(light music playing) >> Welcome back to VEEAMON 2022 in Las Vegas. We're at the Aria. This is theCUBE and we're covering two days of VEEAMON. We've done a number of VEEAMONs before, we did Miami, we did New Orleans, we did Chicago and we're, we're happy to be back live after two years of virtual VEEAMONs. I'm Dave Vellante. My co-host is David Nicholson. Eric Herzog is here. You think he's, Eric's been on theCUBE, I think more than any other guest, including Pat Gelsinger, who at one point was the number one guest. Eric Herzog, CMO of INFINIDAT great to see you again. >> Great, Dave, thank you. Love to be on theCUBE. And of course notice my Hawaiian shirt, except I now am supporting an INFINIDAT badge on it. (Dave laughs) Look at that. >> Is that part of the shirt or is that a clip-on? >> Ah, you know, one of those clip-ons but you know, it looks good. Looks good. >> Hey man, what are you doing at VEEAMON? I mean, you guys started this journey into data protection several years ago. I remember we were actually at one of their competitors' events when you first released it, but tell us what's going on with Veeam. >> So we do a ton of stuff with Veeam. We do custom integration. We got some integration on the snapshotting side, but we do everything and we have a purpose built backup appliance known as InfiniGuard. It works with Veeam. We also actually have some customers who use our regular primary storage device as a backup target. The InfiniGuard product will do the data reduction, the dedupe compression, et cetera. The standard product does not, it's just a standard high performance array. We will compress the data, but we have customers that do it either way. We have a couple customers that started with the InfiniBox and then transitioned to the InfiniGuard, realizing that why would you put it on regular storage? Why not go to something that's customized for it? So we do that. We do stuff in the field with them. We've been at all the VEEAMONs since the, since like, I think the second one was the first one we came to. We're doing the virtual one as well as the live one. So we've got a little booth inside, but we're also doing the virtual one today as well. So really strong work with Veeam, particularly at the field level with the sales guys and in the channel. >> So when INFINIDAT does something, you guys go hardcore, high end, fast recovery, you just, you know, reliable, that's kind of your brand. Do you see this movement into data protection as kind of an adjacency to your existing markets? Is it a land and expand strategy? Can you kind of explain the strategy there. >> Ah, so it's actually for us a little bit of a hybrid. So we have several accounts that started with InfiniBox and now have gone with the InfiniGuard. So they start with primary storage and go with secondary storage/modern data protection. But we also have, in fact, we just got a large PO from a Fortune 50, who was buying the InfiniGuard first and now is buying our InfiniBox. >> Both ways. Okay. >> All flash array. And, but they started with backup first and then moved to, so we've got them moving both directions. And of course, now that we have a full portfolio, our original product, the InfiniBox, which was a hybrid array, outperformed probably 80 to 85% of the all flash arrays, 'cause the way we use DRAM. And what's so known as our mural cash technology. So we could do very well, but there is about, you know, 15, 20% of the workloads we could not outperform the competition. So then we had an all flash array and purpose built backup. So we can do, you know, what I'll say is standard enterprise storage, high performance enterprise storage. And then of course, modern data protection with our partnerships such as what we do with Veeam and we've incorporated across the entire portfolio, intense cyber resilience technology. >> Why does the world, Eric, need another purpose built backup appliance? What do you guys bring that is filling a gap in the marketplace? >> Well, the first thing we brought was much higher performance. So when you look at the other purpose built backup appliances, it's been about our ability to have incredibly high performance. The second area has been CapEx and OpEx reduction. So for example, we have a cloud service provider who happens to be in South Africa. They had 14 purpose built backup appliances from someone else, seven in one data center and seven in another. Now they have two InfiniGuards, one in each data center handling all of their backup. You know, they're selling backup as a service. They happen to be using Veeam as well as one other backup company. So if you're the cloud provider from their perspective, they just dramatically reduce their CapEx and OpEx. And of course they've made it easier for them. So that's been a good story for us, that ability to consolidation, whether it be on primary storage or secondary storage. We have a very strong play with cloud providers, particularly those meeting them in small that have to compete with the hyperscalers right. They don't have the engineering of Amazon or Google, right? They can't compete with what the Azure guys have got, but because the way both the InfiniGuard and the InfiniBox work, they could dramatically consolidate workloads. We probably got 30 or 40 midsize and actually several members of the top 10 telcos use us. And when they do their clouds, both their internal cloud, but actually the clouds that are actually running the transmissions and the traffic, it actually runs on InfiniBox. One of them has close to 200 petabytes of InfiniBox and InfiniBox, all flash technology running one of the largest telcos on the planet in a cloud configuration. So all that's been very powerful for us in driving revenue. >> So phrases of the week have been air gap, logical air gap, immutable. Where does InfiniGuard fit into that universe? And what's the profile of the customer that's going to choose InfiniGuard as the target where they're immutable, Write Once Read Many, data is going