>> Announcer: It's theCUBE
covering the Virtual Vertica Big Data Conference 2020,
brought to you by Vertica.
>> Hi, everybody.
Welcome to this digital coverage
of the Vertica Big Data Conference.
You're watching theCUBE and my name is Dave Volante.
It's my pleasure to invite in Ben White,
who's the Senior Database Engineer at Domo.
Ben, great to see you, man.
Thanks for coming on.
>> Ben: Great to be here and here.
>> You know, as I said, you know, earlier
when we were off-camera,
I really was hoping I could meet you face-to-face
in Boston this year, but hey, I'll take it,
and, you know, our community really wants to hear
from experts like yourself.
But let's start with Domo as the company.
Share with us what Domo does and what your role is there.
>> Ben: Well, if I can go straight to the official
what Domo does is we provide,
we process data at BI scale,
we-we-we provide BI leverage at cloud scale in record time.
And so what that means is, you know,
we are a business-operating system
where we provide a number of
analytical abilities to companies of all sizes.
But we do that at cloud scale
and so I think that differentiates us quite a bit.
>> So a lot of your work, if I understand it,
and just in terms of understanding what Domo does,
there's a lot of pressure in terms of being real-time.
It's not, like, you sometimes don't know
what's coming at you, so it's ad-hoc.
I wonder if you could sort of talk about that, confirm that,
maybe add a little color to it.
>> Ben: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
That's probably the biggest challenge
it is to being, to operating Domo
is that it is an ad hoc environment.
And certainly what that means,
is that you've got analysts and executives
that are able to submit their own queries
with out very...
With very few limitations.
So from an engineering standpoint,
that challenge in that of course
is that you don't have this predictable dashboard
to plan for, when it comes to performance planning.
So it definitely presents some challenges for us
that we've done some pretty unique things,
I think, to address those.
>> So it sounds like your background fits well with that.
I understand your people have called you
a database whisperer and an envelope pusher.
What does that mean to a DBA in this day and age?
>> Ben: The whisperer part is probably a lost art,
in the sense that it's not really sustainable, right?
The idea that, you know,
whatever it is I'm able to do with the database,
it has to be repeatable.
And so that's really where analytics comes in, right?
That's where pushing the envelope comes in.
And in a lot of ways that's where Vertica comes in
with this open architecture.
And so as a person who has a reputation for saying,
"I understand this is what our limitations should be,
but I think we can do more."
Having a platform like Vertica,
with such an open architecture,
kind of lets you push those limits quite a bit.
>> I mean I've always felt like, you know, Vertica,
when I first saw the stone breaker architecture
and talked to some of the early founders,
I always felt like it was the Ferrari of databases,
certainly at the time.
And it sounds like you guys use it in that regard.
But talk a little bit more about how you use Vertica,
why, you know, why MPP, why Vertica?
You know, why-why can't you do this with RDBMS?
Educate us, a little bit, on, sort of, the basics.
>> Ben: For us it was,
part of what I mentioned when we started,
when we talked about the very nature of the Domo platform,
where there's an incredible amount of resiliency required.
And so Vertica, the MPP platform, of course,
allows us to build individual database clusters
that can perform best for the workload
that might be assigned to them.
So the open, the expandable, the...
The-the ability to grow Vertica, right,
as your base grows, those are all important factors,
when you're choosing early on, right?
Without a real idea of how growth would be
or what it will look like.
If you were kind of, throwing up something to the dark,
you look at the Vertica platform and you can see,
well, as I grow, I can, kind of, build with this, right?
I can do some unique things with the platform
in terms of this open architecture that will allow me
to not have to make all my decisions today, right?
(mutters)
>> So, you're using Vertica, I know, at least in part,
you're working with AWS as well,
can you describe sort of your environment?
Do you give anything on-prem, is everything in cloud?
What's your set up look like?
>> Ben: Sure, we have a hybrid cloud environment
where we have a significant presence in public files
in our own private cloud.
And so, yeah, having said that,
we certainly have a really an extensive presence,
I would say, in AWS.
So, they're definitely the partner of our when it comes to
providing the databases and the server power
that we need to operate on.
>> From a standpoint of engineering and architecting
a database, what were some of the challenges that you faced
when you had to create that hybrid architecture?
What did you face and how did you overcome that?
>> Ben: Well, you know, some of the...
There were some things we faced in terms of,
one, it made it easy that Vertica and AWS have their own...
They play well together, we'll say that.
And so, Vertica was designed to work on AWS.
So that part of it took care of it's self.
Now our own private cloud
and being able to connect that to our public cloud
has been a part of our own engineering abilities.
And again, I don't want to make little, make light of it,
it certainly not impossible.
And so we...
Some of the challenges that pertain to the database
really were in the early days, that you mentioned,
when we talked a little bit earlier about
Vertica's most recent eon mode.
And I'm sure you'll get to that.
But when I think of early challenges,
some of the early challenges were the architecture
of enterprise mode.
