Trident 18.07 Introduces Support for AI/ML, CSI, FlexGroup Volumes & More

maltiger

I love it when things just work without having to think about them. Too often in the technology world things don’t work as they should or they’re just simply…broken.

Take, for instance, the Rachio sprinkler control system I recently installed at my rental property. With Denver traffic what it is these days, it’s an excruciating pain to go back and forth to the rental to check on the landscape sprinkler system. With my Rachio system, I can control the sprinklers remotely with a mobile app. But what’s even more cool is the controller is smart enough to adjust the sprinkling schedule with the weather…automatically! So, when it rains it automatically adjusts and even skips watering as required. That kind of automation is awesome!

That’s a great analogy for the value Trident brings to persistent storage for your Kubernetes, Docker, Rancher, and OpenShift environments. With Trident, you get automated dynamic provisioning of storage for your persistent application data. Gone are the days of service tickets and endless waiting for storage to be provisioned for your containers. It just works behind the scenes without you having to think about it. Voilà!

What’s really cool is today we’re announcing the next quarterly release of Trident – 18.07, with some great new features. Trident 18.07 is now available on GitHub.

In addition to all the usual updates and bug fixes you’d expect in a release like this, there are some cool new things which this release delivers too:

Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning/Deep Learning (AI/ML/DL) Support

Containers are a great fit for many AI/ML/DL workloads. With Trident 18.07, we’ve verified support for NVIDIA GPU Cloud images running Docker containers to provision persistent storage for various deep learning frameworks. This means you can automatically provision any NetApp storage, including AFF 800 and HCI from your Docker containers running on top of NVIDIA GPU’s.

FlexGroup Volumes Support

Trident 18.07 includes support for NetApp FlexGroup Volumes. With AI/ML datasets averaging well into the petabyte+ range, FlexGroup support is critical!

Docker EE 2.0 and Rancher 2.0 Support

With Trident 18.07, we’ve expanded support a larger set of popular container orchestration platforms such as Docker Enterprise Edition 2.0 and Rancher 2.0.

Container Storage Interface (CSI) Alpha Driver Availability

Kubernetes 1.10 introduced beta support for CSI, and Trident will support a CSI driver in alpha in the 18.07 release. NetApp is a strong proponent and contributor to CSI. Please see Garrett Mueller’s thePub blog for more info on NetApp’s involvement in CSI.

While developing containerized applications is a very different activity from watering your lawn, it’s reassuring to know that the underlying technologies will work, and our lives will be easier as a result. Smart sprinkler systems help save water, but the kind of automation Trident offers save precious IT dollars and help enterprises stay ahead of the curve!

To get more information on Trident, please see the following resources:

General Trident information on netapp.com* Detailed Trident technical information on thePub* Download Trident from GitHub

The post Trident 18.07 Introduces Support for AI/ML, CSI, FlexGroup Volumes & More appeared first on NetApp Blog.

https://blog.netapp.com/trident-18-07-introduces-support-for-ai-ml-csi-flexgroup-volumes/