to live. >> So we did, we announced our InfiniSafe technology first on the InfiniGuard, which actually earlier this year. So we have what I call the four legs of the stool of cyber resilience. One is immutable snapshots, but that's only part of it. Second is logical air gapping, and we can do both local and remote and we can provide and combine local with remote. So for example, what that air gap does is separate the management plane from the actual data plane. Okay. So in this case, the Veeam data backup sets. So the management cannot touch that immutable, can't change it, can't delete it. can't edit it. So management is separated once you start and say, I want to do an immutable snap of two petabytes of Veeam backup dataset. Then we just do that. And the air gap does it, but then you could take the local air gap because as you know, from inception to the end of an attack can be close to 300 days, which means there could be a fire. There could be a tornado, there could be a hurricane, there could be an earthquake. And in the primary data center, So you might as well have that air gap just as you would do- do a remote for disaster recovery and business continuity. Then we have the ability to create a fenced forensic environment to evaluate those backup data sets. And we can do that actually on the same device. That is the purpose built backup appliance. So when you look at the architectural, these are public from our competitors, including the guys that are in sort of Hopkinton/Austin, Texas. You can see that they show a minimum of two physical devices. And in many cases, a third, we can do that with one. So not only do we get the fence forensic environment, just like they do, but we do it with reduction, both CapEx and OpEx. Purpose built backup is very high performance. And then the last thing is our ability to recover. So some people talk about rapid recovery, I would say, they dunno what they're talking about. So when we launched the InfiniGuard with InfiniSafe, we did a live demo, 1.5 petabytes, a Veeam backup dataset. We recovered it in 12 minutes. So once you've identified and that's on the InfiniGuard. On the InfiniBox, once you've identified a good copy of data to do the recovery where you're free of malware ransomware, we can do the recovery in three to five seconds. >> Okay. >> So really, really quick. Actually want to double click on something because people talk about immutable copies, immutable snapshots in particular, what have the actual advances been? I mean, is this simply a setting that maybe we didn't set for retention at some time in the past, or if you had to engineer something net new into a system so to provide that logical air gap. >> So what's net new is the air gapping part. Immutable snapshots have been around, you know, before we were on screen, you talked about WORM, Write Once Read Many. Well, since I'm almost 70 years old, I actually know what that means. When you're 30 or 40 or 50, you probably don't even know what a WORM is. Okay. And the real use of immutable snapshots, it was to replace WORM which was an optical technology. And what was the primary usage? Regulatory and compliance, healthcare, finance and publicly traded companies that were worried about. The SEC or the EU or the Japanese finance ministry coming down on them because they're out of compliance and regulatory. That was the original use of immutable snap. Then people were, well, wait a second. Malware ransomware could attack me. And if I got something that's not changeable, that makes it tougher. So the real magic of immutability was now creating the air gap part. Immutability has been around, I'd say 25 years. I mean, WORMs sort of died back when I was at Mac store the first time. So that was 1990-ish is when WORMs sort of fell away. And there have been immutable snapshots from most of the major storage vendors, as well as a lot of the small vendors ever since they came out, it's kind of like a checkbox item because again, regulatory and compliance, you're going to sell to healthcare, finance, public trade. If you don't have the immutable snapshot, then they don't have their compliance and regulatory for SEC or tax purposes, right? With they ever end up in an audit, you got to produce data. And no one's using a WORM drive anymore to my knowledge. >> I remember the first storage conference I ever went to was in Monterey. It had me in the early 1980s, 84 maybe. And it was a optical disc drive conference. The Jim Porter of optical. >> Yep. (laughs) >> I forget what the guy's name was. And I remember somebody coming up to me, I think it was like Bob Payton rest his soul, super smart strategy guy said, this is never going to happen because of the cost and that's what it was. And now you've got that capability on flash, you know, hard disk, et cetera. >> Right. >> So the four pillars, immutability, the air gap, both local and remote, the fence forensics and the recovery speed. Right? >> Right. Pick up is one thing. Recovery is everything. Those are the four pillars, right? >> Those are the four things. >> And your contention is that those four things together differentiate you from the competition. You mentioned, you know, the big competition, but how unique is this in the marketplace, those capabilities and how difficult is it to replicate? >> So first of all, if someone really puts their engineering hat to it, it's not that hard to replicate. It takes a while. Particularly if you're doing an enterprise, for example, our solutions all have a hundred percent availability guarantee. That's hard to do. Most guys have seven nines. >> That's hard. >> We really will guarantee a hundred percent availability. We offer an SLA that's included when you buy. We don't charge extra for it. It's like if you want it, like you just get it. Second thing is really making sure on the recovery side is the hardest part, particularly on a purpose built backup appliance. So when you look at other people and you delve into their public material, press