>> Narrator: 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 Stuart Miniman
and this is theCUBES's coverage of VMworld 2020.
Our 11th year doing the show
and happy to welcome back to the program
one of our CUBE's alums.
Somebody that's is going to VMworld
longer than we have been doing it for theCUBE.
So Vaughn Stewart
he is the Vice President
of Technology Alliances with Pure Storage
Vaughn, nice to see you.
How you doing?
>> Hey, Stu.
CUBE thanks for having me back.
I miss you guys
I wish we were doing this in person.
>> Yeah, we all wish we were in person
but as we've been saying all this year,
we get to be together even while we're apart.
So we look to you on little screens
and things like that
rather than bumping into each other
at some of the after parties
or the coffee shops all around San Francisco.
So Vaughn,
obviously you know Pure Storage
long, long, long partnership with VMware.
I think back the first time
that I probably met with the Pure team,
in person,
it probably was around Moscone,
having a breakfast
having a lunch, having a briefing or the likes.
So just give us the high level.
I know we've got a lot of things to dig into.
Pure and VMware,
how's the partnership going these days?
>> Partnership is growing fantastic
Pure invests a lot of engineering resources
in programs with VMware.
Particularly the VMware design partner programs for vVols,
Container-Native Storage et cetera.
The relationship is healthy
the business is growing strong.
I'm very excited about the investments
that VMware is making around VMware Cloud Foundation
as a replatforming of what's going on MPREM
to help better enable hybrid cloud
and to support Tanzu and Kubernetes platforms.
So a lot going on at the infrastructure level
that ultimately helps customers of all
to adopt cloud native workloads and applications.
>> Wonderful. Well a lot of pieces to unpack that.
Of course Tanzu big piece of what they're talking about.
But let's start.
You mentioned VCF.
You know what is it on the infrastructure side,
that is kind of driving your customer adoption these days,
and the some of the latest integrations that you're doing?
>> Yeah you know VCF has really caught the attention
of our mid to large
or mid to enterprise size customers.
The focus around, as I use the phrase replatform
is planning out with VMworld phrase.
But the focus on simplifying the lifecycle management,
giving you a greater means to connect
to the public cloud.
I don't know if you're aware,
but all VMware public cloud offerings
have the VCF framework in terms of architectural framework.
So now bringing that back on-prem,
allowing customers on a per workload domain basis
to extend to a hybrid cloud capability.
It's a really big advancement
from kind of the base vSphere infrastructure,
which architecturally hasn't had a significant advancement
in a number of years.
What's really big around VCF
besides the hybrid connectivity,
is the couple of new tools
SDDC Manager and vSphere Lifecycle Manager.
These tools can actually manage the infrastructure
from bare metal up to workload domains
and then from workload domains
you're now handing off to
considered like delegated vCenter Servers right?
So that the owner of a workload if you will
and then that person can go ahead
and provision virtual machines or containers,
based on whatever is required to run their workloads.
So for us
the big gain of this is
the advancement in the VMware management.
They are bringing their strength in providing simplicity,
and end-to-end hardwared application management
to disaggregated architectures.
Where the focus of that capability has been with HCI
over say the past five or six years.
And so this really helps close that last gap,
if you will,
and completes a 360 degree view
of providing simplified management
across dissimilar architecture
and it's consistent and it's standardized by VMware.
So HCI, disaggregated architecture, public cloud,
it all operates the same.
>> So Vaughn,
you made a comment about not a lot of changes.
If I remember our friends at VMware
they made a statement vSphere 7
was the biggest architectural change in over a decade.
Of course bringing in Kubernetes
it's a major piece of the Tanzu discussion.
Pure.
Your team's been pretty busy in the Kubernetes space too.
Recent acquisition of Portwox to help accelerate that.
Maybe let's talk a little bit about you know
cloud native.
What you're hearing from your customers.
(chuckles)
And yeah, like we've
Dave Vellante had a nice interview with,
Pure and Portwox CEOs.
Give the VMworld audience a little bit of an update
as you know where you all fit in the Kubernetes space.
>> Yeah and actually,
there was a lot that you shared there kind of
in connecting the VCF piece through to vSphere 7
and a lot of changes there in driving into Tanzu
and containers.
So maybe we're going to jump around here a bit
but look we're really excited.
We've been working with VMware,
but in addition to all of our application partners,
you are seeing
nearly every traditional enterprise application
being replatformed to support containers.
I'd love to share with you more details,
but there's a lot of NDAs I'd be breaking in that.
