everybody welcome to this digital coverage of the verdict of big data conference you're watching the cube and my name is Dave Galante it's my pleasure to invite in Ben white who's the senior database engineer at Domo been great to see you man thanks for coming on great to be here and here you know as I said you know earlier when we were off camera I really was hoping I could meet you face to face and in Boston this year but hey I'll take it and you know our community really wants to hear from experts like yourself but let's start with with domo is the company share with us what Domo does and what your role is there well if Parker can go straight to the official what Domo does is we provide we process data at bi to scale with we provide VI leverage a cloud scale in record time and so what that means is that you know we are a business operating system where we provide a number of analytical abilities to companies of all sizes but we do that at cloud scale and so I think that difference is quite a bit so a lot of your work if I understand it and just in terms of understanding with Domo does--is there's a lot of pressure in terms of being real-time it's not like you sometimes don't know what's coming at you so it's AD Hoch I wonder if you could sort of talk about that confirm that and maybe add a little color to it yeah absolutely absolutely that's probably the biggest challenge it is to being the operating Domo is that it is an ad hoc environment and certainly what that means is that you've got analysts and executives that are able to submit their own queries without very with very few limitations so from an engineering standpoint the challenge in that of course is that you don't have this predictable dashboard to plan for when it comes to performance planning and so it definitely presents some challenges for us that we've done some pretty unique things I think to address those right sounds like your background fits well with that I understand here if people have called you a database whisperer and an envelope pusher what does that mean to do a DBA in this in this day and age well the whisperer part is probably a lost art in the sense that it's not really sustainable right the idea that you know whatever it is I'm able to do with the database it has to be repeatable and so that's really what analytics comes in right and that's where pushing the envelope comes in in a little right away that's what vertical comes in with this open architecture and so as a person who has a reputation for saying I understand this is what our limitations should be but I think we can do more having a platform like vertical is such an open architecture kinda lets you push those limits by the bit I mean I've always felt like you know vertical when I first saw the Stonebreaker architecture and doctors some of the early founders I always felt like it was the Ferrari of databases certainly at the time and it sounds like you guys use it in that in that regard but talk a little bit more about how you use Vertica why in a ym ppy Vertica you know why why can't you do this with our DBMS educate us a little bit on some of the basics but for us it was part of what I mentioned when we start and we talked about the very nature of the demo platform where there's a an incredible amount of resiliency required and so Vertica the NPP platform of course allows us to build individual database clusters that can perform best for the workload that may be assigned to them so the the open the expandable the the the ability to grow vertically as your base grow those are all important factors when you're losing early on right without a real idea of how growth would be or what it would look like if you were kind of doing that something to the dark you looked at the vertical platforming you can see well as I grow I can kind of feel with this right I can do some some unique things with the platform in terms of this poking architecture that will allow me to not have to make all my decisions today right about Harlem so you're using Vertica I know at least in part you you working with AWS as well can you describe sort of your environment that you give anything on Prem is everything in the cloud what's your setup sure we have a hybrid cloud environment where we have a significant presence in public files in our own private cloud and so yeah having said that we certainly have a really an extensive presence I will say an AWS and so they're definitely the partner of our when it comes to providing the databases the server power that we need to operator but from the standpoint of engineering and architecting a database what was some of the challenges that you faced when you had to create that hybrid architecture what did you face and how did you overcome that well you know some of the there are some things we need faced in terms of wine and made it easy that Vertica and AWS have their own they play well together we'll say that and so vertical is designed to reprise I'm gonna AWS and so that part of it the care of itself not our own private cloud and being able to connect that because our public clouds has been a part of our own engineering ability and again I don't want to make a little light of it it's certainly not impossible and so we've some of the challenges though this pertains to the database really were in their early days that you mentioned when we talked a little bit earlier about marathas most recent Eon mode and I'm sure you'll get to that but when I think of our early challenges some of the early challenges were the architecture of enterprise mode when I talk about all of these this idea that we could have unique databases or database clusters of different sizes