releases, white paper, support documentation. No one's talking about. Yeah, we can take a 1.5 petabyte Veeam backup data set and make it available in 12 minutes and 12 seconds, which was the exact time that we did on our live demo when we launched the product in February of 2022. No one's talking that. On primary storage, you're hearing some of the vendors such as my old employer that also who, also starts with an "I", talk about a recovery time of two to three hours once you have a known good copy. On primary storage, once we have a known good copy, we're talking three to five seconds for that copy to be available. So that's just sort of the power of the snapshot technology, how we manage our metadata and what we've done, which previous to cyber resiliency, we were known for our replication capability and our snapshot capability from an enterprise class data store. That's what people said. INFINIDAT really knows how to do the replication snapshot. I remember our founder was one of the technical founders of EMC for a product known as the Symmetric, which then became the DMAX, the VMAX and is now is the PowerMax. That was invented by the guy who founded INFINIDAT. So that team has the real chops at enterprise high-end storage to the global fortune 2000. And what are the key feature checkbox items they need that's in both the InfiniBox and also in the InfiniGuard. >> So the business case for cyber resiliency is changing. As Dave said, we've had a big dose last several months, you know, couple years actually, of the importance of cyber resiliency, given all the ransomware tax, et cetera. But it sounds like the business case is shifting really focused on avoiding that risk, avoiding that downtime time versus the cost. The cost is always important. I mean, you got a consolidation play here, right? >> Yeah, yeah. >> Dedupe, does dedupe come into play? >> So on the InfiniGuard we do both dedupe and compression. On the InfiniBox we only do compression. So we do have data reduction. It depends on which product you're using from a Veeam perspective. Most of that now is with the InfiniGuard. So you get the block level dedupe and you get compression. And if you can do both, depending on the data set, we do both. >> How does that affect recovery time? >> Yeah, good question. >> So it doesn't affect recovery times. >> Explain why. >> So first of all, when you're doing a backup data set, the final final recovery, you recovered the backup data set, whether it's Veeam or one of their competitors, you actually make it available to the backup administrator to do a full restore of a backup data set. Okay. So in that case, we get it ready and expose it to the Veeam admin or some other backup admin. And then they launch the Veeam software or the other software and do a restore. Okay. So it's really a two step process on the secondary storage model and actually three. First identifying a known good backup copy. Second then we recover, which is again 12, 13 minutes. And then the backup admin's got to do a, you know, a restore of the backup 'cause it's backup data set in the format of backup, which is different from every backup vendor. So we support that. We get it ready to go. And then whether it's a Veeam backup administrator and quite honestly, from our perspective, most of our customers in the global fortune 2000, 25% of the fortune 50 use INIFINIDAT products. 25% and we're a tiny company. So we must have some magic fairy dust that appeals to the biggest companies on the planet. But most of our customers in that area and actually say probably in the fortune 500 actually use two to three different backup packages. So we can support all those on a single InfiniGuard or multiples depending on how big their backup data sets. Our biggest InfiniGuard is 50 petabytes counting the data reduction technology. So we get that ready. On the InfiniBox, the recovery really is, you know, a couple of seconds and in that case, it's primary data in block format. So we just make that available. So on the InfiniBox, the recovery is once, well two. Identifying a known good copy, first step, then just doing recovery and it's available 'cause it's blocked data. >> And that recovery doesn't include movement of a whole bunch of data. It's essentially realignment of pointers to where the good data is. >> Right. >> Now in the InfiniBox as well as in InfiniGuard. >> No, it would be, So in the case of that, in the case of the InfiniGuard, it's a full recovery of a backup data set. >> Okay. >> So the backup software just launches and it sees, >> Okay. >> your backup one of Veeam and just starts doing a restore with the Veeam restoration technology. Okay? >> Okay. >> In the case of the block, as long as the physical InfiniBox, if that was the primary storage and then filter box is not damaged when you make it available, it's available right away to the apps. Now, if you had an issue with the app side or the physical server side, and now you're pointing new apps and you had to reload stuff on that side, you have to point it at that InfiniBox which has the data. And then you got to wait for the servers and the SAP or Oracle or Mongo, Cassandra to recognize, oh, this is my primary storage. So it depends on the physical configuration on the server side and the application perspective, how bad were the apps damaged? So let's take malware. Malware is even worse because you either destroying data or messing, playing with the app so that the app is now corrupted as well as the data is corrupted. So then it's going to take longer the block data's ready, the SAP workload. And if the SAP somehow was compromised, which is a malware thing, not a ransomware thing, they got to reload a good copy of SAP before it can see the data 'cause the malware attacked the application as well as the data. Ransomware doesn't do that. It just holds it for ransom and it encrypts. >> So this is exactly what we're talking about. When we talk about operational recovery and automation, Eric is addressing the