>> Live
from Las Vegas.
It's theCUBE.
Covering VM World 2018.
Brought to you by VMware
and Adziko System partners.
>> Welcome back to the Mandalay Bay everybody in Las Vegas.
My name is Dave Vellante, I'm here with David Floyer.
This is day three of our wall to wall coverage
of VMworld 2018.
We've got two sets here in the VM Village.
94 guests this week.
It's a record for the CUBE.
Thanks so much for watching.
I've been in this business as long as Pat Gelsinger
and ever since I've been in this business
people have said, "oh infrastructure's dying",
and you know what, storage is the gift that keeps on giving.
And I just, we love the conversations.
Guys from Infinidat are here.
Jacob Broido is the Chief Product Officer
and Neville Yates is the Senior Director
of Data Protection Solutions at Infinidat.
Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE.
Happy VMworld 2018.
>> Thank you >> Thank you
>> All right Jacob, I'm going to start with you.
>> Okay.
>> So we have seen Infinidat come in.
You're basically competing with all flash arrays,
you're faster than Flash, and that's your sort of tag line.
So you have this system designed for primary storage
and then all of a sudden, you know last summer,
around last summer, maybe it was the fall.
We see you guys entering the data protection market
with essentially the same architecture.
How is it that you can take a system that's designed
for primary storage faster than Flash,
and then point it at data protection.
Help us understand.
>> That's a great question.
So, it all starts with the fact that we designed our system
to work with mixed workloads.
And primary storage being our first keypoint,
but the design and architecture
supposed to work with any type of workload.
And what we started seeing in the field
is that our customers first displaced
a lot of incumbent primary storage on us.
And then we started seeing them putting
backup workloads as well,
and data protection workloads on our systems as well,
and coming back and saying that this works amazingly
led to more of that.
This basically led us to a point
of expanding on that strategy
and introducing additional products and services.
The key point for us in this was that
it was remarkably easy for us
to introduce additional capabilities
because of the solid technical and architectural foundation.
We're very fast.
Our financial model enables us to do
and go after the data protection market efficiently,
and we're seeing this in the field.
>> So Neville help us, paint a picture for us.
You've got a long history in the data protection market.
You were involved in disrupting tape,
you've been a consultant in this space
working with customers.
What's the market sort of look like,
the sort of available market for you guys?
>> So when Jacob refers to the expansion
into data protection, we took this technology
as Jacob describes the InfiniBox,
and we didn't just expand in one direction.
We expanded in two directions, multi-direct,
with the introduction of of InfiniSync,
which is a means by which critical applications
can enable a recovery point of zero,
Jacob will go into more details on that.
And then at the other end of the spectrum,
we deliver a deploying InfiniGuard.
Based on the same technology that Jacob described
as the core, we're now able to be the target
of factual re-enter, the typical grandfather/father/son,
every 24-hours you do a backup, you do an incremental.
And with deduplication as a front end to the core storage,
now we've got a coverage across a data protection spectrum
that nobody else can match.
Recovery point of zero, leveraging replication technologies
that Jacob will expand upon in a minute,
Snap technology internal to InfiniBox,
integrated with backup applications
such as the dash-board management is all consistent,
and then further down the spectrum,
the InfiniGuard itself,
dealing with the traditional kind
of data protection schemes.
A complete spectrum coverage.
Nobody else can deliver it.
Built on that technology
core to the InfinityBox storage itself.
>> So you got the full pyramid covered
with the same fundamental architecture.
But Jacob, you can't just throw the Box at data protection,
you have to bring in other features,
you got to be best of breed.
So maybe you can talk a little bit about,
double-click on some of those.
>> Sure.
So it all starts with kind of base foundation
for our data protection that is InfiniSnaps.
It's our snapshot core engine which from day one,
we designed to work at multi-petabyte scale,
and for us what that means is that
you need to support hundred-thousands of snapshots
and up to multiple millions.
That's by design how we designed the system.
But not only that,
you have to have zero impact on performance.
If you look at our systems in the field,
our customers are doing thousands of snapshots per day.
Some are doing tens of thousands or more per day
with no performance impact, that's not even measurable
on any of their performance graphs.
This is the foundational technology on which we have built
our forward looking additional data protection technologies.
So, if we look upper in the pyramid
of overall solutions for data protection,
after that we introduce our asynchronous replication
which is based on that snapshot technology for us.
The reason we had such an efficient
and groundbreaking snapshot technology,
enables us to do the lowest RPO protection
for async replication when comparing
to any storage product on the market.
We're talking about four seconds RPO,
and this is something that no other vendor was able to do,
because snapshots
break at that pace.
It's very hard to create and delete snapshots at scale
at a such a short interval.
>> Without performance degradation.
>> Exactly, exactly.
We were able to do this.
And this is kind of one example
of how our early days architectural planning
and investment in our product architecture
pays off year after year with every new feature.
That's why it seems easy for now
when we release features quickly,
because we have such a solid technical foundation.
>> One of the things that I was really fascinated by,
was your purchase of Axxana.
And how have you been able to use that
to get this RTO zero, that you're claiming on that?
I mean if you look at the marketplace at the moment,
it seems to be that the storage vendors in general
are owning this whole space of RTO, lower-RTO's, et cetera.
>> That's a great question,
but before we get into details about that
I want to cover
a kind of foundational technology for that,
that enabled us to do this.
And that is our synchronous replication
within InfiniBox already.
Which is also built on top of our async,
which in turn, built on top of our snapshots.
With our synchronous replication within InfiniBox,
we're delivering the lowest possible latency
for sync replication today.
Just to give you an example of how low
and how efficient that is,
systems that are running synchronous replication
on top of InfiniBox are having lower latency
than a single all-flash array writing locally.
Just imagine what it means.