When I talk about all of these,
this idea that we can have unique databases
or database clusters of different sizes,
or this elasticity,
because really, if you know the enterprise architecture,
that's not necessarily the enterprise architecture.
So we had to do some unique things, I think,
to overcome that, right, early.
To get around the rigidness of enterprise.
>> Yeah, I mean, I hear you. Right?
Enterprise is complex
and you like when things are hardened and fossilized
but, in your ad hoc environment,
that's not what you needed.
So talk more about eon mode.
What is eon mode for you and how do you apply it?
What are some of the challenges and opportunities there,
that you've found?
>> Ben: So, the opportunities
were certainly in this elastic architecture
and the ability to separate in the storage,
immediately meant that for some of the unique data paths
that we wanted to take, right?
We could do that fairly quickly.
Certainly we could expand databases, right, quickly.
More importantly, now you can reduce.
Because previously, in the past, right,
when I mentioned the enterprise architecture,
the idea of growing a database in itself has it's pain.
As far as the time it takes to (mumbles) the data, and that.
Then think about taking that database back down
and (telephone interference).
All of a sudden, with eon, right, we had this elasticity,
where you could, kind of, start to think about auto scaling,
where you can go up and down
and maybe you could save some money
or maybe you could improve performance
or maybe you could meet demand,
At a time where customers need it most,
in a real way, right?
So it's definitely a game changer in that regard.
>> I always love to talk to the customers
because I get to, you know,
I hear from the vendor, what they say,
and then I like to, sort of, validate it.
So, you know, Vertica talks a lot about separating
compute and storage, and they're not the only one,
from an architectural standpoint who do that.
But Vertica stresses it.
They're the only one that does that
with a hybrid architecture.
They can do it on-prem, they can do it in the cloud.
From your experience,
well first of all, is that true?
You may or may not know,
but is that advantageous to you, and if so, why?
>> Ben: Well, first of all, it's certainly true.
Earlier in some of the original beta testing
for the on-prem eon modes that we...
I was able to participate in it and be aware of it.
So it certainly a realty,
they, it's actually supported on Pure storage
with FlashBlade and it's quite impressive.
You know, for who, who will that be for, tough one.
It's probably Vertica's question
that they're probably still answering,
but I think, obviously, some enterprise users
that probably have some hybrid cloud, right?
They have some architecture, they have some hardware,
that they themselves, want to make use of.
We certainly would probably fit into one of their,
you know, their market segments.
That they would say that we might be the ones to look at
on-prem eon mode.
Again, the beauty of it is, the elasticity, right?
The idea that you could have this...
So a lot of times...
So I want to go back real quick to separating compute.
>> Sure. Great.
>> Ben: You know, we start by separating it.
And I like to think of it, maybe more of, like, the up link.
Because in a true way, it's not necessarily separated
because ultimately, you're bringing the compute
and the storage back together.
But to be able to decouple it quickly,
replace nodes, bring in nodes,
that certainly fits, I think, what we were trying to do
in building this kind of ecosystem that could respond
to unknown of a customer query or of a customer demand.
>> I see, thank you for that clarification
because you're right, it's really not separating,
it's decoupling.
And that's important because you can scale them
independently, but you still need compute
and you still need storage to run your work load.
But from a cost standpoint, you don't have to buy it
in chunks.
You can buy in granular segments
for whatever your workload requires.
Is that, is that the correct understanding?
>> Ben: Yeah, and to, the ability to able to reuse compute.
So in the scenario of AWS
or even in the scenario of your on-prem solution,
you've got this data that's safe and secure in (mumbles)
computer storage, but the compute that you have,
you can reuse that, right?
You could have a scenario that you have some query
that needs more analytic, more-more fire power,
more memory, more what have you that you have.
And so you can kind of move between,
and that's important, right?
That's maybe more important than can I grow them separately.
Can I, can I borrow it.
Can I borrow that compute you're using for my (cuts out)
and give it back?
And you can do that, when you're so easily able to decouple
the compute and put it where you want, right?
And likewise, if you have a down period
where customers aren't using it,
you'd like to be able to not use that,
if you no longer require it,
you're not going to get it back.
'Cause it-it opened the door to a lot of those things
that allowed performance and process department to meet up.
>> I wonder if I can ask you a question,
you mentioned Pure a couple of times,
are you using Pure FlashBlade on-prem, is that correct?
>> Ben: That is the solution that is supported,
that is supported by Vertica for the on-prem.
(cuts out)
So at this point, we have been discussing with them
about some our own POCs for that.
Before, again, we're back to the idea of
how do we see ourselves using it?
And so we certainly discuss the feasibility
of bringing it in and giving it the (mumbles).
But that's not something we're...
Heavily on right now.
>> And what is Domo for Domo?
Tell us about that.
>> Ben: Well it really started as this idea,
even in the company, where we say,
we should be using Domo in our everyday business.
From the sales folk to the marketing folk, right.
Everybody is going to use Domo, it's a business platform.
For us in engineering team, it was kind of like,
well if we use Domo, say for instance,
to be better at the database engineers,
now we've pointed Domo at itself, right?
