(bright music) >> Announcer: From around the globe, it's "theCUBE", with digital coverage of VMworld 2020, brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is "theCUBE's" coverage of VMworld 2020. Of course, such a broad ecosystem in the VMware environment. Been talking a lot, of course, this year, about what's happened in the Cloud Native space. vSphere 7 has Kubernetes coming into the virtualized environment. And one of those key pieces of doing cloud is you need to make sure data protection still works. And, of course, VMware has a long history working with lots of companies. In this segment, we're going to be digging into the VMware, and Dell, also, solution for data protection. So, happy to welcome to the program. First, I have, from VMware, Tom Spoonemore. He is a product line manager for Modern Application Platform with VMware, and welcome back to the program, one of our CUBE alumnis, Efri Nattel-Shay, who is with Dell technologies, Director of Data Protection and Cloud Native apps. Efri, welcome back, Tom, welcome to the program. >> Thank you very much, it's good to be here. >> So, Tom, I kind of teed it up in my intro. VMware, for the longest time, for as long as I can remember, we've really talked about that ecosystem, those joint solutions. I remember, back when we started "theCUBE", in 2010, you'd go there and it would be, oh, there's $15, no, $20, for every dollar that you spend on VMware that the ecosystem kind of pulls along. When VMware started building the VMware Cloud Foundation and the VMware cloud solutions, data protection really went along with it. So, the integrations that they done with vSphere hold them in there as the environment. Tanzu Kubernetes, there's a lot of new pieces. But I think some of those principles have stayed the same. So, why don't you start us off. Tell us a little bit, philosophically, how is VMware treating this space, and how data protection fills into it, and then, Efri, we'll get your take on it, too. >> Yeah, sure, absolutely. So, from the perspective of VMware and the ecosystem, as you say, we want to be very inclusive. We want to bring the ecosystem and our partners along with what we're doing, regardless of what space it is, and in the Modern Applications Platform and Cloud Native tooling, we're very much thinking along the same lines. And as it relates to data protection in specific, Cloud Native is a place where, mainly it's been thought of as a place for stateless applications. but what we're seeing in people's deployments is more and more stateful applications are beginning to move to Kubernetes and into containers. And so the question then becomes, what do you do for data protection of those applications that are deployed into Kubernetes? And so, with Tanzu, and specifically Tanzu Mission Control, we have included a data protection capability, along with the other capabilities that come with Mission Control, that allows you to provide data protection for your fleet of Kubernetes clusters, regardless of which distribution, regardless of which cloud they're running on, and regardless of how many teams you might have running on a particular cluster or set of clusters. And so, for this reason, we have introduced a data protection capability that is focused around our open source project called Velero and Mission Control operates Velero in your clusters from a central UI API and CLI. That allows you to do data protection, initiating schedules of backups, doing restores, and even migration from cloud to cloud, from a single control point. And part of this vision is not only providing an API that we can handle directly with our own Velero-based implementation, but also opening that up to partners. And this is where we're working with Dell, specifically, to be able to provide that single API, but yet have Dell, for instance, with their PowerProtect solution, be able to plug in and be a data protection provider underneath Tanzu Mission Control. And so, that's the work that we're doing together to help satisfy this vision that we have for data protection in the Cloud Native space. >> Yeah, agree 100% with Tom. Like Tom has said, when we looked at customer environments three years ago, people talk mainly about stateless applications, but over time, when more storage solutions, persistent data solutions came along, there came the need to, not only provision the data, but also protect it, and be able to do backups, and restores, and cyber recovery solutions, and disaster recovery, and the whole set of use cases that allow a full life cycle of data along the Cloud Native set of applications, not just a traditional one. And what we've seen, we're talking, obviously, with a lot of customers, joint customers with VMware, customers that use our storage solutions, as well as others, on-prem and in the cloud. And what they have shown, to say, there, is that you have the IT infrastructure people on one hand, which have certain needs, and there is the new set of users, the DevOps people, who are writing applications in a new way, and they need to communicate and they need a solution that fits both of them. So, with VMware, with the community, with Velero, we are introducing a solution that is capable of doing both management for the DevOps people, as well as for the other team infrastructure. And, a year ago, we have talked about this coming up, and now it's really there, and it's doing great. >> Oh, Efri, I'm so glad you brought up some of those organizational issues, because it's not just, oh, we have some new applications, and, of course, we need to do data protection. Can you bring us inside a little bit? Your customers, are they aware of what they need to do? Is it central IT that's coming over and telling the DevOps team, hey, don't forget, security, data protection, still super important. How does that engagement go, and what change does that have for the Dell field and the channel? >> Yeah, I think