 Hi, this is Dave Vellante of wikibond.org and this is the cube where we bring you the best guest that we can find, we extract the signal from the noise. Rick Mattingly is here and he is an IT practitioner with Kroger, he's based in Cincinnati. Rick, thanks for taking some time with us. Yeah, no problem. So we heard in the panel today that you and I were on how you're using Flash, but for our audience why don't you maybe review some of that as exactly what you're doing with Flash, what applications you're targeting, and how that's all working. Yeah, so the main thing we're targeting is really our database infrastructure. We run several different databases. We run SQL and Oracle and DB2 and just making those environments better for our customers. The other environments that we're really leveraging is our virtualization environment, and that's including virtualization desktops and virtualization servers and just being able to make that perform at a better level. And you were essentially in the panel saying that the approach of virtualizing, or using Flash for virtualizing databases is relatively new because your application developers, your database administrators, they don't want to virtualize databases because of the virtualization tax, but Flash changes that. Can you explain that a little bit? Yeah, so a lot of times the virtualization tax feels like an IO issue. So when you put the virtualization layer into a SSD environment and you put the databases on there, it actually performs better for them. So they don't think of it anymore as a tax. So they're not fighting you when you want to virtualize their mission critical apps. You also mentioned to me last night that because of the consumer drive, there's such awareness now of technologies. I mean it's really all bubbling up from, Steve Jobs started it all, I guess. And people are aware that Flash storage is available and you were saying to me that they're actually pushing you to have you deploy Flash for certain applications even though you're saying they don't really need it. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah, so it's not so much, we will ask the age old question, okay, what are your requirements? And I really don't really know what our requirements are, but just give us Flash, we want Flash. What do you really need? And pay for it for us. Of course. Yeah, and the good thing is they'll pay up front, but then we'll pay for the next 50 years and that type of thing. So yeah, they continue to want that. Classic IT problem, right? Yeah, what we see really is it's the consumerization of the enterprise. So no longer is the desktop team determining what kind of desktop people will use. No longer is the storage team determining what type of storage they're going to use. The customer comes and says, hey, I want this. Well, why do you want that? Well, because that's what I use all the time now. So, and they're just, the consumer feels very empowered to make this decision for you and you'll push back right because you always want the betterment for the company and you're always worried about costs and things like that, but they continue to push and push until, sometimes you have to give in and a lot of times flash is one of those things. You just say, okay, here you go. So you're virtualizing SAP applications. Is that right? Or are you not today? Not virtualization. No, okay. I know you've got some, you know, internal projects that are around SAP. Do you see the day where you'll actually run that on flash, those applications, those more transaction oriented applications, or are you guys still trying to figure that out? No, we will run it. We don't run SAP. I'm not sure you heard that, so we can talk about that, but... Maybe I'm confusing with somebody else. Yeah, sorry about that. That's okay. I just assumed in your business, but yeah, okay. No, but we are seeing where transactional databases are going to be running on flash and... So your main systems are, I mean, what's running your business? Can you talk about that a little bit? The back-end storage or... This is the applications that are running your business. Most of the run, we have Oracle SQL, that's the databases we run it on, but as far as the application, I can't really talk about the applications as much. Okay, so you're virtualizing Oracle and SQL today, and you're also running those on flash, is that right? Yes. Okay, and so, whereas maybe two or three years ago, you wouldn't even thought about virtualizing those. Well, you couldn't think about virtualizing them because VMware and those companies have come a long way to improve the experience for the end-users, but there's still that question about the IO and those type of things, you combine those technologies with the flash technologies and make for a better service. Okay, so you're dropping the TMS product in, it's now called Flash Systems, IBM's rebranded that. You're dropping that in as a block-based device. The application sees no changes. No, no. And that's part of the appeal, I presume. Yep. And so, from an economic standpoint, how are you justifying that? We heard today all kinds of benefits. What about Kroger? What are they specifically seeing? So, where I see the economical justification for that is, as you move those higher-end performance-driven applications off of your traditional spinning disk, what happens is you stop needing that Tier 1 layer, that Enterprise Classes, DS88000s and those type of storage, and you can leverage lower-end the 7.2K or the XIV type systems for the bulk of your data because you've moved that little bit of data that's eating up all your performance to Flash. It runs like it's supposed to now. And now you have all these huge amounts of data, block data, that doesn't need the performance, and it can run successfully on your XIV or your cheaper storage where, in the past you just went out and bought DS8800s and DS8800s and DS8800s, you just put it all on there. So, I want to explore a little bit, maybe double-click on something that we talked about earlier, which is the whole tiering. So, you've got tiered storage, you've got a pyramid, if you will, the hierarchy of storage that everybody talks about, and you're adding in the top layer, which is Tier 0. And you were suggesting, at least in the near term, you don't see the lower ends of the pyramid collapsing. You're just really adding in Tier 0 and those other ones are largely preserved. Do you see that preservation is occurring over the mid to long term? So, where I see the collapse again is kind of that Tier 1, or that 15K, it's 300 gigs, 450 gig disks. Short stroke drives, it just makes no sense anymore. That'll collapse. Steve mentioned it in the presentation earlier today about tape, tape's still around. Well, just like tape's still around, you're always going to need that big four-terabyte, three-terabyte disk, because there will be applications, there will be programs, there will be workloads. They just have a lot of data, but so little performance, right? So, something that needs 20 terabytes, just by itself, but doesn't need a very high performance footprint. It doesn't make sense to put in a flash environment yet. It makes sense to put on big four-terabyte disk. Now, your multi-vendor shop, like most customers, talk about why you chose the Texas Memory Systems product, why IBM, you know, how they do them for you. So, we chose TMS, we have a good relationship with IBM, worked with our partners at IBM, and we have a comfort level with their support and their willingness to work with us. And it was a good product, we put it in, and it was very easy to configure. We knew it's going to always be supported behind our SVC environment, being another IBM product. And because of that support that we knew was going to be there, we ultimately chose it. What's on their to-do list in your view? TMS, a little higher redundancy to be able to make some changes without having to shut the box down. There's just a non-disruptive operation. Yeah, there's a few things left that are still disruptive. I think that the maturity is there in the disk-based levels, your XIVs and your DS8s and your V7000s. There is minimal to no reason to ever take those boxes down. With the SSD, there's still some opportunity there for upgrades and things like that that would cause an outage and you have to move that data off. SVC makes that a little easier, but it's still... Bringing that data and volume management stack into that flash world. Rick, the last question is what's really exciting you within the technology world today? What do you get excited about? Honestly, it's a thing that frustrates me the most. It's this consumerization of IT. Just like everybody else, but a lot of people I have my iPad and those type of things. As much as I complain about the people pushing us to do certain things because, well, that's what I like to do, I'm on the flip side. I'm the one saying, well, we should do this because that's what people like to do. So it's that convergence of technologies from a consumer point of view and really the enterprise and the consumer market, really the lines are blending and you don't really see a huge difference anymore. You hear the data centers and things like that. You don't really have data centers, but there's a lot of people that have NAS drives in their house anymore. Who would have ever thought that? So that's really what excites me about the whole environment and just hearing that and, like I said, a little frustrating, but I'm still on that bandwagon where I do it too. They have a folks IT practitioner who is going to love hate with all the consumerization. Rick Mattingly, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate your time and it was great meeting you. Yes, this is Dave Vellante. This is theCUBE.