>> Narrator: Live from Denver, Colorado it's theCUBE. Covering Commvault Go 2019. Brought to you by Commvault. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, we're wrapping up close-- Wrapping up our coverage of two days at Commvault Go in Colorado and we're excited to welcome a new gust to theCUBE. We have Tim Carben, Principle Systems Engineer for Storage and Data Protection at Mitchell, a Commvault customer. Tim, welcome to the program. >> Thanks for having me. >> Lisa: First question. >> Yes. >> Are you ready for the interview? (Tim shows off his shirt) >> I came ready. >> Lisa: You were born ready! >> Yes. (Lisa laughs) >> So for those of you who weren't here, the get ready, be ready is a big theme of the event. So, Tim, first of all, before we get into what Mitchell is doing with Commvault, tell our audience who Mitchell is, what types of products and services do you deliver? >> Well, Mitchell is a little known name, but we are a technology company that provides smart solutions, or smart insurance solutions. (Tim sighs) I'm sorry, we provide smart technology solutions for insurance companies in the area of property and casualty. >> Okay. That's a big, that's a-- >> That's a mouth full. >> It is a mouth full, but you did really well. So based here in the US? >> Tim: Yes in San Diego. >> Oh, that's right, Sunny San Diego. We were just talking about the scooter problem. How could I forget? So, you came onboard there, you said around five or so years ago? >> Tim: Yes, about five and a half years. >> If I think of like, insurance. (Lisa cringes) The data volume growing, right, must be, you're wincing, exponential. Talk to us about the data strategy and the importance of data to Mitchell and what you're doing with Commvault to protect it, get that visibility and use it to deliver stellar services. >> Well that's exactly it. It's, we see growth and, year over year and making sure that we keep that data protected is the most important thing. We have to be able to provide that back to our customers, in an instant and keep it available. That's number one is keeping everything available. So, of course I'm going to choose Commvault. I always look into everything that's in the market and I talk with everyone. I mean, I've had conversations with everyone from Rupert to Veritas and I agree with Forrester in saying that Commvault's the best product for the data protection. >> Lisa: Why? >> Mainly, because we're seeing them move forward faster than anyone else. They're able to-- Or I'm able to, I guess I should say, utilizing Commvault, microtune my environment to be able to provide the fastest level of backup and recovery. Rather than buying blocks and putting these blocks together. And even when it comes to the hyperscale product, it's a Red Hat server cluster. So it's not a black box you can't see inside of, you understand what's going on underneath it and it is a tried and true methodology for doing what you're trying to do and it's... I guess for lack of better words, just really resilient, I love it. >> Great, so Tim, you said you've looked at a lot of solutions, you've been on Commvault for quite a while. Talk to us a little bit about that usability of the product, you know? Some of the questions we have is, you know how simple it actually is to use, you know how much your team needs to study up and get on it and just, kind of, the cadence of change that you're seeing coming from Commvault. >> Now, my team's really good. You know we've been-- They've been with Commvault since version six they know how to use the Java console. So, it's not so much as, they are learning something new, but what's happening and what I've noticed with Commvault, from within the Java console to the command center, is they're making everything else a lot easier. So, they're not changing the way I'm doing my mature backups of, say Oracle, or, you know file system, things like that, but they are making it a lot easier for me to start and recover and I guess, change configuration of the VMware backups. They're making it easier of me to manage my storage and with the command center or with the web console, I should say, they're making it so much easier to report. Anyone that's utilized the CommNet from back in the day, the old reporting tool, versus the new centralized metrics reporting tool, knows that there's no comparison whatsoever. And I can point all of my CommCells to one reporting system and provide reports that go over everything from storage utilization to, you know, just resource utilization all the way down to chargeback, based upon any given criteria I want. >> You have full visibility? >> Full visibility. >> You mentioned that you've been a Commvault customer for a while, not just at Mitchell, but your previous company, you also said before we started that you've done a lot of speaking on behalf of Commvault, your use case, other challenges that you had, the business outcomes. I would love to get your perspective on being one of those customer champions, what are some of the things that you're hearing from prospective Commvault customers? Are they asking you for your advice, like hey, we had this kind of compelling event, Tim, what would you recommendation be? >> A lot of it is specifics and I think that's, you know, they'll be asking questions based upon who they're talking to and I'm the guy that you talk to when you want to talk the details. So they'll come to me and say hey, what about this hyperscale configuration and I'll say, well rather than go with the larger environment, go with the smaller nodes and spread it wider, that way you can transfer more data in. But... It's a lot of just how is it working for you? And even into the newer environments where we're looking at the, you know, 0365 being backed up by SaaS is, how easy is it to configure? And that is quite possibly the easiest thing to configure that I've