 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 Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's coverage of VMworld 2020. Of course, it's such a broad ecosystem in the VMware environment. Been talking a lot of course this year about what's happening in the cloud native space. This year seven has Kubernetes coming into the virtualized environment and one of those key pieces of doing cloud is need to make sure data protection still works. And of course, VMware is a long history working with lots of companies. In this segment, we're going to be digging into the VMware and Dell solutions for data protection. So happy to welcome the program. First I have from VMware, Tom Spoonware, he's a product line manager for modern application platform with VMware. And welcome back to the program, one of our CUBE alumni. Effry Natal Shai, who is with Dell Technologies director of data protection and cloud native apps. Effry, welcome back. Tom, welcome to the program. Thank you very much. It's good to be here. So Tom, I kind of teed it up in my intro, VMware for the longest time, as long as I can remember, we've really talked about that ecosystem, those joint solutions. Remember back when we started the CUBE in 2010, you'd go there and it would be, oh, there's $15, no $20 for every dollar that you spend on VMware that the ecosystem kind of pulls along when VMware started building the VMware cloud foundation and the VMware cloud solutions, data protection really went along with it. So the integrations that they've done with vSphere, hold them in their environments, Tanzu, Kubernetes, there's a lot of new pieces. But I think some of those principles have stayed the same. So why don't you start us off, tell us a little bit philosophically, how's VMware treating this space and how data protection fills into it and then Effry will get your take on it too. Yeah, sure, absolutely. So from the perspective of VMware and the ecosystem, as you say, we want to be very inclusive, we wanna bring the ecosystem and our partners along with what we're doing regardless of what space it is. And in the modern applications platform and cloud native tooling, we're very much thinking along the same lines. And as it relates to data protection and specific, cloud native is a place where mainly it's been thought of as a place for stateless applications. But what we're seeing in people's deployments is more and more stateful applications are beginning to move to Kubernetes and into containers. And so the question then becomes, what do you do for data protection of those applications that are deployed into Kubernetes? And so with Tanzu and specifically Tanzu Mission Control, we have included a data protection capability along with the other capabilities that come with Mission Control that allows you to provide data protection for your fleet of Kubernetes clusters, regardless of which distribution, regardless of which cloud they're running on and regardless of how many teams you might have running on a particular cluster or a set of clusters. And so for this reason, we have introduced a data protection capability that is focused around our open source project called Valero and Mission Control operates Valero in your clusters from a central kind of UI API and CLI that allows you to do data protection, initiating schedules of backups, doing restores and even migration from cloud to cloud from a single control point. And part of this vision is not only providing an API that we can handle directly with our own Valero based implementation but also opening that up to partners. And this is where we're working with Dell specifically to be able to provide that single API but yet have Dell, for instance, with their PowerProtect solution be able to plug in and be a data protection provider underneath Tanzu Mission Control. And so that's the work that we're doing together to help satisfy this vision that we have for data protection in the cloud native space. I agree 100% with Tom. Like I said, when we looked at customer environments three years ago, people talked mainly about stateless applications but over time when more storage solutions, persistent data solutions came along, there came the need to not only provision the data but also protect it and be able to do backups and restores and cyber recovery solutions and disaster recovery. And the whole set of use cases that allow a full lifecycle of data along the cloud native set of applications, not just a traditional one. And what we've seen, we're talking obviously with a lot of customers, joint customers with VMware, customers that use our storage solutions as well as others on-prem and in the cloud. And what they have shown to say that is that you have the IT infrastructure people on one hand which have certain needs and there is the new set of users, the DevOps people who are writing applications in a new way and they need to communicate and they need a solution that fits both of them. So with VMware, with the community, with Valero, we are introducing a solution that is capable of doing both management for the DevOps people as well as for the IT infrastructure. And the year ago we have talked about this coming up and now it's really there and it's doing great. Well, Efri, I'm so glad you brought up some of those organizational issues because it's