that the more successful organizations really have that kind of dialogue. So, the developers are not operating in silos. They're not doing things themselves. They do, some of the use cases, they do need to copy data for their own use, but they understand that there are also organizational needs. Someone needs to sign the audit pass, the SLAs are in compliance, the regulations are met. So, all of these things, someone needs to do them. And there is a mutual recognition that there is a role for these people and for these people, for these use cases and for these use cases. >> Yeah, I would agree with that. One of the things that we're seeing, particularly as you think about Kubernetes as a multitenant kind of platform, what we're seeing is that central IT operations still wants to make sure that backups are happening with stateful applications, but more and more they're relying on and providing self-service capabilities to line of business and DevOps, to be able to back up their applications in the way that's best for those applications. It's a recognition of domain expertise for a particular application. So, what we've done with Mission Control is allowed central IT to define policy. And those policies then give the framework, or guidelines, if you will, that then allow the DevOps teams to make the best choices within their own field of expertise and for their own applications. >> Yeah, and what we've seen is some of the organizations really like full control over central IT, and some customers have told us, don't give anything to the developers, but most of them are asking for some self-service capabilities for the developers. But then, who is setting the policy? Who is saying, okay, I have a gold policy data protection? Does it mean I replicate to another side? Does it mean I do longterm retention for a month, or for a year? That is for someone in central IT to set up. So, saying what the policy means, or what it actually is, is the job of a central IT, whereas, this application needs application consistency, and it is of gold policy, that oftentimes is the best knowledge and domain expertise of the developer. >> So, Tom, you mentioned Tanzu Mission Control, which is the management solution. Tanzu is a portfolio. Can you help walk us through the relevant pieces here that are part of this joint solution? >> Yeah, sure. So, Tanzu is really a portfolio of applications, or a portfolio of solutions, as you've said. It's really along three main pillars. It's what we call, build, run and manage. Tanzu Mission Control fills in, along with our Tanzu Observability and Tanzu Service Mesh, in our manage pillar. The build pillar is more along the lines of supporting developing of modern applications, developing and deploying modern applications. So, many of the technologies that have come from our acquisitions of Pivotal, as well as Bitnami, make up that pillar, and these are technologies that are coming to fore, and you'll hear more and more about at this VM world and going forward. Our run pillar is really where you'll find Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. Now, this is our distribution, but it's more than just a distribution of Kubernetes. It's a distribution of Kubernetes, along with all the tools that you would need to be able to deploy modern applications. So, all of these three pillars come together, along with services provided by Pivotal labs, to really give you a full, multifaceted platform for deploying and operating modern applications. >> Great, and Efri, where are there integrations there? How does the storage fit in has been a discussion we've been having for a few years% when it comes to Kubernetes. >> Yeah, basically, PowerProtect integrates with all of these levels that Tom has mentioned, starting with the lowest levels of integration. With the storage, VMware has Cloud Native storage solutions, which allow things like incremental snapshots to be taken from the environment. And we're using this mechanism in order to copy data efficiently from TKG, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, environment, out of the cluster, into a space-efficient data domain, as a target site. So, that's a storage integration. Then, there is qualification and support for the various run environments that Tom has mentioned, the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated, as well as things that we're working with VMware in order to enable protection for what has been called the Project Pacific, which really allows you very sophisticated capabilities of running multiple Kubernetes clusters using the Kubernetes cluster API capabilities. So, you can spin up a cluster very, very quickly by VMware. And then, we can take backups of this environment up to data domain target site. And, finally, working with Tom for tons of amount of time and effort to do the integration between Tanzu Mission Control and PowerProtect. So, allowing cloud, multicloud, multilocation environments to be provisioned and monitoring by Tanzu Mission Control, but also protected using PowerProtect. >> Yeah, so, Tom, we talked about supporting the ecosystem, and it's a much faster cadence now than it was in the past. It used to be, it felt like every other year at VMworld, we got together and talked about the major vSphere release. Of course, in the container, in Kubernetes world, we're having a much faster cadence. So, could you just help us understand, what of this is generally available today? We saw vSphere 7 back in the spring. The update, right ahead of VMworld, that really extended Kubernetes beyond just VCF, to be able to be an all vSphere 7 environment. So, we know some of this is here on the roadmap, so help map this out for us, what's here today from VMware and what the timeline is we expect for all of these pieces we've been discussing. >> Yeah, absolutely. So, Mission Control shipped in March. So we're still relatively new, but as you say, we