We're able to do the round trip right to another array,
and complete the whole work faster than you'll have
an all-flash array, a typical all-flash array doing.
Now that foundational technology
also is a key part of our InfiniSync implementation.
Because what we did,
we took a great product which comes from Axxana,
which is the hardened black box,
capable of withstanding any type of disaster,
fire, floods, earthquake, whatever.
And we essentially integrated it very closely
with InfiniBox sync replication,
where we're writing this very efficient
low-latency sync operations to our InfiniSync appliance,
and essentially enabling RPO zero over in the distance.
So if you look at it from the heart things perspective
which is the data path, we had existing capability,
which is our sync replication within the array.
We just had to integrate it with another great product,
Axxana, and that essentially was more than anything
an integration work rather than from scratch development.
Because again, this is part of our philosophy,
we plan ahead as far a our product, road map, and strategy,
and when you lay out the foundation early on,
you get to the point where some things look easy,
because they were pre-made and prepared early on.
>> So that's the tip of the pyramid.
For those mission critical applications
where you need RPO zero,
you've now enabled customers to do that for much lower cost
than let's say for instance, the three site data center.
>> Yep.
>> What about the sort of fat middle, Neville,
of data protection, I think you guys call it InfiniGuard.
Right?
That's kind of your solution there.
>> So InfiniGuard simply is InfiniBox storage,
with all of it's resiliency and performance,
and algorithms that outperform typical arrays,
and in front of that we've integrated deduplication engines.
These deduplication engines present themselves as targets
to the traditional backup ecosystem,
receive data, de-duplicate it,
and use the resources of InfiniBox storage
integrated into the InfiniGuard.
And,
it's been
received well,
because its ability to deliver
aggressive recovery time objectives,
because of its performance in terms of resource speeds.
The traditional systems that have been designed
ten or fifteen years ago were okay at doing backups,
they were purposely built for backup processes.
They suffer greatly as a byproduct
of the process of deduplication,
and the IO profile that that generates.
InfiniGuard breaks through that,
because of its performance in the underlying storage,
in order to drive RTO's,
for the recovery of those files
that are under the 24-hour sort of data protection cycle.
And the customers are receiving it well.
They are amazed at the performance, the reliability,
and the simplicity within which
that fits into the existing ecosystem.
So it completes.
InfiniSync, InfiniGuard,
with InfiniBox at the core in the middle.
>> And so you partner with the backup software vendors.
>> Of course.
>> You're not writing your own backup software, right?
>> No no no.
So integration, Veeam, the ConVals,
the Veritas OST's, et cetera.
A little further integration
when it comes to InfiniBox Snap technology.
That is integrated into backup applications
such as ConVal or Veeam.
Specifically, you can use their dashboard
and their scheduling scheme to trigger the snap
that then is taken care of in InfiniBox.
So, it's quite a comprehensive deliverable
against the whole data protection paradigm.
>> And have you made a cloud of that now?
With your new service?
>> Not yet, but as Jacob said,
there's the vision, we are always building strategically,
slightly ahead of the curve.
So you can imagine that that's not lost on the radar screen.
>> Right.
>> I see this as a return on asset play.
In other words, I've got the architecture,
I've got my processes and procedures in place,
I don't have to go out and buy
a purpose built appliance for data protection now,
I can use the asset that's on my floor,
that people are trained on, what are your thoughts?
>> Absolutely, it seems to me that you have, uh
simplified tremendously,
all of those previous steps,
that took one to another to another,
and put them all in the same box,
and used the same technologies,
to achieve much better end to end results.
I think it's excellent.
>> You're absolutely correct,
and it's deliverable in a timely fashion,
because the foundation is so strong.
The investment that we made from day one,
to make sure that that storage architecture
was able to deliver the storage services
at the right cost point, at the right resiliency,
at the right performance levels,
is the means by which we're able to accomplish that.
No one else can do it.
>> And there's another arc to this story.
That we're constantly,
we're continually investing into that foundation.
Every, our customers,
the one unique thing that they experience with us,
is that their systems get better every time,
every release that we have, every month they get better.
Not only on performance, which is obvious,
in that our systems are improving all the time.
>> As opposed to the normal expectation is that
>> Yes.
>> as you fill it up it gets worse.
>> Yeah.
We are actually delivering the opposite.
Our customers that are buying the system today,
know that, the ones that experienced InfiniBox,
know that it will become better over time.
And that expands the whole spectrum.
It's performance, it's reliability,
but it also futures it.
All of the things that we discussed here,
were delivered free of charge through our software upgrade
to our existing InfiniBox customers.
And, without disclosing something specific looking forward,
there are many more things in that area
coming up pretty soon from us.
>> Very innovative.
You guys always solve problems differently,
cutting against the conventional wisdom.
You see, VMworld, a lot of glam.
A lot of big market.
And you guys, I was at your customer dinner the other night.
A lot of happy customers.
A very intimate event.
And a lot of good belly to belly conversations.
So congratulations.
Final thoughts from each of you on VMworld 2018,
the future of Infinidat,
anything you want to share with us?
Go ahead, Neville.
>> Good show,
the clients, the prospects that I've spoken to here,
they get to open their minds
in terms of our solution-offering,
and it's generated a lot of interest,
and it's going to be a good remainder of the year
and a good 2019.
>> Great, Jacob, final words from you.
>> I agree as well.
And we're, I'm seeing customers
that are actually reaching out to new prospects for us,
and telling the story of Infinidat,
and that's catching on.
And it's great to see that.
>> Jacob, Neville, thanks very much for coming to theCUBE.
Bringing you all the action from VMworld 2018,
I'm Dave Vellante, for David Floyer.
You're watching theCUBE,
and we'll be right back after this short break.
(light electronic music)