 From Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back. This is theCUBE coverage of VMworld 2018. Always loved when we get to dig in with the practitioners here. I'm Stu Miniman, my co-host is Justin Warren. Welcome to the program. First time guest, Andrew Chavez, who's a network and information technology manager with Indian Pueblo Culture Center out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, that's correct. Thanks so much for joining us. Well, thank you so much for having me. All right, so first of all, tell us a little bit about your organization and your role. Well, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center is kind of a touch point for all the 19 tribes in the state of New Mexico. It's actually one of the only places in the entire world where 19 tribes, 19 different cultures, really, of Native American people have gotten together, built a cultural center, and kind of have formed the gateway in Albuquerque, kind of the largest city in New Mexico, and the gateways to the Pueblo. So it's kind of a cool place. There's just a mix of a lot of neat people, a lot of the different Pueblo people come in and out. It's culturally just a great place to be, just a wonderful, cool place. And on top of that, we also formed the Pueblo Cultural Center formed a developer corporation. So not only do we have the cultural side, which is really neat, but we have this development side that is developing the old Indian schools. I don't know if you remember the cultural background of the Indian schools throughout the United States of America. They've actually taken some of the, taken the land for the cultural center and the Indian school and are repurposing it to really help out the cultural center and the 19 tribes as we give back to them. So is this nonprofit then or? We have a nonprofit side and a for-profit side. Okay, and it gives a little bit of the scope of the operation. You mentioned the tribes and everything, but is it multiple locations? You know, what, and your scope or responsibilities? It's actually multiple locations. So we are actually housed in the cultural center itself, but directly across the street, we're building up places like hotels, restaurants, office buildings, things of that nature to kind of diversify the portfolio of things that we offer to the community at large. That money is given back to the stakeholders who are the 19 Pueblos. And I was brought in last year to kind of take what they were as an IT department and really improve on what they were doing, what they've already done and just kind of take what's already been done and make it better and really be able to serve not only the Pueblo Cultural Center, but I'm working to make a showcase there. If we can. So Andrew, maybe you could give us a bit of an idea of how IT supports the mission of the cultural center. So a lot of people worry that IT is just a cost center and it sits off on the end there and it's something that you have to pay for. So what are some of the things that IT enables the cultural center to do that they wouldn't be able to do otherwise? Well, some of the things that we do is cultural preservation is really one of the big things that we do. Because we do represent all the 19 tribes of New Mexico, different aspects of each of those tribes in terms of pottery, paintings, the very rich nature of the handcrafted pieces that the Pueblos take care of are all represented in the cultural center. So it's not only putting those, but it's cataloging, archiving them and help with the preservation and the dissemination of that information, right? So, you know, when we walk through our museum, it's all, all the things are automated. You can go in and have, you know, hear the different press buttons and hear the different languages, see how the pottery is made, see how a lot of these arts and crafts come together, see the history of the Pueblo people and kind of what happened and how really other cultures have interdispersed themselves and interweave themselves within really the rich history of the Pueblo people of New Mexico and how this overarching culture has really made a difference in the state and, you know, those preservations. And on top of that, it's using technology to be able to, again, disseminate it and show how those things work going forward. That's great stuff, Andrew. All right, so all the people that visit probably don't understand all the stuff that's behind the scenes. So it's like all of us that have worked in IT, people are like, oh, you do computer stuff, right? So take us a little bit behind the curtain and tell us a little bit about what technologies you're using to help enable all of those great things that you talked about. Well, currently what we're using is we kind of started really green field. The folks that were there before me had worked in more of a single server, hot closet environment, some of the ways it used to be. There were a lot of consultants and the decision was made that to match a lot of the technology initiatives that are going on with the other Pueblos, cultural center needs to catch up. So that's one of the reasons why I was brought in. So one of the first things we did is say, what can we start doing? And so when you pull the curtain back, one of the things we really decided on was going to a full virtual environment and finding the right technology and the right player to help us put together a virtual environment, help us build out a data center and do some of those things. So that's kind of where we started. Started with a five-year plan on that build out and how to maximize not only the budgets that we have, but push those budgets through proper depreciation. So it was really kind of neat being able to go to a place that I