Speaker:

W. Curtis Preston: There are three types of people in this world.

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Those who think you need to back up SaaS services like Microsoft 365.

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Those who don't.

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And those who still aren't sure.

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If, what we talk about in this episode, doesn't persuade you

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to back up things like that.

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I don't know what will hi.

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I'm w Curtis precedent, AKA Mr.

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Backup.

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If you're not familiar with me, I've been fighting the backup fights since

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my first job and it over 30 years ago.

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I've also written for O'Reilly books on the topic.

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And this episode, you'll hear how Microsoft and Salesforce have both

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admitted their services need to be backed up . Then we discuss the all-important

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question of whether or not you should use their backup services or a third party.

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This is an extremely important episode.

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This is backup.

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Central's restore it all.

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Hi, and welcome to Backup Central's Restore All podcast.

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I'm your host, w Curtis Preston, a k a, Mr.

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Backup, and I have with me my used car consultants Prasanna Malaiyandi.

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How's it going?

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Prasanna.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I am good, Curtis, how are you doing?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Well, I can't get rid of my car.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I, I don't know what to say.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I think it's one of those love-hate relationships where you sort of fall in

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

love with a car and you think it's amazing and everyone else is like, wait, what?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Well, this is not my first time like buying a new car and then selling

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

my old car, uh, person to person.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It kills me that my current asking price is lower than what

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I sold my wife's Honda Fit at.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Which had a little, a little bit fewer miles, but a Honda Fit and a Toyota

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Prius, those are not equivalent cars.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Prius has a loyal following, but the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

loyalists will buy a Prius.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I think a fit has a wider audience of people who would potentially buy a fit.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: So you think that I've lowered my tam,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

is that what you're saying?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And it also doesn't help that the new

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Prius just came out as well.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, well, we'll see.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, somebody will buy the dang thing.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

This is gonna be, I'm gonna enjoy this episode.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You know why I'm gonna enjoy this episode, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Because it's one of your pet peeves.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Well, first off, I, I just say like, like an overarching

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

thing that I have always said.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

All my career is back up all the things, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And throughout my entire career, things pop up and people say,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

this doesn't need to be backed up.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Can you, can you think of some of those things?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

What can you think of, like, over the years people have said that

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

don't, doesn't need to be backed up.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

well, so way back in the day, virtual machines,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Virtual machines?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

the, I was, yeah, I was thinking like, I was thinking like raid,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

that was the first thing I remember.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Like, they're like, oh, well we haven't done in hard drives.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

We don't need to back it up, we ever done in hard drives.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, how do the redundant hard drives help when you delete a file

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

or drop a table in a database?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, yeah, you're right though.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's like different.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

There, there are different other, um, I think with VMs, people would

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

say like there were a lot of VMs that didn't need to be backed up.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Different types of.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Servers, like you're saying, like file servers.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Well, when you say file servers, do you mean like na,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yes.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: you know, like, like filers?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Uh, yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And, and, and that, that one, you know, that one we can sort of, it's like, the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

question is if you have a NetApp right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And you're using snapshots, you're using Snap Mirror and SnapVault and

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

all these things, and you've, you've got the data, you've got the history.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You've got it replicated in multiple locations.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Is that backup?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I would kind of say yes.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, as long as we've got something to protect from the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

rolling code, uh, problem.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

The, the rolling code, disaster problem.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So we got a new version of the new code and it wipes out all the data.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

The, the thing that's never happened, but the thing that

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I always worry about, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: If you've got a way to deal with that, then

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I would say that that's backup.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, what, how about, um, like, um, Cassandra and the like,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Oh yeah, those, the databases, the multi-node cluster

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

databases where it's like, yeah, data is replicated, don't need to worry about it.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But like you said, Curtis, it's you drop a table, what are you gonna do?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And I think this is where a lot of people can,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, I was gonna say, never underestimate the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

ability of people to do stupid stuff.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

well, and this is like we, we always talk about, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I think people confuse availability.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Mm-hmm.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And resiliency for backup.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Right, right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Where you're protecting sort of the system level.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And, and right next to raid would be like, ha.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

We've got Ha.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right, that was the thing.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That was the term back in the day.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

We've got ha, it's highly available.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's replicated to multiple locations.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That's the other one.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Is a replicated system just in general, not necessarily these