ever run across. >> Wow. Ever? >> Ever. Well, like I said, they keep making things better and in the past I've used, you know, Veritas backup Exec, as everyone has back in the day. I mean, we've done data transfer on tapes, I've used TSM for seven years, so everything's going to be easier than that and even a lot of testing of different backup applications and when you look at what we're doing with cloud configuration and Commvault SaaS model, Commvault really takes a lot of the configuration out that you would need to do and they have their own CommCell administrator that takes care of it. I was talking with Justin not too long back, he's here I was so happy to get to meet him and he manages all that for us. We enter in the specifics as far as configuration and it's done. >> So you guys-- Oh, go ahead, Stu. >> So, Tim, you know, what I'm curious about is the feedback loop that you have with Commvault. Obviously you're quite happy with the product, you've seen the maturation over time. Are there things you're asking for, or things that you're seeing on their roadmap or maybe things that were announced this week, that are exciting you or things that you would love to help be doing things even better than what you're doing today? >> I don't know, this may be the thing that the sales people don't like about me. Is I don't hold back when I see something that I want to see different and I've done this with different storage manufacturers that I've worked with, as well as, of course with Commvault and the one things that I always come back to and this is one thing I joked with my previous sales person on is, if you're going to call it Commvault Complete, why doesn't it include orchestrate and activate? You could just call it Commvault and then give us another Commvault Complete that actually contains everything in it, because, I wish I could run the activate in-house. The problem is, is I've priced it out, I've provided that data to my upper management and they just will not buy off on it. >> And what was Commvault's response to that feedback? 'Cause they're very pro-listening to their customers, we've heard that resoundingly. >> They are and there really wasn't anything. They said they're hand things up the channel and what's interesting about it is in talking to the activate people today, or, yes, either way. During the show, I found out that they added another plan that would allow you to buy activate by the terabyte and not by the user. So that may be something that could help drop the price if we isolate specific environments to what we would use the activate for and that would be (Tim nods) workable, I guess I should say. >> So, speaking of activate, data governance, insights, the California Consumer Privacy Act, CCPA is around the corner. >> Yes. >> You're based in San Diego. Where is Mitchell in terms of its readiness for that and how is Commvault, ar they part of that solution to get ready? >> As far as-- I can speak to the data protection side of it, because that's where I'm at. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> And I have everything in place for us to be ready by the time everything comes through. And it is utilizing Commvault. I mean, that's the backbone of being able to keep us protected. At that level and all levels, I should say. >> Tim, as we mentioned before, you've been speaking, you've been quite busy at the show, give us, you know, some of the highlights that you've had and, you know, what brings you to Go and how many of them have you been to? >> Well, I went to the first two Florida and DC. I skipped out on the last one, I wanted to send my coworkers there. So my coworkers that I work with, I made it a point I said I'm staying at the office, I'll take care of everything, go and-- No pun intended. >> Lisa: I was going to say that was good. >> Yes. (Lisa and Tim laughing) And then I came back to this one. The big thing is learning. This is an opportunity for me to talk to industry experts, to talk to customers who have done things that I'm planning on doing in the future, to help out customers who haven't done things that I've already done and let 'em know hey look out for this or look out for that. But, with this one a big part of it is looking at the workflows, looking at the automation. Utilizing or being able to utilize all the other features that I have available to me that I'm not using right now. >> Last question in the last few seconds of the time we have left, lots of announcements from Commvault in the last nine months a lot of change, a lot of leadership change, reps to market change, new ventures. Some of your perspective of what you're seeing with this new Commvault? >> Well, it's exciting when you look at it. At first I wondered about the Hedvig acquisition. I mean, it's a step into the primary storage market and some people say that a lot of the companies that are partners with Commvault could see that as overstepping boundaries, but when I learn what they're doing and what they're planning on doing and utilizing it as more of a data protection multicloud strategy, this really could push them a little bit further along than anyone else than the data protection market is. So, the changes look to be, for lack of better words, really good for the company and in turn really good for us, the consumer. And making sure that we can do everything that we need to do and we're ready to move forward. >> 'Course you are, you have the shirt. >> Tim: That's right, we're ready >> Well Tim, Tim thank you for joining Stu and me on theCUBE this afternoon. Sharing with us what's going on at Mitchell and you perspectives on knowing Commvault as long as you have. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you for having me. >> Our pleasure. For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching theCUBE from Commvault Go '19. (upbeat tune)