could kind of just pick and choose the things I needed to move forward and kind of set the course for us moving forward. All right, so maybe could you tell us about some of the decisions you actually made there? So what did you choose and what led you to make that particular choice of technology provider? Well, initially I started out because I'd worked in a previous endeavor using UCS, the three-in-one solution. You have your OS, you have the host and then you have the NAS that's presented to the host and that's what originally what I was going to do because that's what I knew. But I went out to a conference called TribalNet and was introduced to Nutanix. And I was aware of Nutanix, but I hadn't delved into it. So I kind of talked to one of the reps out there Justin and he kind of talked me through Nutanix. When I got back, I searched out a place in Albuquerque called Artem Technologies who sells Nutanix and kind of sat with them. Now, the old UCS was less expensive because it's a little older technology and we didn't think we could get into a hyper-converged solution. But working with the Nutanix rep and my rep from Artem, they really found a way to make it affordable for us and get us into the hyper-converged technology which is where I wanted to go. So it was really kind of, that was the first big decision I made and I've been very happy with it. Excellent. So having made that decision and put it in, what are some of the things that you've now been able to do is given that this is where you wanted to go and thought maybe it wasn't going to be possible but now it is. So what's that enabled you to do that you were looking forward to being able to do? Well, it's been able for us to consolidate a lot of what we have. I mean, we haven't used it to its fullest potential because the implementation's only been in about five months but what we've been able to do is take those different single servers and move them into a virtualized environment and then be able to build out storage area and place user files and group files and all the disparate storage areas throughout that were siloed throughout the environment, put it on one single piece of equipment that we can watch. It's been able to allow us to move to a backup solution that goes to the cloud and isn't fractured, right? So it puts it all in one single area that we can watch and gives us a single pane of glass for all of our servers, which we didn't have before. It's just made us better at what we do really and be able to watch what we're doing a lot better. Yeah, Andrew, it's interesting. We talked for years about hyperconvergence. It's not just about converging into the footprint but it changes the model because it's really more of a distributed architecture. Maybe, I think you've got some geographic locations, maybe help discuss how that fits together between multiple locations, multi-cloud. It's not just about taking a couple of servers and putting it down to a smaller footprint. It's giving you more flexibility. And you've really hit the nail on the head for the five-year plan, right? So year one is like choose the vendor, choose the course, but the five-year plan is to be able to geographically disperse what we're doing. Because we're using Nutanix, it allows us to put a cluster, three-node cluster over here in a single box. We take another single box and put a two-node cluster over here and geographically disperse it. It also allows us, I talked about depreciation and this is something that I worked on in other places. What we did is we bought the Nutanix node that we have now for today, right? We plan on using that and buying a secondary node and using that for the next three years. As we build up the, remember I talked about having the development across the road, as we're building new buildings, we're going to build an alternate data center there. In the third year, we're going to take that piece of equipment and move that to the data center and build out a disaster recovery center. So when we buy the new Nutanix node, those two will now be joined. So not only are we sharing information between the two locations and have, you know, backups geographically dispersed, but we also have been able to, you know, we can use SRM a lot of different ways to keep the geographical locations up, keep business continuity. But the other portion that is really interesting to us is, you know, most technologies about a three-year depreciation schedule, right? We've been able to take that three-year depreciation schedule and because we're using the older technology as our backup business continuity center, that takes it out to a six-year depreciation, which extends the life of what we have and be able, you know, when we buy new equipment, it's the newest, greatest, we have the business continuity equipment. And then, of course, the nodes talk to each other, so we're doing data duplication across two locations. So really, when we're all done, we can have up to four to six sets of backups throughout any portion of the day. So it really protects our data and gives us a continuity that we wouldn't have before. As someone who really likes a good financial model and spends a lot of time in spreadsheets, working around with that, it's really good to hear someone from an IT arena talking about some of the financial impacts on this, some of the business impacts on this. And it shows that what is possible when IT takes an interest in the business issues and shows, and we were talking about this earlier on theCUBE, about how IT people getting a seat at the table, being able to have that conversation about the five-year plan, about what makes IT strategically important to the organization. And it's really great hearing customers actually talk about IT