run Cloud Native ourselves, and so we're releasing new features, new capabilities. literally every week. We have a weekly cadence for release. Our data protection capability was just introduced at the end of June, so it's fairly new, and we are still introducing capabilities, like bring your own storage, doing scheduling of backups, and this kind of thing. You'll see us adding more and more cloud providers. We have been working to open up the platform to make it available to partners. And this is, just generally, with Mission Control, across the board, but specifically, when it comes to Dell, and PowerProtect, the data protection capability, this is something that we are still actively working on, and it is past the architecture stage, but it's probably still a little ways out before we can deliver on it, but we are working on it diligently, and definitely expect to have that in the product, and available, and really providing a basis for integrations with other providers as well. >> Yeah, and in terms of PowerProtect, we have told the audience about a tech preview a year ago, and since then we have released a number of releases. We are having a quarterly cadence. So, it is available for the general consumption for quite some time. Talking about the integration layers that we have mentioned before, we are the first stack to protect VMs and Kubernetes and applications using the same platform, the same UI, the same policies, everything looks the same. And we have recently introduced capabilities such as application consistency for a number of applications. The support for TKG is available for now. And, as Tom has said, we are working on further integrations, such as the integration with Tanzu Mission Control with VMware. >> Wonderful, I want to get a final word from both of you. Efri, we'll start with you. We've got this regular cadence coming up. We know we're only a couple of weeks away from DTWE, the Dell Technology World Experience, where, of course, theCUBE will be there. What should we look for the rest of 2020, or any final comments that you have for customers that might be looking at this environment? >> Sure, I think that, two trends that I'm seeing, and they're just getting stronger over the years. The first thing is multicloud, and multicloud means many things to different people, but, basically, every customer that we are speaking to is talking about, I want to run things on-prem, but I also need to run these workloads in the hyperscaler. And I need to move from one hyperscaler region to another, or between hyperscalers, and they want to run this distribution here, and the other distribution there. And there are many combinations of stacks and Database-as-a-Service and other components of the infrastructure that different developers are using on-prem and in the cloud. So, I expect this to go even further, and solutions like PowerProtect and TKG can help customers to do that job, and, of course, Tanzu Mission Control, to monitor and manage this environment. Secondly, I think that protection is going to follow more the workloads. So, application is no longer the VM. Obviously, it's becoming many different components that are starting to span across locations and across environments. And again, the protection nature of these is going to change according to where and how these workloads are being provisioned. >> Yeah, and I would say the same thing about Mission Control, very much multicloud-focused, Today it's largely an AWS-focused solution. We're changing to add more flexible storage options, more clouds. Azure is something that we'll be doing in the short term, Google Cloud platform and Google Cloud Storage after that, as well as just the ability to use your own on-prem storage for your backup targets. Also, we're going to be focusing on driving more policy-driven backup. So, being able to define policies for groups of clusters, define RTO and RPO for groups of clusters, allowing Mission Control to help determine what the individual backup policy should be for that particular asset. And continuing to work with Dell and other partners to help extend our platform and open it up for other data protection providers. >> Tom and Efri, thanks so much for the updates. Tom, welcome to being a CUBE alumni, and Efri, I'm sure we'll be seeing you in the team, in the near future. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> Stay with us for more coverage from VMworld 2020. I'm Stu Miniman, and as always, thank you for watching theCUBE. (bright music)

>> Announcer: Live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high-tech coverage, it's theCUBE, covering VMworld 2019. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to Moscone here. We're at San Francisco VMworld 2019. I'm John Walls, along with Stu Miniman, here on theCUBE. Thanks for joining us here for our first of three days of coverage here at a very exciting program. I was just blown away by the keynotes this morning. We'll talk about that with Beth Phalen and Rajiv Ramaswami here. Beth is president and GM of data protection at Dell EMC, and Rajiv, of course, the chief operating officer at VMware. So thanks to you both for joining us. >> Good to be here, yeah. >> John: Good to see you both. >> Glad to be here. >> So first off, let's just talk about, if you will, the vibe of the keynotes. Pat, great command of the stage, obviously. Lot of big announcements. But I was just, I thought the whole presentation and the size of the crowd and their reactions were fairly impressive. What was your take on that? >> I totally agree. Being in the audience, it was comprehensive, it was holistic, it told a story that people could connect with, and it recognized just how much the world of IT is changing, and what VMware is doing in influencing that. I was impressed. >> Yeah, no, no, from my vantage point of view, being on the inside here-- >> Yeah. >> It's, yeah, our portfolio continues