Vertica's running Domo in the background to some degree
and then we turn around and say,
"Hey Domo, how can we better at running you?"
So it became this kind of cool thing we'd play with.
We're now able to put some,
some methods together where we can actually do that, right.
Where we can monitor using our platform,
that's really good at processing large amounts of data
and spitting out useful analytics, right.
We take those analytics down,
make recommendation changes at the (cuts out).
For now, you've got Domo for Domo happening
and it allows us to sit at home and work.
Now, even when we have to, even before we had to.
>> Well, you know, look.
Look at us here. Right?
We couldn't meet in Boston physically,
we're now meeting remote.
You're on a hot spot because you've got some weather
in your satellite internet in Atlanta
and we're having a great conversation.
So-so, we're here with Ben White,
who's a senior database engineer at Domo.
I want to ask you about some of the envelope pushing
that you've done around autonomous.
You hear that word thrown around a lot.
Means a lot of things to a lot of different people.
How do you look at autonomous?
And how does it fit with eon
and some of the other things you're doing?
>> Ben: You know, I...
Autonomous and the idea idea of autonomy
is something that I don't even know
if that I have already, ready to define.
And so, even in my discussion,
I often mention it as a road to it.
Because exactly where it is, it's hard to pin down,
because there's always this idea
of how much trust do you give, right, to the system
or how much, how much is truly autonomous?
How much already is being intervened by us, the engineers.
So I do hedge on using that.
But on this road towards autonomy,
when we look at, what we're, how we're using Domo.
And even what that really means for Vertica,
because in a lot of my examples
and a lot of the things that we've engineered at Domo,
were designed to maybe overcome something that I thought
was a limitation thing.
And so many times as we've done that,
Vertica has kind of met us.
Like right after we've kind of engineered
our architecture stuff,
that we thought that could help on our side,
Vertica has a release that kind of addresses it.
So, the autonomy idea and the idea that we could
analyze metadata, make recommendations,
and then execute those recommendations
without innervation, is that road to autonomy.
Once the database is properly able to do that,
you could see in our ad hoc environment
how that would be pretty useful,
where with literally millions of queries every hour,
trying to figure out what's the best, you know, profile.
>> You know for-
>> Ben: (overlapping) probably do a better job in that,
than we could.
>> For years I felt like IT folks sometimes
were really, did not want that automation,
they wanted the knobs to turn.
But I wonder if you can comment.
I feel as though the level of complexity now,
with cloud, with on-prem, with, you know, hybrid,
multicloud, the scale, the speed, the real time,
it just gets, the pace is just too much for humans.
And so, it's almost like the industry
is going to have to capitulate to the machine.
And then, really trust the machine.
But I'm still sensing, from you,
a little bit of hesitation there,
but light at the end of the tunnel.
I wonder if you can comment?
>> Ben: Sure.
I think the light at the end of the tunnel
is even in the recent months and recent...
We've really begin to incorporate more machine learning
and artificial intelligence into the model, right.
And back to what we're saying.
So I do feel that we're getting closer to
finding conditions that we don't know about.
Because right now our system is kind of a rule,
rules based system, where we've said,
"Well these are the things we should be looking for,
these are the things that we think are a problem."
To mature to the point where the database
is recognizing anomalies and taking on pattern (mutters).
These are problems you didn't know happen.
And that's kind of the next step, right.
Identifying the things you didn't know.
And that's the path we're on now.
And it's probably more exciting even than, kind of,
nailing down all the things you think you know.
We figure out what we don't know yet.
>> So I want to close with,
I know you're a prominent member of the,
a respected member of the Vertica Customer Advisory Board,
and you know, without divulging anything confidential,
what are the kinds of things that you want
Vertica to do going forward?
>> Ben: Oh, I think, some of the in dated base for autonomy.
The ability to take some of the recommendations
that we know can derive from the metadata
that already exists in the platform
and start to execute some of the recommendations.
And another thing we've talked about,
and I've been pretty open about talking to it,
talking about it,
is the, a new version of the database designer,
I think, is something that I'm sure they're working on.
Lightweight, something that can give us that database design
without the overhead.
Those are two things, I think, as they nail
or basically the database designer, as they respect that,
they'll really have all the components in play
to do in based autonomy.
And I think that's, to some degree, where they're heading.
>> Nice.
Well Ben, listen, I really appreciate you coming on.
You're a thought leader, you're very open, open minded,
Vertica is, you know, a really open community.
I mean, they've always been quite transparent
in terms of where they're going.
It's just awesome to have guys like you on theCUBE
to-to share with our community.
So thank you so much
and hopefully we can meet face-to-face shortly.
>> Ben: Absolutely.
Well you stay safe in Boston,
one of my favorite towns and so no doubt,
when the doors get back open,
I'll be coming down.
Or coming up as it were.
>> Take care.
All right, and thank you for watching everybody.
Dave Volante with theCUBE,
we're here covering the Virtual Vertica Big Data Conference.
(electronic music)