in that context. Well, that's one of the things that I think IT gets lost in. And as you know, with CIOs, CFOs, CEOs, IT is always seen as a cost center. And we'd eventually like to not be a cost center. We'd like to make money. But we have to be fiscally responsible. We have to be fiscally responsible for a number of reasons where I come from at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center because we do have a responsibility to our shareholders. We have a responsibility to the Native American people that are taking care of us. We need to take care of them. So if we can find the technology that we need, that we can be a showcase, not only in the technological realm, but also how we budget and take care of money, that shows a huge commitment to what we're doing. And you can't be a showcase unless you're going to be fiscally responsible as well as technologically responsible. So that's what we're really trying to do. And Andrew, the other thing that strikes me from your conversation, you talk about this five-year plan. Sometimes we come to the shows and it's like, oh wait, I'm worried about lock-in and enterprise license agreement. Talk about what you look for in choosing partners that that'll be strategic that will be with you for this kind of engagement. Well, I'm looking for, everybody's always looking for cutting edge, right? But you need to have cutting edge with a background, with a roadmap, right? So what I look for in not only a partner that service me locally, but the larger vendor partners, for instance, Nutanix, I look for somebody who has a roadmap of what they're doing. Here's what we started with. You know, if I have a five-year plan, what's your five-year plan? What was your five-year plan? Where did you come from? Where are you going to? Can you show me what's going to go on over here? And that's one thing that I really liked about Nutanix is they had, yeah, here's what got us here. Here's how it's changing. Here's what we can show you moving forward. And here's how it can help you. And then my vendor, like in Albuquerque, I want the same things. Are you growing? Are you stagnant? What's your customer list? And then the last portion of that is really a relationship sell. There are people out there that will go buy from any vendor because that's what the price ensues. But I can't buy on just price because I need pricing and support and be able to, you know, one call. We used to say the one throat to choke. I don't like using that anymore. But you know, somebody you can drive to and have a conversation with. And that's one thing I've really respected about my vendors and I like from a customer perspective, it's people that are real, they come and see you. And then I can reach out to the, not only my local vendor, but the folks that support them. I do have to say with Nutanix, I met Justin, who was the rep from Nutanix. He got me involved with the sales engineer at that point and they were on site. They worked directly with me and had just built a great relationship around you know, this brand new purchase. Something I'm not familiar with, but it's a foray into a wider world. And it made me really comfortable with my decision. What's the most exciting thing that you're looking forward to? So you've seen the roadmap, or you've spoken to the vendors and you have an idea of what your five year plan is. What's the most exciting thing that's going to be coming up in the next few years? The biggest thing for me, and it's probably not even a new thing for Nutanix, but it's what Nutanix is built on. It's what you talked about, the geographical separation, you know, the node building and how we can, okay, you need more compute, we can give you more compute. You need more storage, we can give you more storage. You need to add something over here, we can do that. It's the flexibility it gives me to stick within budget, right? We don't have to do this huge budget every year to be able to prop up what we need. We can buy piece by piece and build it out. And again, part of that fiscal responsibility is being forward-looking and working with a company that's saying, hey, we can get you this today. We're going to take care of you. We're going to listen to your needs. We're going to get you what you need. And here's the bolt-on pieces as we move forward. So I think that's the most exciting piece is being able to grow within that framework. You know, starting, I like to use a word called platforms for what we're doing, right? And I think from an IT perspective, that's what we're doing. And from a cultural perspective, the Indian public cultural perspective, it's having that platform. So if we say from a museum standpoint, we found the latest and greatest software that's going to allow people to do virtual reality, but we need a backend to support it. I can say, I got that, you know, we've been able to build the platform to put that on. So it's been able, it's putting that platform in place, building on that platform, us growing into it, and then that company growing with us. And that's been something that's been just transformative for us. Well, Andrew, you talked about authentic conversations. We really appreciate you sharing your story with us. Be sure to check out indianplaybelow.org for all that they have to offer. I want to go check out the museum. You've got a great, you know, list of cultural activities there. So thanks so much for joining us. Yes, come and see us at the Indian Public Cultural Center. The best time to come is the first week in October for the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. We'd love to have you all. All right, for Justin Warren, I'm Stu Minin. I still have lots more coverage here from VMworld 2018. Thanks for watching theCUBE.