>> Announcer: Live from Vancouver, Canada it's theCUBE, covering OpenStack Summit North America 2018. Brought to you by Red Hat, the OpenStack foundation, and its Ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and my cohost John Troyer and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of OpenStack Summit 2018 here in Vancouver. Happy to welcome first-time guest Roland Cabana who is a DevOps Manager at Vault Systems out of Australia, but you come from a little bit more local. Thanks for joining us Roland. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. Yes, I'm actually born and raised in Vancouver, I moved to Australia a couple years ago. I realized the potential in Australian cloud providers, and I've been there ever since. >> Alright, so one of the big things we talk about here at OpenStack of course is, you know, do people really build clouds with this stuff, where does it fit, how is it doing, so a nice lead-in to what does Vault Systems do for the people who aren't aware. >> Definitely, so yes, we do build cloud, a cloud, or many clouds, actually. And Vault Systems provides cloud services infrastructure service to Australian Government. We do that because we are a certified cloud. We are certified to handle unclassified DLM data, and protected data. And what that means is the sensitive information that is gathered for the Australian citizens, and anything to do with big user-space data is actually secured with certain controls set up by the Australian Government. The Australian Government body around this is called ASD, the Australian Signals Directorate, and they release a document called the ISM. And this document actually outlines 1,088 plus controls that dictate how a cloud should operate, how data should be handled inside of Australia. >> Just to step back for a second, I took a quick look at your website, it's not like you're listed as the government OpenStack cloud there. (Roland laughs) Could you give us, where does OpenStack fit into the overall discussion of the identity of the company, what your ultimate end-users think about how they're doing, help us kind of understand where this fits. >> Yeah, for sure, and I mean the journey started long ago when we, actually our CEO, Rupert Taylor-Price, set out to handle a lot of government information, and tried to find this cloud provider that could handle it in the prescribed way that the Australian Signals Directorate needed to handle. So, he went to different vendors, different cloud platforms, and found out that you couldn't actually meet all the controls in this document using a proprietary cloud or using a proprietary platform to plot out your bare-metal hardware. So, eventually he found OpenStack and saw that there was a great opportunity to massage the code and change it, so that it would comply 100% to the Australian Signals Directorate. >> Alright, so the keynote this morning were talking about people that build, people that operate, you've got DevOps in your title, tell us a little about your role in working with OpenStack, specifically, in broader scope of your-- >> For sure, for sure, so in Vault Systems I'm the DevOps Manager, and so what I do, we run through a lot of tests in terms of our infrastructure. So, complying to those controls I had mentioned earlier, going through the rigmarole of making sure that all the different services that are provided on our platform comply to those specific standards, the specific use cases. So, as a DevOps Manger, I handle a lot of the pipelining in terms of where the code goes. I handle a lot of the logistics and operations. And so it actually extends beyond just operation and development, it actually extends into our policies. And so marrying all that stuff together is pretty much my role day-to-day. I have a leg in the infrastructure team with the engineering and I also have a leg in with sort of the solutions architects and how they get feedback from different customers in terms of what we need and how would we architect that so it's safe and secure for government. >> Roland, so since one of your parts of your remit is compliance, would you say that you're DevSecOps? Do you like that one or not? >> Well I guess there's a few more buzzwords, and there's a few more roles I can throw in there but yeah, I guess yes. DevSecOps there's a strong security posture that Vault holds, and we hold it to a higher standard than a lot of the other incumbents or a lot of platform providers, because we are actually very sensitive about how we handle this information for government. So, security's a big portion of it, and I think the company culture internally is actually centered around how we handle the security. A good example of this is, you know, internally we actually have controls about printing, you know, most modern companies today, they print pages, and you know it's an eco thing. It's an eco thing for us too, but at the same time there are controls around printed documents, and how sensitive those things are. And so, our position in the company is if that control exists because Australian Government decides that that's a sensitive matter, let's adopt that in our entire internal ecosystem. >> There was a lot of talk this morning at the keynote both about upgrades, and I'm blanking on the name of the new feature, but also about Zuul and about upgrading OpenStack. You guys are a full Upstream, OpenStack expert cloud provider. How do you deal with upgrades, and what do you think the state of the OpenStack community is in terms of kind of upgrades, and maintenance, and day two kind of stuff? >> Well I'll tell you the truth, the upgrade path for OpenStack is actually quite difficult. I mean, there's a lot of moving parts, a lot of components that you have to be very specific in terms of how you upgrade to the next level. If you're not keeping in step of the next releases, you may fall behind and you can't upgrade, you