not just, oh, we have some new applications and of course we need to do data protection. Can you bring us inside a little bit? Your customers, are they aware of what they need to do? Is it central IT that's coming over and telling the DevOps team, hey, don't forget security, data protection, still super important, how does that engagement go and what changes that have for the Dell field and the channel? Yeah, I think that the more successful organizations really have that kind of dialogue. So the developers are not operating in silos, they are not doing things themselves. They do some of the use cases, they do need to copy data for their own use, but they understand that they are also organizational needs, someone needs to sign that the audit passed, that the SLAs are in compliance, the regulations are met. So all of these things, someone needs to do them and there is a mutual recognition that there is a role for these people and for these people, for these use cases. Yeah, I would agree with that. One of the things that we're seeing, particularly as you think about Kubernetes as a multi-tenant kind of platform, what we're seeing is that central IT operations still wants to make sure that backups are happening with stateful applications, but more and more they're relying on and providing self-service capabilities to line a business and DevOps to be able to back up their applications in the way that's best for those applications. It's a recognition of domain expertise for a particular application. So what we've done with Mission Control is allowed central IT to define policy and those policies then give the framework or guidelines, if you will, that then allow the DevOps teams to make the best choices within their own field of expertise and for their own applications. What you've seen is some of the organizations really like full control over central IT and give some customers have told us, don't give anything to the developers, but most of them are asking for some self-service capabilities for the developers. But then who is setting the policy? Who is saying, okay, I have a gold policy data protection? Does it mean I replicate to another side? Does it mean I do long-term retention for a month or for a year? That is for someone in central IT to set up. So saying what the policy means or what it actually is, is the job of a central IT whereas setting, you know, this application needs application consistency and it is of gold policy that oftentimes is the best knowledge and domain expertise of the developer. So Tommy, you mentioned Tanzu Mission Control which is the management solution. Tanzu's a portfolio, can you help walk us through kind of the relevant pieces here that are part of this joint solution? Yeah, sure. So Tanzu is really a portfolio application or portfolio solutions, as you've said. It's really along three main pillars. It's what we call build, run and manage. Tanzu Mission Control fills in along with our Tanzu observability and Tanzu service mesh in our manage kind of pillar. The build pillar is more along the lines of supporting, developing of modern applications, developing and deploying modern applications. So many of the technologies that have come from our acquisitions of Pivotal as well as Bitnami make up that pillar. And these are technologies that are coming to fore and you'll hear more and more about at this VM world and going forward. Our run pillar is really where you'll find Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. Now this is our distribution but it's more than just a distribution of Kubernetes. It's a distribution of Kubernetes along with all the tools that you would need to be able to deploy modern applications. So all of these three pillars come together along with services provided by Pivotal Labs to really give you a full multifaceted platform for deploying and operating modern applications. Great, and Fri, where are there integrations there? How does the storage fit in has been a discussion we've been having for a few years when it comes to Kubernetes. Yeah, basically PowerProtect integrates with all of these levels that Tom has mentioned starting with the lowest levels of integration with storage. VMware has cloud native storage solutions which allow things like incremental snapshots to be taken from the environment. And we are using this mechanism in order to copy data efficiently from DKG Tanzu Kubernetes Grid environment out of the cluster into space efficient data domain as a target site. So that's a storage integration. And there is qualification and support for the various run environments that Tom has mentioned, the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid integrated as well as things that we're working with VMware in order to enable protection for what has been called Project Pacific which really allows you a very sophisticated capabilities of running multiple Kubernetes clusters using the Kubernetes cluster API capabilities so you can spin up cluster very, very quickly by VMware and then we can take backups of this environment up to a data domain target side. And finally, working with Tom for sensitive amount of time and effort to do the integration between Tanzu Mission Control and PowerProtect. So, allowing cloud, multi-cloud, multi-location environments to be provisioned and monitoring