so this elasticity that's really if you know that the enterprise architecture that's not necessarily dandified architecture so we added this Munich things I think to overcome that right early to get around the rigidness though enterprise yeah I mean I hear you right Enterprise is complex and and you like when things are hardened and fossilized but in your ad hoc environment that's not what you needed so talking more about Aeon mode what what is e on mode for you and how do you apply it what are some of the challenges and opportunities there that you found um so the opportunities were certainly in its elastic architecture the ability to separate the storage immediately meant that for some of the unique data paths that we wanted to take right we could do that fairly quickly certainly we could expand databases right quickly but more importantly now you could reduce because previously in the past right when I mention the Enterprise Architect with the idea of growing a database in itself has its pain right as far as the time it takes to speed the data in that but to read to then think about taking that database back down no Innova though all of us under the eon right you had this elasticity where you could kind of start to think about auto scaling where you go up and down and maybe used to save some money or maybe you could improve performance or maybe in needham and at a time when the customers needed most in a real way right so it was definitely a game in that regard I always have to talk to the customers because I get to you know I hear from the vendor what they say and I think they sort of validate it so you know Vertica talks a lot about separating compute and storage they're not the only one from an architectural standpoint to do that but Vertica stresses that they're the only one that does that with a hybrid architecture they can do it off ram they can do it in the cloud from your experience well first of all is it true you may or may not know it is that advantageous to you and if so why well first of all it's certainly true earlier in some of the original beta ethnic for the arm prim GI mode stuff we I was able to participate in it and be aware of it so it's certainly a reality day I'm it's actually supported on pure spirit with flash played and it's time quite impressive you know for who who that who that will be for tough one a Spartacus question that they're probably still answering but I think obviously some enterprise users that probably have some hybrid cloud right they have some architecture they have some hardware that their sales want to make you so we certainly would probably fit into one of their you know their market segments that they would say we might be the wants to look at on pram er mo begin the the beauty of it is the elasticity right that the idea that you could have this and so a lot of times so I want to go back real quick to separating them and you know we start by separating it and I like to think of it maybe more as like decoupling because a new in a true way it's not necessary separated there's ultimately you bring the compute and the doors back together but to be able to typically couple it quickly replace knows bring in those that's certainly fits I think what we were trying to do in building this Emma I'll me let the ecosystem that could respond to a unknown or of a customer demand I see thank you for that clarification because you're right it's really not separating its decoupling in it that's important because you can scale them independently but you still need compute and you still need storage to run you your workloads but from a cost standpoint you're not to buy it in in chunks you can you can't buy granular segments for whatever your workload requires is that is that the correct understanding yeah and to be able to the ability to be able to reuse compute throw it in a scenario of AWS or even in the scenario your on-prem solution you've got this data that's safest here and ask for your in your storage but then the compute that you have you can reuse that right you could have a scenario that you have some query that needs more analytic more firepower more memory more what have you that you haven't so you can kind of move to the next important right that's maybe more important then and I grow them separately can I can I borrow it can I borrow that computer use for my perfect give it back type of thing and you can do that when you're so easily a couple different ooh all right and likewise if you have a down period where customers aren't using it you'd like to be able to not use that if you no longer require if you'd like to give it back go in it open the door to a lot of those things that allow performance and cross the spark to meet up we're going to ask you a question winsome pure a couple times are you using pure flash blade on-prem is that correct that is the solution that is supported that is supported by Vertica for the on print so at this point we were we have been discuss with them about some our own PLC's for that time before again we back to the idea of how do we see ourselves using it and so we've certainly discussed the feasibility of bringing it in and give it a job but that's not something we're Oh happily all right now then what is Domo for Domo tell us about that we really started this this idea even in the company where we say you know we should be using Domo in our everyday business the sales folks the marketing folks right everybody we're gonna use Domo it's a business platform for us in the engineering team it was kind of like well if we use Domo say for instance to be better at the database engineers now we've pointed Domo edits tell fried verdict is running