Category: VMware

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GreyBeards talk VMware agentless backup with Chris Wahl, Tech Evangelist, Rubrik

In this edition we discuss Rubrik’s converged data backup with Chris Wahl (@ChrisWahl), Tech Evangelist for Rubrik.  You may recall Chris as a blogger on a number of Tech, Virtualization and Storage Field Days (VFD2, TFD extra at VMworld2014, SFD4, etc.) which is where  I met him. Chris is one of the bloggers that complains about me pounding on my laptop keyboard so loud at SFDs ;/

Chris had only been with Rubrik about 3 weeks when we  talked with him but both Howard and I thought it was time to find out what Rubrik was up to.

Rubrik provides an agentless, scale-out backup appliance for VMware vSphere clusters. It uses VADP to tap into VM data stores and obtain changed blocks for backup data. Rubrik deduplicates and compresses VM backup data and customers define a SLA  policy at the VM, folder or vSphere cluster level to determine when to backup VMs.

Rubrik supports cloud storage (any S3 or SWIFT provider) for long term archive storage of VM backups. With Rubrik, customers can search the backup catalog (for standard VM, NFS file, and backup metadata) that spans the Rubrik cluster data as well as S3/SWIFT storage backups.  Moreover, Rubrik can generate compliance reports to indicate how well your Rubrik-vSphere backup environment has met requested backup SLAs, over time.

Aside from the standard recovery facilities, Rubrik offers some interesting recovery options such as “instant restore” which pauses a VM and reconfigures its storage to come up on the Rubrik cluster (as a set of NFS VMDKs). Another option is “instant mount”, which runs a completely separate copy of a VM using Rubrik storage as its primary storage. In this case the VM’s NIC is disconnected so that the VM gets an error when it fires up, which has to be resolved to run the VM.

Rubrik hardware comes in a 2U package with 4 nodes. Each node has one flash SSD and 3 4 or 8TB SATA disks for customer data. The SSD is used for ingest caching and metadata. Data is triple mirrored across SATA disks in different nodes.

The latest release of Rubrik supports (compressed/deduped) data replication to other Rubrik clusters located up to asynchronous distances away.

This months edition runs just under 42 minutes and gets somewhat technical in places. We had fun with Chris on our call and hope you enjoy the podcast.

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Chris Wahl, Tech Evangelist, Rubrik

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Chris Wahl, author of the award winning Wahl Network blog and Technical Evangelist at Rubrik, focuses on creating content that revolves around virtualization, automation, infrastructure, and evangelizing products and services that benefit the technology community.

In addition to co-authoring “Networking for VMware Administrators” for VMware Press, he has published hundreds of articles and was voted the “Favorite Independent Blogger” by vSphere-Land three years in a row (2013 – 2015).

Chris also travels globally to speak at industry events, provide subject matter expertise, and offer perspectives to startups and investors as a technical adviser.

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GreyBeards talk data-aware storage with Paula Long & Dave Siles, CEO&CTO DataGravity

In this podcast we discuss data-aware storage with Paula Long, CEO/Co-Founder and Dave Siles, CTO of DataGravity. Paula comes from EqualLogic and Dave from Veeam so they both have a lot of history in and around the storage industry, almost qualifying them as grey hairs :/

Data-aware storage is a new paradigm in storage that combines primary (block and file) storage, file and data analytics and text indexing. Just to top it off, they also add data protection to a separate storage partition. Their system is VM aware and is able to crack open VMDKs to find out what’s inside. With all their file and data analytics, DataGravity is  able to supply data leakage detection and a much better understanding of what data is actually being stored on the system.

Paula believes, in 5 years or so, this new approach to storage will become common. Their system also supports targeted data deduplication and compression as well as provide self-service restore and a “google-like” rich search experience to their data aware storage.

DataGravity was designed for mid-market but are being pulled up market by workgroups as department level storage for F500 companies. They find that once installed,  they usually uncover some exposure and then other departments take notice. Also they’re discovering an awful lot of dormant data and moving this off of primary storage can save quite a lot.

DataGravity has a 2U controller with a 24-disk drive shelf but have SSDs inside the controllers. They use spinning disks for a majority of the data storage.

DataGravity has an interesting twist on the active-passive, standard dual conttroller/HA approach to storage, which you will have to listen to the podcast to truly understand.

This months episode runs a bit over 44 minutes and wanders over a lot of high ground but dips into technical waters occasionally.