But the way for
enterprise adoption of containers is right upon us.
And so the timing for VMware Tanzu is ideal.
Our focus has always been around providing a rich set
of data services.
One that provides faster provisioning,
simplified fleet management,
and the ability to move that container
and those data services between different clouds
and different cloud platforms,
Be it on-prem,
or in the public cloud space.
We've had a lot of success doing that
with the Pure Service Orchestrator Version 6.0
enables CSI compliant persistent storage capabilities.
And it does support Tanzu today.
The addition or I should say the acquisition
of Portworx is really interestinG.
Because now we're bringing on an enhanced set
of data services
that not only run on a Pure Storage storage products,
but runs universally regardless of the storage platform,
or the Cloud architecture.
The capabilities within Portworx are above
and beyond what we had in PSO.
So this is a great expansion of our capabilities.
And ultimately we want to help customers.
Whether they want to do containers solely on Tanzu,
or if they're going to mix Tanzu with say Amazon EKS,
or they've got some department
that does development on OpenShift.
Whatever it might be.
You know that the focus of storage vendors
is obviously to help customers make that data available
on these platforms through a consistent control plan.
>> Yeah.
Vaughn it's a great acquisition.
Think a nice fit.
Anybody that's been talking to Pure
the last year or so you've been.
How do we take the storage
make it more cloud native if you will.
So you've got code.
Obviously, you've got a great partnership with VMware,
but as you said,
in Amazon and some of the other hyper clouds
those clouds, those storage services,
no matter where a customer is,
so that that core value,
of course we know,
is this the software underneath it.
And that's what Portworx is.
So you know not only Pure's,
but other hardware,
other clouds and the likes.
So a really interesting space
You know Vaughn, you and I've been covering this,
since the early days of VMware.
Hey this software is kind of a big deal
and you know (chuckles)
cloud in many ways is an extension of what we're doing.
I know we used to joke how many years was it
that VMworld was storage world?
You know.
>> Ooh yeah.
>> There was talk about like big architectural changes,
you know vVols
When that finally came out,
it was years of hard work by many of the big companies,
including your previous and current
you know employer.
What's the latest?
My understanding is that there are some updates there
when it comes to the underlying vVols.
What are the storage people need to know?
>> Yeah.
So great question
and VMware is always been infrastructure world really
Right?
Like it is a showcase for storage.
But it's also been a showcase for the compute vendors
and every Intel partner.
From a storage perspective,
a lot is going on this year
that should really excite both VMware admins
and those who are storage centric in their day-to-day jobs.
Let's start with the recent news.
vVols has been promoted within VCF
to being principal storage.
For those of you who maybe are unfamiliar
with this term 'principal storage'
VMware Cloud Foundation supports any form of storage
that's supported by vSphere.
But SDDC manager
tool that I was sharing with you earlier
that really excites
large scale organizations around it's end-to-end simplicity
and management.
It had a smaller,
less robust support list
when it comes to provisioning external storage.
And so it had two tiers.
Principal and secondary.
Principal meant SDDC manager could provision
and deprovision sub-tenants.
So the recent news brings vVols both on Fiber Channel
and iSCSI up to that principal tier.
Pure Storage is a VMware design partner around vVols.
We are one of the most adopted vVols storage platforms,
and we are really leaning in on VCF.
So we are very happy to see that come
to fruition for our customers.
Part of why VMware partners with Pure Storage around VCF,
is they want VCF enabled on any Fabric.
And you know some vendors only offer ethernet only
forms of connectivity.
But with Pure Storage,
we don't care what your Fabric is right.
We just want to provide the data services
be it ethernet, fiber channel
or next generation NVMe over Fabric.
That last point segments into another
recent announcement from from VMware.
Which is the support for NVMe over Fabric within vSphere 7.
This is key because NVMe over Fabric
allows the IO path
to move away from SCSI based form of communication
one to a memory based form of communication.
And this unleashes a new level of performance,
a way to better support those business
and mission critical applications.
Or a way to drive greater density
into a smaller form factor
and footprint within your data center.
Obviously Fabric upgrades tend to not happen
in conjunction with hypervisor upgrades,
but the ability to provide customers a roadmap
and a means to be able to continually evolve
their infrastructure non disruptively,
is our key there.
It would be remiss of me
to not point out one kind of orthogonal element,
which is the new vMotion capabilities that are in vSphere 7.
Customers have been tried for a number of years,
probably from vSphere 4 through six
to virtualize more performance centric
and resource intense applications.
And they've had some challenges around scale,
particularly with the non-disruptive.