by Tanzu Mission Control but also protected using PowerProtect. Yeah, so Tom, we talked about supporting the ecosystem and it's a much faster cadence now than it was in the past. It used to be, it felt like every other year at VMworld we got together and talked about the major vSphere release. Of course, in the container and Kubernetes world we're having a much faster cadence. So could you just help us understand, what of this is generally available today? We saw vSphere 7 back in the spring, the update right ahead of VMworld that really extended Kubernetes beyond just VCF to be able to be in all vSphere 7 environments. So we know some of this is here on the roadmap. So help map is out for us, kind of what's here today from VMware and what the timeline is we expect for all of these pieces we've been discussing. Yeah, absolutely. So Mission Control shipped in March. So we're still relatively new, but as you say, we run cloud native ourselves and so we're releasing new features and new capabilities literally every week. We have a weekly cadence for release. Our data protection capability was just introduced at the end of June, so it's fairly new. And we are still introducing capabilities like bring your own storage, doing scheduling backups and this kind of thing. You'll see us adding more and more cloud providers. We have been working to open up the platform to make it available to partners to integrate. And this is just generally with Mission Control across the board, but specifically when it comes to Dell and PowerProtect, the data protection capability. This is something that we are still actively working on and it is past the architecture stage, but it's probably still a little ways out before we can deliver on it, but we're working on it diligently and definitely expect to have that in the product and available and really providing a basis for integrations with other providers as well. Yeah, and in terms of PowerProtect, we have told the audience about TechPreview a year ago and since then we have released a number of releases. We are having a quarterly cadence, so it is available for the general consumption for quite some time. Talking about the integration layers that we have mentioned before, we are the first stack to protect VMs and Kubernetes and applications using the same platform, the same UI, the same policies, everything looks the same. And we have recently introduced capabilities such as application consistency for a number of applications. The support for TKG is available for now. And as Tom has said, we are working on further integrations such as the integration with Tanzu Mission Control with VMware. Wonderful. Want to get a final word from both of you, Efri, we'll start with you. We've got this regular cadence coming up. We know we're only a couple of weeks away from DTWE, the Dell technology world experience where of course the cube will be there. What should we look for the rest of 2020 or any final comments that you have for customers that might be looking at this environment? Sure, I think that two trends at time seeing and they are just getting stronger over the years. The first thing is multi-cloud. And multi-cloud means many things to different people but basically every customer that we are speaking to is talking about, I want to run things on-prem but I also need to run these workloads in the hyperscaler and I need to move from one hyperscaler region to another or between hyperscalers. And I want to run this distribution here and the other distribution there. And there are many combinations of stacks and databases of service and other components of the infrastructure that different developers are using on-prem and in the cloud. So I expect this to go even further and solutions like PowerProtect and TKG can help customers to do that job and of course Tanzu Mission Control to monitor and manage this environment. Secondly, I think that protection is going to follow more the workloads. So application is no longer the VM obviously. It's coming many different components that are starting to span across locations and across environments. And again, the protection nature of these is going to change according to where and how these workloads are being provisioned. Yeah, and I would say the same thing about Mission Control. Very much multi-cloud focus. Today it's largely an AWS focused solution for changing to add more flexible storage options, more clouds, Azure is something that we'll be doing in the short term, Google Cloud Platform and Google Cloud Storage after that, as well as just the ability to use your own on-prem storage for your backup targets. Also, we're going to be focusing on driving more policy driven backup. So being able to define policies for groups of clusters, define RTO and RPO for groups of clusters allowing Mission Control to help determine what the individual backup policy should be for that particular asset. And continuing to work with Dell and other partners to help extend our platform and open it up for other data protection providers. Tom and Effery, thanks so much for the updates. Tom, welcome to being a CUBE alumni. And Effery, I'm sure we'll be seeing you in the team in the near future. Thank you. Stay with us for more coverage from VMworld 2020. I'm Stu Miniman as always. Thank you for watching the CUBE.