Trident 26.02: Operational simplicity for Kubernetes at scale

This latest release of NetApp^® Trident^™ software version 26.02 marks a significant milestone in our ongoing efforts to enhance scalability and performance through increased parallelism. This new version introduces several impactful features and improvements that benefit users across a wide range of Kubernetes environments.

Key features and enhancements

Improved scalability and performance:

Trident now improves scalability through parallel execution of operations in the Trident controller for our most widely used backend types: ontap-nas and ontap-san. In addition, the Trident node for the NVMe/TCP protocol now also runs in parallel, completing node-level parallelism across all supported protocols.

Improved cloud experience for FSx for NetApp ONTAP users on AWS:

Trident now allows users to automate configuration seamlessly, enhancing the cloud experience when used with AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and FSx for NetApp ONTAP.

Automation and usability with new Trident AutoGrow:

This new feature enables users to create policies that automatically expand volumes in Kubernetes, reducing the need for manual intervention when persistent volumes run out of space.

Support for the new Google Cloud NetApp Volumes service for iSCSI block storage:

Trident now supports the new iSCSI-based block storage service for Google Cloud NetApp Volumes when used with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), OpenShift Dedicated, or any self-managed Kubernetes distribution. In addition, data autotiering can now be configured directly from Kubernetes through Trident, optimizing data placement in Google Cloud NetApp Volumes.

Business challenges solved

Trident 26.02 addresses several critical business challenges:

Confident growth at scale:

Improved scalability and performance enable Trident to support larger and more complex Kubernetes environments, allowing businesses to scale operations without compromising reliability.

Lower operational overhead:

The Trident AutoGrow feature automates volume expansion and eliminates the need for time-consuming manual intervention. In addition, automated configuration for AWS users leveraging FSx for NetApp ONTAP, together with the existing EKS add-on, simplifies Trident installation and configuration.

Higher application performance at lower cost:

Support for Google Cloud NetApp Volumes block storage via the iSCSI protocol enables more workloads that require lower latency than file-based protocols. Autotiering further optimizes data placement by dynamically moving infrequently accessed (“cold”) data to lower-cost storage, while maintaining high performance for actively used (“hot”) data.

Explore more about NetApp Trident software on our product page and get started by downloading Trident from GitHub today.