As organizations accelerate their Kubernetes adoption in 2025, persistent storage remains one of the most challenging barriers to deployment and scaling. Tintri, a platinum sponsor at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025, is addressing these infrastructure headaches head-on with their award-winning VMstore solution. In this exclusive VMblog pre-show interview, Brock Mowry, CTO of Tintri, shares how the company’s workload-aware data management platform is transforming Kubernetes operations by eliminating performance unpredictability, removing troubleshooting complexity, and dramatically reducing operational overhead.
Returning to KubeCon for the third consecutive year with an expanded custom booth at #910, Tintri is showcasing how their NVMe-based platform delivers predictable performance for every Persistent Volume through Auto-QoS and per-workload isolation. With live “Geek Out!” demo sessions, Mowry and his team will demonstrate how VMstore’s unified management approach eliminates the “black box” problem of Persistent Volumes, providing instant dynamic provisioning and granular observability that lets teams troubleshoot in seconds. From addressing GenAI infrastructure demands to enabling hybrid environments that run VMs and containers side-by-side, Tintri’s solution promises to turn storage from a cost center into a strategic business enabler for CTOs and CIOs looking to drive innovation while maintaining predictable growth.
VMblog: Can you give us your elevator pitch? What key message will attendees hear from you at KubeCon NA 2025, and what actionable insights will they take back to influence their management teams?
Brock Mowry: Tintri, through our award-winning VMstore solution provides workload-aware data management to accelerate, observe and secure your Kubernetes deployment. Our key message to the attendees are that applications and workloads are the key to drive innovation. They will be able to see Tintri VMstore platform and the native CSI driver can overcome operational complexity and predictable performance compared to traditional storage.
Key takeaways and insights for their management teams:
- Huge reduction in operational burden and costs: VMstore’s autonomous operations, Auto-QoS, and simple management can drive storage management efficiencies and reduce costs by up to 95%.
- Predictable performance for all workloads: Our per-workload isolation and Auto-QoS guarantee consistent, predictable I/O performance for Kubernetes Persistent Volumes (PVs) and other workloads such as VM and SQL.
- Observability: Detailed per-workload observability and troubleshooting for clusters, containers, persistent volume claims (PVCs), and PVs without third-party tools.
VMblog: As a sponsor of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025, what sponsorship level have you chosen, and what strategic objectives drove this investment?
Mowry: Tintri has supported this event for a number of years, and we are, again, a platinum level sponsor this year. However, compared to previous years, we have a custom booth to showcase our solutions and our commitment to this market.
Our objectives are simple: we are bringing our industry-leading visibility and management from VMs into the container space. We are making Kubernetes adoption simple with our CSI driver and unified management, which allows customers to run VMs and containers on our VMstore platform. Finallly, we are demonstrating how VMstore provides essential data services for kubernetes, including observability and workload optimization – all at the Persistent Volume (PV) level.
VMblog: Where can attendees find you at the event? What hands-on demos, interactive experiences, or booth activities have you designed to showcase your technology?
Mowry: The Tintri booth can be found at #910, where our theme follows on from our year-long “Data Disruptor World Tour” campaign, bringing our solutions across the world from USA to Europe to Japan!
In addition to exciting giveaways and prize draws, we will be having a series of live demos (we call them Geek-Outs!) of our Tintri VMstore, showing you how its unified management can dramatically simplify Kubernetes adoption for users. We will be focusing on Kubernetes data services like instant dynamic provisioning and how per-workload observability lets you troubleshoot in seconds, proving that PVs are no longer a black box.
VMblog: How has your company’s KubeCon presence evolved since your first participation? What value keeps driving your continued investment in this community?
Mowry: We’re at KubeCon for the third year, and our presence has only increased year-on-year. We have a custom booth with multiple demo stations and live “Geek Out!” sessions. We believe Kubernetes adoption is just going to keep growing, serving more complex applications driven increasingly by AI. Tintri is here to enable organizations to easily scale applications, manage on-prem/cloud/hybrid cloud, and manage security with their deployments. This event is perfect spot to get our fingers on the market’s pulse and showcase our solutions and successes.
VMblog: Can you dive deeper into your company’s core technologies? What specific challenges do you solve for KubeCon attendees in their day-to-day operations?
Mowry: The flagship Tintri VMstore, built on NVMe and powered by AI/ML, solves the three biggest infrastructure headaches today: complexity, poor visibility, and weak data protection. We ditch the outdated LUN/Volume approach to focus entirely on the workload. This workload-aware system with Auto-QoS eliminates the dreaded “I/O Blender” with predictable performance for every PV, VM, or DB.