know, Keystone from a Liberty all the way up to Alcatel, right? You're basically stuck there. And so what we do is we try to figure out what the government needs, what are the features that are required. And, you know, it's also a conversation piece with government, because we don't have certain features in this particular release of OpenStack, it doesn't mean we're not going to support it. We're not going to move to the next version just because it's available, right? There's a lot of security involved in fusing our controls inside our distribution of OpenStack. I guess you can call it a distribution, on our build of OpenStack. But it's all based on a conversation that we start with the government. So, you know, if they need VGPUs for some reason, right, with the Queens release that's coming out, that's a conversation we're starting. And we will build into that functionality as we need it. >> So, does that mean that you have different entities with different versions, and if so, how do you manage all of that? >> Well, okay, so yes that's true. We do have different versions where we have a Liberty release, and we have an Alcatel release, which is predominant in our infrastructure. And that's only because we started with the inception of the Liberty release before our certification process. A lot of the things that we work with government for is how do they progress through this cloud maturity model. And, you know, the forklift and shift is actually a problem when you're talking about releases. But when you're talking about containerization, you're talking about Agile Methodologies and things like that, it's less of a reliance on the version because you now have the ability to respawn that same application, migrate the data, and have everything live as you progress through different cloud platforms. And so, as OpenStack matures, this whole idea of the fast forward idea of getting to the next release, because now they have an integration step, or they have a path to the next version even though you're two or three versions behind, because let's face it, most operators will not go to the latest and greatest, because there's a lot of issues you're going to face there. I mean, not that the software is bad, it's just that early adopters will come with early adopter problems. And, you know, you need that userbase. You need those forum conversations to be able to be safe and secure about, you know, whether or not you can handle those kinds of things. And there's no need for our particular users' user space to have those latest and greatest things unless there is an actual request. >> Roland, you are an IAS provider. How are you handling containers, or requests for containers from your customers? >> Yes, containers is a big topic. There's a lot of maturity happening right now with government, in terms of what a container is, for example, what is orchestration with containers, how does my Legacy application forklift and shift to a container? And so, we're handling it in stages, right, because we're working with government in their maturity. We don't do container services on the platform, but what we do is we open-source a lot of code that allows people to deploy, let's say a terraform file, that creates a Docker Host, you know, and we give them examples. A good segue into what we've just launched last week was our Vault Academy, which we are now training 3,000 government public servants on new cloud technologies. We're not talking about how does an OS work, we're talking about infrastructures, code, we're talking about Kubernetes. We're talking about all these cool, fun things, all the way up to function as a service, right? And those kinds of capabilities is what's going to propel government in Australia moving forward in the future. >> You hit on one of my hot buttons here. So functions as a service, do you have serverless deployed in your environment, or is it an education at this point? >> It's an education at this point. Right now we have customers who would like to have that available as a native service in our cloud, but what we do is we concentrate on the controls and the infrastructure as a service platform first and foremost, just to make sure that it's secure and compliant. Everyone has the ability to deploy functions as a service on their platform, or on their accounts, or on their tenancies, and have that available to them through a different set of APIs. >> Great. There's a whole bunch of open-source versions out there. Is that what they're doing? Do you any preference toward the OpenWhisk, or FN, or you know, Fission, all the different versions that are out there? >> I guess, you know, you can sort of like, you know, pick your racehorse in that regard. Because it's still early days, and I think open to us is pretty much what I've been looking at recently, and it's just a discovery stage at this point. There are more mature customers who are coming in, some partners who are championing different technologies, so the great is that we can make sure our platform is secure and they can build on top of it. >> So you brought up security again, one of the areas I wanted to poke at a little bit is your network. So, it being an IS provider, networking's critical, what are you doing from a networking standpoint is micro-segmentation part of your environment? >> Definitely. So natively to build in our cloud, the functions that we build in our cloud are all around security, obviously. Micro-segmentation's a big part of that, training people in terms of how micro-segmentation works from a forklift and shift perspective. And the network connectivity we have with the government is also a part of this whole model, right? And so, we use technologies like Mellanox, 400G fabric. We're BGP internally, so we're routing through the host, or routing to the host, and we have this... Well so in Australia there's this, there's