioning systems.

What needs improvement?

It needs a Hyper-V toolset and OpenStack Horizon support. Most of the features are in line with the competition, but they could provide automation to move VMs between hypervisors.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for 3+ years.

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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No, everything was extremely simple. We had the unit racked and powered on in 15 minutes, and it took only 10 minutes to set the device up.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We've had no issues with stability, even when upgrading. The VAAI plugin is a little tedious to install on the ESX hosts, but it's not needed for every function.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scaling is very easy to do, as they effectively are standalone units. You can get a Global Center OVA which monitors and manages up to 32 devices at once. We have this in-house and use it frequently.

How are customer service and support?

Customer Service:

9/10. They have always been prompt at getting back to us, follow-up service has never been pushy by pressuring us to buy more, and we can highly recommend them.

Technical Support:

9/10. The support site is a great resource. The techies in the UK really know their stuff, and the upgrades have always worked flawlessly (save one issue, which they released a fix for almost immediately!).

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used HDS, but its cost and technical skill level of implementation was too high for our IT staff. Also, the introduction of fiber channel meant a big change to our infrastructure. Tintri was simple, and plugged into our environment with minimal changes.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it with our in-house team with very little training required. As long as you know VMware, it's really easy to put in. Mounting the device as a NAS also takes a lot of the pain points away.

What was our ROI?

Our ROI is in the time saved on our troubleshooting. Also, management hours have been massively reduced as monitoring and maintaining the Tintri have almost gone down to zero!

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Only go for the Tintri Global Center if you intend to buy more than two VM stores, but other than that, it was straightforward, and even the SKUs are simple to understand.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes, HDS, Huawei, and HP. We looked at a lot of different vendors beforehand, but Tintri just fit our needs nicely, and I cannot fault the performance.

What other advice do I have?

We love our Tintri's here, so much so, we have 3! I would highly recommend them to anyone. We are mainly VMWare, but the multi hypervisor support means that it can fit almost any environment.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We're partners.

it_user371412

Head of IT at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 17, 2016

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The most important features to us are its low latency, the high performance, and the per-VM QoS.

What is most valuable?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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

What needs improvement?

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

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 didn't encounter any issues with deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's been very stable for us.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We've been able to scale without any problems.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

10/10

Technical Support:

10/10

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it with our in-house team.

What was our ROI?

We anticipate that our ROI will be around three years.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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

What other advice do I have?

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.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.

Buyer's Guide

Tintri VMstore T7000

December 2024

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it_user250251

Senior Systems Engineer with 51-200 employees

Nov 25, 2015

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.

Chris ChilderhoseLead Infrastructure Architect at ThinkON

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Sep 29, 2016

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.

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Firoze Bhorat

Senior Environments Engineer - Virtualised Environments at Derivco with 501-1,000 employees

May 23, 2015

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Versatile solution with multiple uses.

Valuable Features

Tintri is amazingly powerful storage solutions packaged into a 4u unit. It is an extremely versatile solution with multiple uses.

It currently handles a lot of our virtualisation systems and we love the quick setup (30 minutes), intuitive admin/monitoring page and amazing support.

It is a great system.

Room for Improvement

They should keep up the great innovation and good work.

Use of Solution

4 years

Deployment Issues

No issues with deployment.

Stability Issues

No issues with stability.

Scalability Issues

No. We're onto our 4th unit.

Customer Service and Technical Support

Customer Service:

10 out of 10

Technical Support:

10 out of 10

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user502368

IT Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jan 25, 2017

We purchased it and currently use it for our Hyper-V environment.

Valuable Features:

The overall speed/performance of the system is critically valuable for us and the analytical data is extremely helpful for minimizing troubleshooting time for any VMs experiencing issues.

This product was purchased for our MS Hyper-V 2012 R2 environment and allowed us to build out a clustered configuration that we have never been able to have due to previously unreliable equipment. At the time we were having severe disk latency issues and realized that we needed an all Flash or Hybrid flash and SATA array. The unit we purchased is a Hybrid unit, although at first we were skeptical it would provide the same performance as an all Flash Array, yet it has far surpassed all expectations. Detailed reporting with the ability to see reports from the hypervisor are very helpful.

