Tintri, the company that makes purpose-built storage appliances for virtual machines, rolled out an update to its flagship Tintri VMstore platform that adds several enhancements on top of the existing functionality.

One of the new features is virtual machine cloning, which can help admins better cover a number of processes. Being able to fire up hundreds of clones makes testing and development considerably faster,  in addition to making provisioning a lot simpler.

VMstore also added pretty extensive integration with VMware software. That includes full vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) support, which lets IT admin start cloning on Tintri appliances directly from the interface of vCenter or vCloud Director. There’s also been some centerization added to the mix, as VMstore can now be used to manage multiple VMware vCenter deployments as well.

Here’s a case study the company cited in their release:

“The culmination of features in Tintri’s new release will completely change the way you look at storage for virtual environments,” said Ryan Makamson, Systems Administrator for the College of Engineering and Architecture at Washington State University. “With the VAAI plug-in, you can clone VMs in an instant; this will make provisioning of all of our VMs, VDI, and infrastructure alike – which makes everything much simpler and faster. The only downside is that I won’t have time to refill my coffee while I wait for the cloning process to run.”

Tintri is focused on VDI, and flash is playing an increasingly important role in this space. One example from the firm itself is a contract it landed with the Norwegian School of Economics, through which its technology has been deployed to power the latter’s flash-powered virtual machines.  The institute cited several improvements, including better performance and more affordability than some other alternatives they could’ve chosen instead.