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

multi-node databases, but we've got a, a active, active full replication.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And, and what's the why?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Why is that?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Why is that?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Why do I still wanna back that one up?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Because like you said, even if you drop a table

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

that gets replicated over because that's what those systems do.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: It, it makes your stupidity more effective.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Or, or a hack, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Or, or, or a cyber attack.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Uh, or, you know, some kind of something that attacks the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

data on a logical basis, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Logical as opposed to physical, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, I'm trying to think what else before we get to the topic at

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah, so the other one, I think the other thing

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

that people kind of going along with clustered, uh, databases, Kubernetes,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, that was gonna be my next one too.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They're

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

like, oh

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

it's a, it's ephemeral.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's um, you know, we don't

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

yeah, you probably still need to back that up.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Or yeah, Kubernetes.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

The other one I was also thinking is just like public cloud, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Infrastructure.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Write your own applications hosted on the public cloud.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Well, let's, well, let's, let's talk about that one next.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Let's talk about the Kubernetes thing.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

The thing with Kubernetes, well, well, Docker right containers.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Like if we just look at containers historically, originally they

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

were meant to be ephemeral.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That they were, they were, they were not meant to, to have data originally.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And I remember being told, When I, you know, whenever I, when when a new

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

thing comes up, my ears perk up and I'm like, how do we back this thing up?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And I remember asking people that knew Docker, uh, how do I back this thing up?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And their answer was, you know, I'm like, well, there's gotta be data.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And basically what they said back then was that if your containers had permanent

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

data in them, you are doing it wrong.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That was, that was what it was back in the day.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That has absolutely changed.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So now, now we need to know two things.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

One, how to back up like doc, the Docker and Kubernetes configuration,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

and then also how to back up the, the, the actual data.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Somebody, I, I think it was actually Steven Manley that we had on the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

show that that said things like that.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's a pretty boring application that doesn't have any data.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

yep.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Does that sound like something Steven would

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

say?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That would be something Steven would say.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Like, like any, any application that is worth anything is

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

gonna have data attached to it.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, and yes, theoretically, I suppose you could have a database

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

that's not in, in a container.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Being used by something that's in a container, but,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

and, and that way the database, which is fine, and, but that database would then

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

be protected via whatever mechanisms.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Prasanna Malaiyandi: You still need to back

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: need to protect the configurate, you need

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

to protect the configuration.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Uh, but the, but the one that you just brought up though, the,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Public cloud.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

The public cloud.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I, I, I've never been able to, do you say ias?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

What do you say?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I A A Ss, it's not

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I a

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: and it sounds weird.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

so yeah,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

as a service.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yep.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: infrastructure as a service, um, and this is one, this is

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

the one to me that's the easiest to.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

To shoot down, if you will, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Because if you talk to anyone at a W Ss, they will go, yes, you

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

absolutely have to back this up.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's unequivocal, it's in the documentation.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They're like, make sure you back it up.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Make sure you put it in another region, put it in another account.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

This is proper backup configuration.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

If you, if you just have an e c two instance, for example, nothing

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

is happening with that host from a backup and recovery perspective.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Unless you do it on purpose.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

There are other things in a w s, such as r d s that has default backups built

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

into it, but even those who need to do something more than the default.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

More than the default, because a hack of the account could

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

delete everything, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Do you agree with the point that that one's relatively easy

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

to shoot down People that think that you don't need to back up the public cloud?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I know it happens a lot,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yes.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I especially, I think, yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And I think people are now realizing that they have to, I think the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

challenge becomes how do you do it?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Because there are a variety of, is, uh, ways you could do

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

it, like you mentioned, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Depending on what a w s service or cloud service you use, maybe it has

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

built-in backup, maybe it has APIs, maybe it doesn't have anything at all.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And so you need to sort of pull data out in other ways and back it up some.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

The other thing I was also thinking like if I think about like

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

one of the common things I heard is like, hey, with AWS S3, right, object storage,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

you don't need to back it up, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Because it's sort of, depending on what you pick, it's replicated between multiple

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

availability zones within a region.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You could replicate it out to a separate region as well.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But then that's not good enough, like you said, because you can delete it.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

The deletions propagate, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But that's where a W s introduced like versioning.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So you can have versions of objects that you can keep track of, so