service from the Department of Finance, they create this idea of an icon network. And what it is, is an actually direct media fiber from the department directly to us. And that means, directly to the edge of our cloud and pipes right through into their tenancy. So essentially what happens is, this is true, true hybrid cloud. I'm not talking about going through gateways and stuff, I'm talking about I speed up an instance in the Vault cloud, and I can ping it from my desktop in my agency. Low latency, submillisecond direct fiber link, up to 100g. >> Do you have certain programmability you're doing in your network? I know lots of service providers, they want to play and get in there, they're using, you know, new operating models. >> Yes, I mean, we're using the... I draw a blank. There's a lot of technologies we're using for network, and the Cumulus Networking OS is what we're using. That allows us to bring it in to our automation team, and actually use more of a DevOps tool to sort of create the deployment from a code perspective instead of having a lot of engineers hardcoding things right on the actual production systems. Which allows us to gate a lot of the changes, which is part of the security posture as well. So, we were doing a lot of network offloading on the ConnectX-5 cards in the data center, we're using cumulus networks for bridging, we're working with Neutron to make sure that we have Neutron routers and making sure that that's secure and it's code reviewed. And, you know, there's a lot of moving parts there as well, and I think from a security standpoint and from a network functionality standpoint, we've come to a happy place in terms of providing the fastest network possible, and also the most secure and safe network as possible. >> Roland, you're working directly with the Upstream OpenStack projects, and it sounds like some others as well. You're not working with a vendor who's packaging it for you or supporting it. So that's a lot of responsibility on you and your team, I'm kind of curious how you work with the OpenStack community, and how you've seen the OpenStack community develop over the years. >> Yeah, so I mean we have a lot of talented people in our company who actually OpenStack as a passion, right? This is what they do, this is what they love. They've come from different companies who worked in OpenStack and have contributed a lot actually, to the community. And actually that segues into how we operate inside culturally in our company. Because if we do work with Upstream code, and it doesn't have anything to do with the security compliance of the Australian Signals Directorate in general, we'd like to Upstream that as much as possible and contribute back the code where it seems fit. Obviously, there's vendor mixes and things we have internally, and that's with the Mellanox and Cumulus stuff, but anything else beyond that is usually contributed up. Our team's actually very supportive of each other, we have network specialists, we have storage specialists. And it's a culture of learning, so there's a lot of synchronizations, a lot of synergies inside the company. And I think that's part to do with the people who make up Vault Systems, and that whole camaraderie is actually propagated through our technology as well. >> One of the big themes of the show this year has been broadening out of what's happening. We talked a little bit about containers already, Edge Computing is a big topic here. Either Edge, or some other areas, what are you looking for next from this ecosystem, or new areas that Vault is looking at poking at? >> Well, I mean, a lot of the exciting things for me personally, I guess, I can't talk to Vault in general, but, 'cause there's a lot of engineers who have their own opinions of what they like to see, but with the Queens release with the VGPUs, something I'd like, that all's great, a long-term release cycle with the OpenStack foundation would be great, or the OpenStack platform would be great. And that's just to keep in step with the next releases to make sure that we have the continuity, even though we're missing one release, there's a jump point. >> Can you actually put a point on that, what that means for you. We talked to Mark Collier a little bit about it this morning but what you're looking and why that's important. >> Well, it comes down to user acceptance, right? So, I mean, let's say you have a new feature or a new project that's integrated through OpenStack. And, you know, some people find out that there's these new functions that are available. There's a lot of testing behind-the-scenes that has to happen before that can be vetted and exposed as part of our infrastructure as a service platform. And so, by the time that you get to the point where you have all the checks and balances, and marrying that next to the Australian controls that we have it's one year, two years, or you know, however it might be. And you know by that time we're at the night of the release and so, you know, you do all that work, you want to make sure that you're not doing that work and refactoring it for the next release when you're ready to go live. And so, having that long-term release is actually what I'm really keen about. Having that point of, that jump point to the latest and greatest. >> Well Roland, I think that's a great point. You know, it used to be we were on the 18 month cycle, OpenStack was more like a six month cycle, so I absolutely understand why this is important that I don't want to be tied to a release when I want to get a new function. >> John: That's right. >> Roland Cabana, thank you the insight into Vault Systems and congrats on all the progress you have made. So for John Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman. Back here with lots more coverage from the OpenStack Summit 2018 in Vancouver, thanks for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)