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Paula Long, CEO & Co-founder, DataGravity

PaulaLong-G Paula brings over 30 years of experience to DataGravity in delivering meaningful and game changing high-tech innovation. Prior to DataGravity, Paula served as vice president of product development at Heartland Robotics. In 2001 Paula co-founded storage provider EqualLogic, resetting the bar on how customers managed and purchased data storage. EqualLogic was acquired by Dell for $1.4 billion in 2008 and Paula remained at Dell as vice president of storage until 2010. Previous to EqualLogic, she served in several engineering management positions at Allaire Corporation and oversaw all aspects of the ClusterCATS product line while at Bright Tiger Technologies.

Her executive and technical leadership has been extensively recognized, including the New Hampshire High Tech Council Entrepreneur of the Year award, the Ernst & Young 2008 Northeast Regional “Entrepreneur of the Year” and a national finalist for the same award. Her technical awards span systems designs and enterprise software including the EqualLogic and ClusterCATS product lines. She is a graduate of Westfield State College

Paula is also active in the startup community. Outside of high tech, she works with charities creating equality for professional women and girls, as well as with organizations enabling literacy for all children, regardless of economic status.

Dave Siles, CTO DataGravity

DaveSiles-colorWith more than 20 years in operations and leadership roles with growth companies, David serves as chief technology officer of DataGravity, responsible for leading the technical strategic vision for the company while guiding our product management teams and research and development efforts to better serve the needs of organizations looking for more from their data storage.

Prior to becoming CTO, David served as vice president of worldwide field operations at DataGravity. Previously, David was a member of the senior leadership team at Veeam Software, a leading data protection software provider for virtualized and cloud environments.

David also served as CTO and VP of professional services for systems integrator Hipskind TSG. He also served as CTO for Kane County, Ill., and has held technology leadership roles with various organizations. A graduate of DeVry University, he is a frequent speaker at top tier technology shows and is a recognized expert in virtualization.

 

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GreyBeards talk VVOLs with “Father of VVOLs”, Satyam Vaghani, CTO PernixData

In this podcast we discuss VMware VVOLs with Satyam Vaghani, Co-Founder and CTO PernixData. In Satyam’s previous job, he was VMware’s Principal Engineer and Storage CTO   and worked extensively on VVOLs and other VMware storage enhancements. He also happens to be the GreyBeards second repeat guest.

With vSphere 6 coming out by the end  of this quarter, it’s a good time to talk about VVOLs and VASA 2.0.

In the podcast, Ray and Howard got a bit wild on the terminology we used to describe how VMware VVOLs work. Satyam wanted to be sure that we at least provided a decoder ring to get us back to proper VMware terminology.

  • So in the podcast when we discuss the magic LUN, control LUN or the container LUN, VMware calls this the  Protocol Endpoint (PE). VMware uses the+ PE for a message passing interface to inform a storage system what IO to perform. Although technically in block storage the PE is a LUN, it really has no data storage behind it, rather it’s only used as a message box to perform IO on other storage objects.
  • In the podcast when we talk about micro-LUNs, sub-LUNs or VM data objects. VMware calls these items a Virtual Volume (VVOL). VVOLs represent a new version of VMDK. But because VVOLs  no longer have to reside with other VVOLs (VMDKs) on the same LUN, they can be replicated, snapshotted, cloned, etc., all by themselves, without having to impact other VVOLs in the storage system.

VMware is also releasing VASA 2.0 to provide an easier, more standardized approach to provisioning VVOLs. Together, VVOLs and VASA 2.0 should theoretically greatly reduce the burden on VMware storage administration.

We go into more detail how block storage VVOLs work, the benefits of VVOLs-VASA 2.0, and many other items in our discussions with Satyam.  Listen to the podcast to learn more…

This months episode runs about 45 minutes. 

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Satyam Vaghani Bio’s

Satyam Vaghani, Co-founder and CTO Pernixdata
Satyam Vaghani is Co-Founder and CTO at PernixData, a company that leverages server flash to enable scale-out storage performance that is independent of capacity. Earlier, he was VMware’s Principal Engineer and Storage CTO where he spent 10 years delivering fundamental storage innovations in vSphere. He is most known for creating the Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) that set a storage standard for server virtualization. He has authored 50+ patents, led industry-wide changes in storage systems and standards via VAAI, and has been a regular speaker at VMworld and other industry and academic forums. Satyam received his Masters in CS from Stanford and Bachelors in CS from BITS Pilani.