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

that kind of becomes your backup.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, it, it's basically the cloud version of the NetApp

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

thing that we talked about earlier, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Like, so a lot of people due to both the versioning and the multi-zone

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

replication, um, and also features like, um, right locking are, are, what's the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

actual term that, yeah, object lock.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Thank you.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, that you can.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You can protect yourself against an awful lot with built in S three.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That's why a lot of people, um, don't, most people don't back up the SS three

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

s three doesn't make it easy to back up.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, I, I know 'cause I used to work at a company that was trying to do

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

that and it wasn't, it wasn't easy.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, the, um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Do you wanna throw out our disclaimer?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Throughout our disclaimer.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Uh, so this is an independent podcast.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

This is, uh, Prasanna and I bloviating about backup and

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

recovery and related topics and, uh, the opinions that you hear.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Ours, not our employers.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I mean, they may be not necessarily our employers, I

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

think would be the official term.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And, um, you know, if, if you like us, rate us.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

If you hate us.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I need something that rhymes.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Uh, you know, if you like us, go to, go to your favorite, you know, pod catcher

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

and, uh, give us some stars and comets.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

We love the comets.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Uh, you know, oh, if you hate us, don't rate us.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That's what it is.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

If you hate us, don't rate us.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, and, um, if you, uh, would like to join the conversation,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

we'd love to hear from you.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I am at WC Preston on Twitter.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I am now w Curtis Preston on threads, uh, linkedin.com/in/mr backup.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So, um, or, or w Curtis Preston gmail.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You can reach me any one of those ways and I will, uh, be happy to

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

get you, get you on the podcast.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Uh, but what about the topic at hand that's gonna allow

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

us to say, I told you so?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

The one thing that we did not talk about so far is SaaS applications,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So like, Google Workspaces or Microsoft 365.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Or Salesforce.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

All of these applications, which you are putting your data into your, they

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

provide all the infrastructure, the application, and you just use a service.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Unlike the previous things that we talked about, there seems to be, again,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

me, based on having argued the same exact point for the last 30 years,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

but just against different things.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It seems to me that, um, in the case of SaaS, I get much

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

stronger arguments against.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Have you, have you seen that?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's like, oh, they're providing everything.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Why should I care about this?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And I know Curtis, you and I just even looking at consumer.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

SaaS, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

We, you did your experiment right with iCloud Apple's iCloud, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And how do you back it up?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I would say that's a SaaS service, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And yet there weren't many good ways to back it up.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And as we talked about, right, there are issues with keeping all that

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

data there being locked out of your account or just losing the data and

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

how do you actually take a backup

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: yeah, and, and, and with the iCloud, if you

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

have a phone, you have an iPhone.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Oh, you're, hang on.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I didn't hear anything you just said.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I got, I got, um, what, what, what did you just say?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Oh, I was just saying about how with

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

iCloud, right, you basically.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You're responsible for backing it up, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That there, if you get locked out of your account right, you basically

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

lose access to the data and they don't make it easy to back it up.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: A lot of people are moving to SaaS because they don't want to

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

administer, let's say, exchange anymore.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They don't want the hassle of everything that came with administering

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

exchange, one of which was backup.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And so, and they may have been sold a bill of goods somewhere along the way

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

by somebody that said, well, if you, if you go to 365 or whatever, then you

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

don't have to worry about backup either.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

We handle backup, right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Except they don't.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

There's nothing in the, in the, um, terms of service that say backup and restore.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, there are actually occasional parts in the documentation

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

that use the word restore.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You can restore files that you've deleted.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You can restore emails that you've deleted, but it's not really a

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

restore, it's really just pulling it out of essentially a recycle bin.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, there there is a slightly fancier recycle bin.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They, they do have this concept of retention lo uh, retention.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Uh, features, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But as we've previously talked in previous episodes, the retention, uh,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

policies, Can actually be as harmful as, uh, you know, not having 'em,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

because there is a story about K P M G accidentally deleting a whole

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

bunch of data using retention policy.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So they're trying to use retention policies to retain data and they actually

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

accidentally deleted data on 150,000 employees and there is no back button.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Uh,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And I think they were under regulatory.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But I think it was under regulatory obligations as well.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, and so given all of that, what Prasanna, what Pray, tell happened

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

in the last week or so that would allow me to say, I told you so?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So I ran across an article by Chris Miller on the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

register called Microsoft User Content Backup for Microsoft 365.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So it looks like Microsoft has finally come around and they are now

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

doing native user content backups.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: My question would be, Prasanna: why does something that

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

doesn't need backup ...need backup?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They've had a change of heart.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Here's what I think happened.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

The Microsoft 365 backup market got big enough

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yep.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: and they said, in a meeting someday, " did

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

you know that currently there are a hundred million people?"