Domo in the background for some degree and then we turn around and say hey Domo how can we better at running you and so it became this kind of cool thing we played with where we're now able to put some dumb methods together where we can actually do their eye we can monitor using our platform it's really good at processing large amounts of data and spitting out useful analytics right we take those analytics out make recommendation changes that the day so now you've got still more for Domo happening it allows us to sit at home and and work now even when we have to even before we had to well you know look look at us here right it couldn't mean in Boston physically we're now meeting remote you're you're on a hot spot because you got some weather and your satellite internet and in Atlanta and we're having a great conversation so so we're here with with Ben white who's the senior database engineer at Domo I want to ask you about some of the envelope-pushing that you've done around autonomous you hear that that word thrown around a lot means a lot of things to a lot of different people how do you look at autonomous and how does it fit with Eon and some of the other things that you're doing you know I'm a tall amidst the idea of economy is something that I don't even know that I'm I have already ready to define and so even in my discussion I often mention it as a road to it exactly where it is it's hard to pin down because there's always this idea how much trust do you give right to the system or how much how much is truly autonomous how much authority is being intervened by us the engineers so I do hate on using it but on this road towards autonomy when we look at what would how we're using Domo and even what that really means to vertical because in a lot of my examples and a lot of the things that we've engineered a demo work designs maybe over something I thought was a limitation day and so many times Oh as we've done that verdict is kind of met us like right after we've kind of engineered our architecture stuff than we thought it felt on our side Vertica has some released it kinda addresses it so the autonomy idea and the idea that we could analyzed metadata make recommendations and then execute those recommendations without intervention is that road to autonomy and once the databases start able to do that you can see in our ad-hoc environment how that would be pretty pretty useful where with literally millions of queries every hour trying to figure out what's the best you know probably for years I felt like I I T folks sometimes we really did not want that automation they wanted the knobs to turn but but I wonder if you comment I feel as though the level of complexity now with cloud with on-prem with you know hybrid multi clouds the scale the speed the real-time it just gets the pace is just too much for for humans and so it's almost like you know the industries is gonna have to capitulate to the Machine and then really trust the machine but I'm sitting I'm still sensing from you a little bit of hesitation there but light at the end of the tunnel I wonder if you could comment sure I think that in the light of the tunnel is even in recent months in recent we've really began incorporating more machine learning in artificial intelligence to the model right and back to where we're saying it so I do feel they were getting close for too finding conditions that we don't know about because right now our system is kind of a rule rules based system where we've said well these are the things that we should be looking for these are the things that we think are a problem to mature to the point where the database is recognized and anomalies and taken on at imagining saying these are problems you didn't know happen and that's kind of the next step right identifying the things you didn't know and that's where that's the path we're on now and that's probably more exciting even then kind of nailing down all the things you think you know and to figure out what we don't know yet so I want to close with I know you're a prominent member of the respected member of the Vertica a customer advisory board you know without divulging anything confidential to me what are the kinds of things that you want Vertica to do going forward I think some of the end a in database autonomy the ability to take some of the recommendations that we know we can derive from the metadata that already exists in the platform and start to execute some of the recommendation another thing we talk about and I'm gonna pretty open about talking to it is talking about it is the new version of the database designer I think it's something that I'm sure they're working on lightweight something that can give us that's database design without the overhead those are two things I think as they nail or particularly the database designer as they respect that they'll really have all the components in place to do in based economy and I think that's just some victory where they're headed yeah nice well Ben listen I really appreciate you coming on your a thought leader be very open open-minded verdict is you know really open community I mean they've always been quite transparent in terms of where they're going it's just awesome to have guys like you on the cube to share with our community so thank you so much and hopefully we can meet face to face currently absolutely will you stay safe in Boston I'm one of my favorite towns and so no doubt when this when the doors get back open I'll be from coming down or coming I'm gonna do work take care all right and thank you for watching everybody Villante with a cube we're here covering the virtual Vertica of big data conference you [Music]