to get broader and broader. Our relevance to customers keeps getting bigger. And this year in particular, we had a whole series of announcements here. There were two major acquisitions, our largest two acquisitions, over the last week. So there was a lot to digest. And in fact, we were actually working on putting that story together at the very last minute, as you can imagine, because these acquisitions were literally announced on Thursday. (Beth laughs) So a lot came together, it came together beautifully. I thought Pat did a great job putting it all together and giving the story. >> Yeah, I know, the Pivotal, obviously, everybody went 10 days ago, two weeks ago, saying, "It can't happen that fast, can it?" Well, the answer is yes, it can happen that fast. >> Rajiv: Let me give you one more story there. >> Yes, yes. >> You might remember Callum Eade was on stage. He was the guy who swam across the English Channel-- >> Beth: Mm-hm? >> At the very beginning. So just to tell you how last-minute that was, he finished his swim, I talked to him on Friday morning, and then I went to Pat and said, "Pat, you know, one of our guys "actually swam across the English Channel." (Beth laughs) He said, "Yeah, we should have him ontage at VMworld." (Beth and John laugh) >> So we flew him over over the weekend-- >> Wow, wow. >> Here, got him to Vmworld, and there he was onstage. >> (laughs) Oh, man, that's impressive. >> Yeah, yeah. >> It was a great story. It was a good call to bring him in. >> Yes, yes. >> Yeah. >> All right, so obviously, you have this strong partnership that got a little stronger with some announcements today. >> Rajiv: Yeah. >> So let's get into that a little bit. Beth, if you would, talk a little bit about what you announced on stage, or what was announced onstage today. >> Yeah, I mean, there are three things that we're talking about this week, with our good partners at VMware. How we make sure that we have data protection for the Dell EMC cloud, for the VMware Cloud, excuse me, on Dell EMC. Previewing what we're doing to protect Kubernetes environments, which is super exciting. And then the project we talked about just quickly on stage this morning, around how we're doing work together to bring PowerProtect into, as tight as possible, to the best integration for vSphere and our VMware customers. So, Rajiv, anything that I missed, or-- >> Yeah, no, no, at the big-picture level, look, I mean, you've had a long history in data protection solutions. You modernized your portfolio quite a bit over the last year-- >> Beth: Yeah. >> With the introduction of the new X400 appliances and the IDPA PowerProtect software. >> Beth: Yeah. >> And we've been talking together for a while now about, what can we be doing together better? >> Beth: Mm-hm. >> And this just came across, you know, we've been working on this together, and now we have specific things to talk about. So on the first one, which is really data protection for VMware Cloud, now, VMware Cloud on AWS, one of the first use cases, important use cases, is actually around disaster recovery. So customers want to use the cloud or the data as a backup for a DR site. And very cost-effective to do that, it makes a lot of sense. Now, we've been working to continue and improve that solution, and making it much more broadly applicable, making use of native cloud storage capabilities. For example, Amazon S3. And so, that's really the collaboration that we are doing with Beth's team here, where we're using their underlying technology to build a VMware data disaster recovery as a service that will work on our VMware Cloud environments and make use of native cloud storage capabilities. So, very powerful, brings a lot of value for our customers together. >> John: Yeah. >> And I think that everybody watching probably understands just how important it is to have a DR site, but for many companies, it's cost-prohibitive and really old-school to think about having a dedicated DR site. So using the cloud as your destination, if something were to happen, you had to recover, it is an excellent fit, and I expect it to be one of the fastest-growing use cases. We're already seeing it. It's going to continue to grow dramatically going forward, having DR as a service as a core to people's recovery strategy. >> Yeah, Rajiv, one of the things we've been watching is, VMware's always had a robust ecosystem, but it's been going through a major shift. >> Rajiv: Yes. >> You know, VMware kind of at the center, and the server, storage, and network around it to where everything fits in the multi-cloud environment. When we see data protection with VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, it's obviously a natural fit, because it's under there. What do you talk to your partners about when you say, "Okay, the Dell side of things is getting "further embedded into VMware"? How do you make sure that you have an open and robust ecosystem without unbalancing that? >> That's a great question. VMware has always prided itself on being a platform company, and you're only a platform company if you actually have a broad ecosystem of people who are building and developing on your platform. >> Stu: True. >> So we are not walking away from that one little bit. We continue to support a very broad-based set of providers across many different functions, whether it be data protection, whether it be security, whether it be compliance, you know, a whole bunch of things around the platform. What we will do, though, is we will pick a set of partners, and we will do deeper integrations with them, right? We are always going to have broad APIs available for everybody. Just as another example with Carbon Black that you saw today, yeah, we had actually partnered with Carbon Black on a deep integration between Carbon Black and AppDefense, okay? But at the same time, we have open APIs with every Guest Introspection provided that there is, and we will continue to maintain that, with every endpoint provided that there is. It's much the same way here. We're going to do deep integration with Beth's team. We are actually using some of their technologies to enhance our services, but also enabling them to do better integration with vSphere and the whole VMware environment, while at the same time allowing a rich ecosystem of third-party providers to work with us on top of our platforms. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Beth, was wondering if you could help us dig in a little bit to that Kubernetes space. >> Beth: Mm-hm. >> So, obviously, a big presence here at the show, you know, Prevalent talked in the keynote. When I walked the show floor, everybody's talking about Kubernetes. >> Beth: Mm-hm, mm-hm. >> So from the data protection standpoint, what's been done to more into that environment? What's different that people might not have known from your group from just a couple of years ago? >> Yeah, a couple of things. One, we've been working on this jointly with Jon Rose's organization and doing an incubation on this for well over a year, and working with Velero, making sure that everything we're doing is tied very closely with what's going on at VMware. And as you start talking about the container space, what you're saying with data protection, it's a different set of assets that you need to protect. You have to make sure that you're protecting the metadata, you have to bring up the whole environment. And so it's sort of a variation on a theme, and what we're particularly proud of is that we're approaching it in a way that's really ground-up and designing data protection, not retrofitting the past, but what are the needs for a Kubernetes environment, and make sure that they can restore that, come back to whatever data they need to do and whatever applications they need to get back to. >> Beth, you talked about Velero, too. I mean, so, what you're talking about, how does that enhance or how is that adding to the data protection capabilities of that, then? What are you building on, in terms of enhanced services there? >> Well, I think, what I understand about the project, I'd like to hear your point of view too, is as Velero builds out and working on the Kubernetes environment, it becomes the center for people's production environment, right? And as you move into a production environment, data protection becomes an essential part of that. So whereas a couple of years ago, Kubernetes might have been something that people were dabbling with, or maybe had not their most important applications running on, it's now becoming center and core. And so, what we're doing, working with VMware, is making sure that directly integrated into that, the UCS has that need around backup, disaster recovery, and all types of RRTO and RPOs are all met, even though now the application's being run in a Kubernetes environment. >> Sort of the conversation around, as we talked about Tanzu, VMware Tanzu-- >> Yeah. >> Which is in our portfolio. >> It's a great name, by the way. >> Thank you. (Beth and John laugh) So the portfolio, the idea here is you're going to have build, run, and manage, and when you look at the manage component of this, it's not just that every service is going to be developed by VMware. There's going to be a set of third-party services that run on top of this platform that will do functions like backup, disaster recovery, for Kubernetes clusters. And my anticipation is that Dell would be a second party, third party on that environment as part of the overall Tanzu portfolio, as a marketplace-type service. >> Beth: Yep, that's what we're working towards. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, just following up on that Tanzu, VMware has mostly been a platform, an infrastructure layer for applications-- >> That's correct. >> You know, Pivotal was the group that really dealt with the modern. >> Rajiv: Yes. >> But you've made some acquisitions. Data protection's always had that integration with the application. What's changing now that requires Dell and VMware to kind of delve upstack a little bit more than it might have in the past? >> For us it's very simple, as Pat already articulated. The world is moving to where it's all about how to build and manage your applications portfolio. That's become a CIO's top job. And so, for us to be relevant to that space, infrastructure companies naturally need to move up-- >> Mm-hm. >> Address the needs of application developers, and while at the same time the application developers need the infrastructure teams to deliver the infrastructure that they can easily build around and manage these apps without having to do it all themselves. So that's really, the bringing together of the developers and the IT operators is what we are doing. And that's the rationale for why we brought Pivotal in-house, and why we are building this overall Tanzu portfolio. >> It's kind of what goes around, comes around, right? >> Absolutely. Well, as Pat explained, right? >> Right. >> You know, six, seven years ago, we weren't really in a position to focus on it. >> Right. >> And it made sense to have Pivotal stand alone-- >> John: The time was right. >> And they invested, they built up their franchise over time, and here we are. The time is right. >> Right, Rajiv, Beth, thank you. I appreciate the time, good to see you. >> Beth: Great discussion. >> Congratulations on day one! Off to a great start, and-- >> Not over yet. (Rajiv and Beth laugh) >> (laughs) Oh, I know, I know, and nor for us. But a great start. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you, sir, good to see you both. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Beth, always a pleasure. >> Yes. >> Thanks for being with us once again. >> Thank you. >> Oh, sorry, (laughs) sorry. >> With more live from theCUBE, you're watching theCUBE's coverage of VMworld 2019. (upbeat electronic music)