reality that it doesn't just end at the line above some arbitrary storage box, you know, reaching up real recovery, reaches up into the application space and it's complicated. >> That's when you're actually recovered. >> Right. >> When the application- >> Well, think of it like a disaster. >> Okay. >> Yes, right. >> I'll knock on woods since I was born and still live in California. Dave too. Let's assume there's a massive earthquake in the bay area in LA. >> Let's not. >> Okay. Let's yes, but hypothetically and the data center's cat five. It doesn't matter what they're, they're all toast. Okay. Couple weeks later it's modern. You know, people figure out what to do and certain buildings don't fall down 'cause of the way earthquake standards are in California now. So there's data available. They move into temporary space. Okay. Data's sitting there in the Colorado data center and they could do a restore. Well, they can't do a restore. How many service did they need? Had they reloaded all of the application software to do a restoration. What happened to the people? If no one got injured, like in the 1989 earthquake in California, very few people got injured yet cost billions of dollars. But everyone was watching this San Francisco giants played in Oakland, >> I remember >> so no one was on the road. >> Al Michael's. >> Epic moment. >> Imagine it's in the middle of commute time in LA and San Francisco, hundreds of thousands of people. What if it's your data center team? Right? So there's a whole bunch around disaster recovery and business country that have nothing to do with the storage, the people, what your process. So I would argue that malware ransomware is a disaster and it's exactly the same thing. You know, you got the known good copy. You've got okay. You're sure that the SAP and Oracle, especially on the malware side, weren't compromised. On the ransomware side, you don't have to worry about that. And those things, you got to take a look at just as if it, I would argue malware and ransomware is a disaster and you need to have a process just like you would. If there was an earthquake, a fire or a flood in the data center, you need a similar process. That's slightly different, but the same thing, servers, people, software, the data itself. And when you have that all mapped out, that's how you do successful malware ransomeware recovery. It's a different type of disaster. >> It's absolutely a disaster. It comes down to business continuity and be able to transact business with as little disruption as possible. We heard today from the keynotes and then Jason Buffington came on about the preponderance of ransomware. Okay. We know that. But then the interesting stat was the percentage of customers that paid the ransom about a third weren't able to recover. And so 'cause you kind of had this feeling of all right, well, you know, see it on, you know, CNBC, should you pay the ransom or not? You know, pay the ransom. Okay. You'll get back. But no, it's not the case. You won't necessarily get back. So, you know, Veeam stated, Hey, our goal is to sort of eliminate that problem. Are you- You feel like you guys in a partnership can actually achieve that. >> Yes. >> So, and you have customers that have actually avoided, you know, been hit and were able to- >> We have people who won't publicly say they've been hit, but the way they talk about what they did, like in a meeting, they were hit and they were very thankful. >> (laughs) Yeah. >> And so that's been very good. I- >> So we got proof. >> Yes, we absolutely have proof. And quite honestly, with the recent legislation in the United States, malware and ransomware actually now is also regulatory and compliance. >> Yeah. >> Because the new law states mid-March that whether it's Herzog's bar and grill to bank of America or any large foreign company doing business in the US, you have to report to the United States federal government, any attack, same with the county school district with any local government, any agency, the federal government, as well as every company from the tiniest to the largest in the world that does, they're supposed to report it 'cause the government is trying to figure out how to fight it. Just the way if you don't report burglary, how they catch the burglars. >> Does your solution simplify testing in any way or reduce the risk of testing? >> Well, because the recovery is so rapid, we recommend that people do this on a regular basis. So for example, because the recovery is so quick, you can recover in 12 minutes while we do not practice, let's say once a month or once every couple weeks. And guess what? It also allows you to build a repository of known good copies. Remember when you get ransomeware, no one's going to come say, Hey, I'm Mr. Rans. I'm going to steal your stuff. It's all done surreptitiously. They're all James Bond on the sly who doesn't say "By the way, I'm James Bond". They are truly underneath the radar. And they're very slowly encrypting that data set. So guess what? Your primary data and your backup data that you don't want to be attacked can be attacked. So it's really about finding a known good copy. So if you're doing this on a regular basis, you can get an index of known good copies. >> Right. >> And then, you know, oh, I can go back to last Tuesday and you know that that's good. Otherwise you're literally testing Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday to try to find a known good copy, which delays the recovery process 'cause you really do have to test. They make sure it's good. >> If you increase that frequency, You're going to protect yourself. That's why I got to go. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBEs. Great to see you. >> Great. Thank you very much. I'll be wearing a different Hawaiian shirt next to. >> All right. That sounds good. >> All right, Eric Herzog, Eric Herzog on theCUBE, Dave Vallante for David Nicholson. We'll be right back at VEEAMON 2022. Right after this short break. (light music playing)