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Tintri has an interesting VM-aware All-Flash storage platform for virtualization and cloud environments. There are both All-Flash and Hybrid-Flash products, but the most interesting aspects are the VM-aware capability, the analytics data, and the scaling model.

The arrays are similar to other two-controllers arrays, with a scale-up (or scale-in) model. But some years ago Tintri unveils its scale-out storage model where was possible grow your storage base in a simple way.

In May 2016, the company announced their VM Scale-out technology: when a customer adds a Tintri system to their footprint, it is treated as a single, federated pool. Tintri automatically optimizes the placement of every individual virtual machine across the newly expanded footprint. A different approach compared with the traditional storage scale-out, where you can have also data redundancy across multiple storage arrays, but it’s anyway an interesting way to move out from the scale-up limit. And potentially, in the future, could also possible transform the VM Scale-out technology into a fully scale-out model.

Now Tintri complements its approach to scale-out with a new technologyFlexDrive, a storage expansion feature that enables customers of Tintri all-flash storage arrays to increase system capacity to meet a specific storage need, by adding as little as one drive at a time.

Nothing totally new, considering that most of the Software Defined Storage permit this flexibility (also using commodity drivers), but it’s not so common on the appliance based storage; for this reason, it’s a good sign!

Tintri’s approach to expansion is distinguished by its granularity. Since Tintri operates at the VM-level and eliminates the need for traditional storage constructs such as RAID groups and shelves, customers can purchase a partially populated EC6000 all-flash array and:

  1. Add capacity in increments as little as one drive—inserting the drive(s) into any available disk slot
  2. Click a single “expand” button in the Tintri interface
  3. Gain immediate access to new capacity and deploy virtual machines without any further configuration

But it’s also possible plan the expansion before with the new interesting expansion estimator feature:

You can use a slider to define new number of disks and how expansion can increase the the desired space.

Tintri FlexDrive software for EC6000 systems will be included at no charge to customers with current support contracts via the Tintri OS 4.4.1 release available later this month.

The Tintri EC6000 All-Flash Series delivers powerful and efficient all-flash performance for up to 7,500 virtualized or cloud applications in just two rack units. Flexible expansion options give you the power to balance performance and capacity. The unique Tintri storage file system, built specifically for virtualized and cloud workloads, is powered by the Tintri CONNECT architecture. With the EC6000, you can start with a 19 TB all-flash system and grow to over 40 PB of all-flash storage supporting over 480,000 applications all managed by a single console.

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