Improvements to My Organization:

Immediately upon installation we benefited from a 5x speed/performance increase in the overall system for all of our VMs migrated to the unit from an old unreliable Synology storage unit.

Use of Solution:

We currently continue to use our Tintri for our Hyper-V environment and will purchase another unit once we have the need for expansion.

Deployment Issues:

We had no issues with deployment as it was deployed within an hour.

Stability Issues:

The unit remains extremely stable

Scalability Issues:

We currently only have one device, but will scale when needed

Customer Service:

The customer service is excellent and second to none!

Technical Support:

Only issue experienced was due to administrative error with respect to Active Directory connectivity.

Previous Solutions:

Synology unit that was replaced did not have de-dupe or have any other feature like the Tintri does.

Initial Setup:

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

Implementation Team:

Single IT Administrator

ROI:

The ROI for us is expected to be just under 3 years

Cost and Licensing Advice:

Compared to other products in the same area, very cost effective. Licensing is not a factor as there are no additional license costs.

Other Solutions Considered:

Dell, NetApp, HP

Other Advice:

A lot of people get spooked by the word hybrid, but the performance is truly impressive and well worth considering.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user326337Customer Success Manager at PeerSpot

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Sep 28, 2016

Chris and Donald, I think you may find this review on Tintri VMstore useful:

www.itcentralstation.com

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it_user497901

Network Administrator at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 18, 2016

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Easy to setup and use.

Valuable Features:

Ease of setup and simplicity to use. The per VM metrics are something that isn't found anywhere else.

Room for 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.

it_user243507

IT Manager with 51-200 employees

Jun 15, 2015

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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.

it_user256836Enterprise Architech at UC Irvine

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Jun 22, 2015

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.

it_user371403

Enterprise Infrastructure Architect at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

Jan 17, 2016

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We replaced a EMC VNX 5700 with Tintri. Cost, performance, and ease of management were the primary reasons for the replacement.

What is most valuable?

There are several valuable features for us, among them are speed, savings of storage space, and the ease of setup and management.

How has it helped my organization?

Using VMstore, we no longer need a dedicated storage engineer, saving us costs from a human resources perspective. There's also very little setup required for new Tintri units. And once set up, management can be done by anyone.

What needs improvement?

It would be very helpful if it had scheduled time-to-full trend reporting because management always wants to know how much time is left on storage.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using it for 11 months.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

We've had no deployment issues at all. It's the simplest storage installation we've ever seen.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We encountered no issues with stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's scalability is great. Because it’s node-based, if you need more space, you just add a node.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Customer support is excellent. They're very responsive.

Technical Support:

Technical support is top-notch. We dealt with Steve Phillips, and he's been great.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Tintri replaced an EMC VNX 5700. Cost, performance, and ease of management were the primary reasons for the replacement.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What about the implementation team?

Steve Phillips from Tintri came in person to show us how to set up the unit. His expertise is complete.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pricing is much less expensive than anything of similar size/performance that we looked at (Pure, Tegile, upgraded VNX). The licensing is quite simple, especially when we made the purchase. It was all-inclusive then, and now they have more products that can be licensed.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at Pure Storage and Tegile, and considered upgrading the existing VNX 5700.

What other advice do I have?

Install a POC unit and put test machines on it. That is the best way to see what it can do, and it is *very easy* to install/remove.

Fig 1: Typical Monday morning in the primary datacenter on Tintri T-850. The space savings (x1.9) means that we are getting nearly twice as much value out of the Tintri than standard storage.

Fig 2: IO changes between Sunday and Monday performance not changed by the increase in IOPS:

it_user400461Senior Technical Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

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Mar 8, 2016

There is an indication on the main page of days left till full, but this only kicks in after a certain period of time, and when you have hit a certain percentage of storage I believe.

Screenshot of one our boxes here:

postimg.org

--Jason