DDN is giving Tintri file array users access to file services through a Nexenta virtual storage appliance.
The company bought Tintri in 2018 and Nexenta this year, and this is the first time it has brought together their technologies in one product.
Tom Ellery, general manager for Tintri, said more is to come: “As part of the DDN family of brands, we will continue to extend our technology to deliver automation and analytics up the stack, and add complementary solutions.”
Tintri by DDN, as it is formally known, ships VMstore file access arrays optimised for use by VMware and other virtualized servers. VMstore systems expose NFS for vSphere and SMB elsewhere, such as Hyper-V.
There is now a NexentaStor VSA for Tintri. This gives users Nexenta’s version of filer functionality, meaning NFS and SMB/CIFS file services for Windows and Mac clients.
We asked Tintri why it needs two versions of NFS and SMB in its portfolio. Kurt Kuckein, DDN’s senior director if marketing, said Tintri’s NFS and SMB interfaces “do not include a fully featured set of file services for desktop users, and historically Tintri customers would follow VMware best practices recommendations by adding a Windows server as a VM for desktop file services. “
NexentaStor VSA for Tintri “offers a hardened and mature SMB server to consolidate server and desktop storage on a Tintri system, including user profiles for virtual desktops and other non-virtualized use cases.”
NexentaStor VSA storage pools are built on VMDK files from an ESXi datastore and rely on the durability provided by the Tintri array.
Files stored on the Tintri array are deduplicated. The VSA is managed via the Flex or HTML5 VMware vCenter plugins. A NexentaStor High Availability plugin provides automated failover of file services in the event of virtual machine or node failure.
File storage is almost always needed for applications and document storage, according to DDN. The NexentaStor VSA extends Tintri array use to home directories, user profiles, consolidated file sharing and branch office file data.
The NexentaStor VSA has been certified as VMware Ready for VSAN.