The ability to non disruptively move a workload.
VMware rewrote vMotion for vSphere 7
so it can tackle these larger
more performance centric workloads.
And when you combine that along with the addition
of like NVMe over Fabric support,
I think you're truly at a time where you can say,
almost every workload can run on a VMware platform, right?
From your traditional two two consolidation
where you started
to looking at performance centric AI,
in machine learning workloads.
>> Yeah.
A lot of pieces you just walked through Vaughn,
I'm glad especially the NVMe over Fabric piece.
Just want to drill down one level there.
As you said,
there's a lot of pieces
to make sure that this is fully worked.
The standards are done,
the software is there,
the hardware, the various interconnects there
and then okay,
when's does the customer actually ready to upgrade that?
How much of that is just
you know okay hitting the update button.
How much of that is do I need to do a refresh?
And we understand that the testing
and purchasing cycles there.
So how many customers are you talking to
that are like, "Okay I've got all the pieces,
"we're ready to roll,
"we're implementing in 2020."
And you know, what's that roadmap look like
for kind of the typical enterprise,
which I know is a bit of an oxymoron?
(laughs)
>> So we've got a handful.
I think that's a fair way to give you a size
without giving you an exact number.
We had a handful of customers
who have NVMe over Fabric deployments today.
The deployments tend to be application
or workload centric versus ubiquitous
across the data center.
Which I think does bear an opportunity for VMware adoption
to be a little bit earlier
than across the entire data center.
Because most VMware architectures today
are based on top of rack switching.
Whether that switching is fiber channel or ethernet base,
I think the ability to then upgrade that switch.
Either you've got modern hardware
and it just needs a firmware update,
or you've got to replace that hardware
and implement NVMe over Fabric.
I think that's very attractive.
Particularly that you can do so in a
non disruptive manner with a flash array
or with flash deck.
We expect to see the adoption
really start to take take hold in 2021.
But you probably won't see large market gains
until 2022 or 23.
>> Well that's super helpful Vaughn
especially Pure Storage
you've got customers that have
some of the most demanding performance environments
out there.
So they are some of the early adopters
that you would expect
go into adopting this new technology.
All right.
I guess last piece, listening to the keynote
looking at all the announcements that they have
you know, VMware obviously has a big push
into the cloud native space
they've made a whole lot of acquisitions.
We touched on a little bit before
but what's your take as to what you are hearing
from your customers,
where they are with adoption into really modernizing
and accelerating their businesses today?
>> I think for the majority of our customers
and again I would consider more of a commercial
or mid market centric up through enterprise.
They've particularity enterprise,
they've adapted cloud native technologies
particularity in developing their own internal
or customer facing applications.
So I don't think the technology is new.
I think where it's newer is this re platforming
of enterprise applications
and I think that what's driving the timeline for VMware.
We have a number of Pivotal deployments
that run up here.
Very large scale Pivotal deployments that run on Pure.
And hopefully as you audience knows
Pivotal is what VMware Tanzu has been rebranded as.
So we've had success there.
We've have had success in the test and development
and in the web facing application space.
But now this is a broader initiative from VMware
supporting enterprise apps along with
you know the cloud native disaggregated applications
that have been built over the last say five to 10 years.
But to provide it though a single management plane.
So I'm bullish, I'm really bullish
I think they are in a unique position
compared to the rest of our technology partners
you know they own the enterprise virtualization real estate
and as so their ability to successfully
add cloud native application to that,
I think it's a powerful mix .
For us the opportunity is great.
I want to thank you for focusing on the fact that
we've been able to deliver performance.
But performances found on any flash product.
And it's not to demote our performance by any means,
but when you look at our customers and what they purchase us
in terms of the repeat purchases,
it's around simplicity, it's around the native integration
with VMware and the extending of that value prop
through our capabilities
whether it's through the end-to-end
infrastructure management, through data protection
extending in the hybrid cloud.
That's where Pure Storage customers
fall in love with Pure Storage.
And so it's a combination of performance, simplicity
and ultimately, you know, economics.
As we know economics drive most technical decisions
not the actual technology itself.
>> Well, Vaughn Stewart thank you so much for the update,
congratulation on all the new things
that are being brought out in the partnership
>> Thank you Stu appreciate being on theCUBE,
big shout out to VMware
congratulations on VMworld 2020,
look forward to seeing everybody soon
>> All right, stay tuned for more coverage VMworld 2020
I'm Stu Miniman and that you for watching theCUBE.
(bright upbeat music)