This essentially enables us to achieve our three core promises. (1) Eliminate Performance Jams by replacing conventional FIFO I/O queuing with Auto-QoS and per-workload isolation to guarantee consistent, predictable performance. (2) Remove Troubleshooting Complexity with built-in, deep, granular observability signaling actionable metrics at per-workload granularity across the entire stack, for troubleshooting in seconds without third-party tools. (3) Eliminate Manual Management Overhead by reducing management hours and eliminating manual tuning with autonomous operations that learn and adapt automatically. In other words, we let you manage data at the PV level for performance, protection, and enhanced visibility
VMblog: With GenAI workloads and LLM deployments reshaping cloud-native architectures, how does your solution address these AI infrastructure demands?
Mowry: Tintri’s platform is based on NVMe and provides the necessary performance at high throughput for the GPUs that require large amounts of data. The Workload-Aware Filesystem with Auto-QoS manages the I/O of each Persistent Volume (PV) and thus ensures consistent performance and removes the “noisy neighbor” issue in cloud-native environments. Additionally, features like instant cloning speeds up the MLOps/DevOps cycles by furnishing test and tuning environments for the LLMs instantly. All these factors together guarantee the efficient scaling of your AI initiatives.
VMblog: Is your company presenting any sessions, workshops, or contributing to the event programming? What key takeaways will attendees gain from your presentations?
Mowry: Yes, I will be presenting a session called “Accelerate, Observe and Secure Kubernetes Deployments with Tintri.” at 12.30pm on 11/11 in the Demo Theater (located inside the Solutions Showcase).
Key takeaways from the session are: I will show the audience how to (1) “Accelerate Deployment” by leveraging the native CSI driver for instant, automated provisioning, entirely eliminating storage configuration wait times. (2) Gain “Deep Observability” into PVs, turning the storage layer from a “black box” into a transparent asset with built-in performance metrics. (3) Easily “Secure Data” by leveraging native, space-efficient snapshots at the per-workload level.
VMblog: Which KubeCon NA 2025 technical tracks or keynote themes align most closely with your company’s strategic direction?
Mowry: The most closely aligned KubeCon NA 2025 themes to Tintri are:
- Observability & Analytics
- Storage, State, and Data Services
- Platform Engineering & Developer Experience
- Performance & Optimization
VMblog: What’s your executive pitch for CTOs and CIOs? How do you demonstrate measurable business impact and ROI?
Mowry: Tintri VMstore transforms the infrastructure cost center into a business enabler by simplifying IT operations and enabling consistent application performance.
- 95% Operational Cost Reduction: Autonomous operations minimizes the time needed manual storage management enormously, thus freeing up IT teams to dedicate their time to innovation.
- Risk Mitigation & Uptime: Auto-QoS eliminates the unpredictability of performance for critical applications and ensures performance is delivered where it is most required through I/O isolation per workload. Additionally, instant cloning and data restoration per workload provide the quickest recovery options.
- Strategic Consolidation & Predictable Growth: Tintri Analytics provides a roadmap for future capacity and performance requirements, allowing for precise modeling, forecasting, and consolidation planning up to 18 months to avoid unanticipated capital expenditure.
VMblog: What are the biggest obstacles to Kubernetes adoption and scaling in 2025? How does your solution help organizations overcome these barriers?
Mowry: The biggest obstacles organizations face when adopting and scaling Kubernetes in 2025 boils down to three core infrastructure challenges: operational complexity, unpredictable performance, and lack of deep visibility. These issues are stark when organizations try to use legacy storage systems (LUN/Volume-based) that weren’t designed for the dynamic, granular nature of containers and PVs.
How Tintri overcomes these issues have been covered extensively in my previous answers, but I do need to highlight how we overcome “hybrid environment friction” by unifying VM, database and container storage since VMstore handles VM, VDI, SQL and container workloads.
VMblog: What creative booth experiences, prize draws, or community engagement activities have you planned to connect with attendees?
Mowry: We’re turning our booth into a hub for connecting, learning, and fun, all under the banner of our Live Geek Out! sessions. We’ve got swag bags galore, with the essentials for any IT rock star! Attendees can grab T-shirts, earbuds, sunglasses, YETIs, drumsticks, and guitar picks (plectrums) . Plus, snag an exclusive 7-inch vinyl record featuring original Tintri songs not found anywhere else . Our prize draws are fantastic this year, with headlining items like Lego sets and the Awesome Mixtape 2.0 Wireless Speaker
VMblog: What’s your top recommendation for attendees to maximize their KubeCon experience and learning outcomes?
Mowry: Come along with an open mind along (so you can soak up the genius) and have ask lots of questions (so you can put the genius to the test).
KubeCons are a fantastic opportunity to interact with leaders and players from across the Kubernetes ecosystem and to enhance your knowledge for both professional and personal development. Seriously, you cannot Google/ChatGPT/Grok this stuff.
Besides visiting the Tintri booth (obviously), for Live Geek Outs! and grab some swag, some top survival tips are: choose comfy footwear (you will accumulate more steps than a marathon runner) and, for the love of all that is cloud-native, stay hydrated!