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

'cause they will have the data, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They will know exactly how many users are using third party backup and recovery.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And they're like, we have a hundred million users that

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

are using third party backup.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

At an average of, let's say $3 a user that's $300 million a

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

month, that should be ours.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And so they said let's bring the service out.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I think the other thing, and I don't know if

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

this is true or not, but I know that with how Microsoft does their

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

APIs, right, that there's usually limitations placed when you're doing.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Backups, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Because you're basically calling the same set of APIs to pull the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

data out as a backup vendor, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And so there are certain limitations in terms of the number you could do and

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

how quickly, and so maybe they've also decided to sort of centralize a lot of

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

that into a single place to make it more efficient for these backup operations.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I kind of go back and think about VM VMware, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

When they're like, Hey, backup teams, why don't you guys just

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

use whatever APIs are out there?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And then they sort of were like, okay, no.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

We need to create the right backup specific APIs for VMware so it can be

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

more optimized and targeted for backup use cases, which is very different

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

than your standard, normal use case.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So maybe Microsoft came around.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: that's a really good point, Prasanna.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I actually hadn't thought about that.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That this release of this, or impending release of backup for Microsoft 365

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

perfectly coincides with the release of the backup APIs, which are now, um, uh,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Available to other

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

vendors, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Because for those that didn't know this, Microsoft didn't have backup APIs.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Basically in order to back up 365, you had to basically pretend to be

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

a person accessing 365 via the O w A, the Outlook web, uh, access.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And a lot of people don't realize that, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

'cause there were no APIs, so the only a p I they had was

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

the one that,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

there was no backup specific APIs.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

No backup specific APIs.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

The APIs that were available were accessing, uh, outlook

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

and whatnot via the web.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It was called o w a.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And so backup vendors, basically, I don't think reverse engineer

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

might be a strong term,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

were available, but they just weren't optimized.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And so, uh, but within the last year or so, Microsoft has come out

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

with these specific APIs that are designed for backup, and then lo and

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

behold, they said, we think we're gonna get into the backup game.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I can think of a better parallel to this than VMware.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Can you,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Oracle.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: you think of a No?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

No.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Can you think of another cloud vendor that decided to get into the backup business?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

A w s.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yep.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

A w s and their a w s backup

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Now that one's a little bit different in that they don't charge for a w s backup,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

they just charge for what it does, right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But they decided to just sort of make it easier for people to create backups

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

of their services without necessarily having to go to a third party backup.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

In this case, it looks like 365 will be charging for this service.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And I just wanna say I told you so.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That's all I'm saying.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I just wanna say that Microsoft has validated all of us screaming out

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

here in the rain going, Hey, why isn't anybody backing this stuff up?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Now microsoft's "Oh!

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

we can make money at this.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

We're gonna back this stuff up."

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

the other parallel to this is what happened with Salesforce.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yep.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Um, and, and this, this story's a lot weirder though, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So Salesforce used to have their, um, their, I forgot what they called it,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

but they had this service that you didn't pay for where they were backing

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

up Salesforce and you only paid for it if you needed to do a restore.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: It was $10,000.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It took like four to six weeks to get your data back.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

there was no

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

guarantee.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

No guarantee.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And they gave you a bunch of CSS fees and at one point they came out

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

and they said, um, you know what?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

This service, this is my, this is my paraphrasing.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Of course, we decided this service is so horrible, we're

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

not gonna offer it anymore.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Like, who would want to pay for that?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

The, the, the service level was so low.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It just doesn't match the needs for our customers.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And then what happened was there were a whole bunch of customers that were

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

counting on that they were hoping they never needed it, but they were counting

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

on it and they were telling vendors like, you know, uh, my previous employer

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

to, uh, they say, we don't need, you know, we don't need you because if

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

the, you know, feces hits the rotary oscillator, we will just pay this $10,000.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And, um, We know it'll suck, but at least we don't have to pay for something.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

