Tintri has recently released some new versions of software for our VMstore systems. This includes enhancements to TxOS, the operating system that runs on our VMstore storage appliances, and TGC (Tintri Global Center), the powerful yet elegant management plane for administering all of your VMstore systems from a single screen. While VMstore has been the most revolutionary storage appliance on the market for more than a decade – and still is – there are many new features and enhancements which widen the gap between Tintri and the rest of the infrastructure players. We’d like current and potential customers to take note of these important innovations with Tintri Intelligent Infrastructure and how each of these changes can help you.
- Expanded OS support: The latest OS (TxOS 5.x) is now available for additional VMstore product lines
- Expanded network troubleshooting (agnostic and vendor-specific): LLDP and CDP
- Enhanced security: New DBA role for better RBAC
- Optimized user experience: UI updates and additions
- Broader hybrid cloud solutions: Additional S3 technology partner support
TxOS 5.x support for additional VMstore product lines
For starters TxOS 5.1, the newest version of the VMstore operating system, is now supported on both the EC6000 and T7000 product lines. Previous versions of TxOS 5.x had only been available for the T7000 series. In case you need a refresher…TxOS 5.x provides a new kernel to support newer hardware with improved performance and multiple critical security improvements. Support for TxOS 5.1 is particularly exciting for existing EC6000 series customers, because this new OS version is a building block that ensures important future enhancements will available for many of their existing VMstore systems.
LLDP and CDP
Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) and Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) are widely available networking protocols that provide switch and port information, plus other valuable data. The VMstore UI and TGC will both provide this information via the hardware tab on the VMstore UI, enabling infrastructure admins to quickly figure out where their VMstore systems are connected. This enhanced visibility makes it faster and easier to troubleshoot and resolve potential networking configuration issues that can disrupt critical failover processes or create performance bottlenecks. This feature may not seem like a major enhancement, but it’s one that many VMstore customers have requested – and we are very glad to introduce capabilities that clearly improve the lives of our customers.
DBA role
SQL Integrated Storage is an amazing solution for managing SQL Server databases. This begins with unparalleled autonomous operations as a key differentiator, but this differentiation also includes unmatched visibility, granularity and control over your SQL Server environment. TGC 5.2.1.1 includes a new RBAC role for security, called the DBA role. This role-based feature enables infrastructure admins to grant DBAs permission to log into the system and control their database, review current and historical performance, and set up protection policies as well as replication configurations and schedules for their databases. This RBAC role empowers DBAs to be more efficient and productive, while at the same time restricting their ability to make changes to other parts of the system. The clear advantage with the DBA role is that infrastructure admins can now delegate tasks to the people requesting them. DBAs have a fresh way to independently understand if any storage contention issues are affecting their domain without waiting on someone else to help them.
User interface updates and additions
The UI from TxOS 4.6.2.1 has been incorporated into TxOS 5.1. This interface, which is completely HTML5-based, brings a feature-rich experience to VMstore users, making it much easier for them to adjust many settings, including data IPs, hypervisor managers, network configuration, replication, and more.
In addition, both the TGC and TxOS UIs have added settings which previously could only be initiated via the API, but can now be established within the UI itself – the most requested one being the ability to make adjustments to default capacity alerts. Other capabilities include the ability to reboot the secondary controller and change the Admin password via the UI. The UI also includes enhanced multi-select capabilities and pagination for lengthy result sets.
Wasabi support
In an ongoing effort to expand our hybrid cloud strategy, we’ve added a new S3-supported solution with existing Tintri partner and cloud storage provider Wasabi. Tintri VMstore customers can now connect to Wasabi S3-compatible object storage, which provides a more cost-effective secure storage solution for Tintri VMstore snapshots compared to Amazon S3.