We don't need.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And then they came back and they were like, yep, we're

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

gonna bring it back into business.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They, yes, they brought that back because so many people.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But, but then, but then they actually came out with a service like

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Microsoft 365 is doing with backup.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

My understanding is they release it.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It wasn't very good.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

This is, this is a total paraphrase based on.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Random stuff that I read, and I don't really know how true to life is, but

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

my understanding is they, they came out with it, they unreleased it.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

The commercial product that you actually pay for, they released it,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

they unreleased it, and I believe they've released it again so that now

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

there's a service that you can pay Salesforce and Salesforce back up.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yep.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Let me ask you a question, Prasanna.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

What do you think from a generic perspective, this isn't Microsoft or

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Salesforce, what do you think about paying vendor A to back up vendor a.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So I go back and forth on this, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So on the one hand, I'd rather not have all my eggs in one basket.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Right,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It depends on how vendor A is doing the backup.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Like if it's like, okay, you're gonna pull the data out and you'll let me

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

put it into, say, like I could pull it out of Microsoft and write it to

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

an AWS S3 bucket, like that would be a little less concerning, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Rather than, okay, as Microsoft, I'm gonna pull your data out and I'm

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

gonna throw it into Azure Blob and you don't get any control of anything.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So that's where I get a little queasy because it's like, how

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

can you verify, validate that they're not screwing things up?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And at the same time though, the other part of me from a technology side says

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

they're the best people to build this because they can actually work with

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

the internal developers, know the secret sauce, optimize it better than

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

anyone else who's trying to reverse engineer things from the outside.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: I'm pretty sure you know that I'm much more the former than

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah, I know.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I'm just gonna say OVH Cloud.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Just keep saying that over, over and over.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And if you don't know what I'm talking about, They were the, this happened

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

a couple years ago and they were, uh, they, they still are, uh, the largest

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

cloud provider headquartered in Europe.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And they had a giant data center fire, and it turns out that the backup

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

system, which people were paying for was stored in the same place

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

as the data that it was protecting.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And so people lost backups and there's a big class action lawsuit.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I don't know what happened to it.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I'm generally not a fan.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I understand.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I understand what you're saying.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Uh, because, so on one hand I'd say, yes, they are the, the best

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

at, let's say, Microsoft 365.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They will know it better than anybody else.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

What they don't necessarily know, and clearly history has proven this right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They don't necessarily know anything about backup, and that's

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

the only thing I care about.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So here's another argument I have too, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's for people who aren't backing up today, they now get back up, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Which is better than nothing.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Something is better than nothing.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And I would also say the way that they're doing things, because it

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

looks like they're still allowing you to bring your own third party

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

to back up that data as well.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Mm-hmm.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And so I think if you do want that safety, like I think they

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

have the best of both worlds.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They've provided an API layer.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So if you do wanna bring your own third party backup, you could do that for people

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

who aren't backing things up, now you have a solution that is built into the product.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You don't need to go procure something separately and manage and worry about it.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But I think the one thing we should talk about though, Curtis, is what do you think

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

are the questions that customers should be asking Microsoft to really figure out,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

is this going to meet their needs or not?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: 3, 2, 1, rule man.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

3, 2, 1 rule.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That's all I gotta throw out.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I mean, I, you know, it's been a while since we've said that phrase.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I think the, the question is, uh, you know, how is this data being stored?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

How is it being protected against?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Something that would take out whatever data center is hosting

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

my particular, uh, what would you

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

call it, instance of 365.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, how is it protected against a ransomware attack that would

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

directly target my account?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

If somebody gains, I, I think about one worry that I would have is

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

whether or not the backup system is administered by the same.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Administrative console as the 365?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I would hope not because of, you know,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Prasanna Malaiyandi: It probably is though.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Maybe and, but maybe it's based, but maybe it's based on roles.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So maybe they are providing an RBAC system.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Well, I hope they're providing an RBAC system, but you know, at

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

the top of the RBAC system is, at the top of that is gonna be like cloud admin or

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

whatever, and you know, if somebody gains access, they can do whatever they want.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Uh, I hope that it's a separate system.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

This is why I go back to how good are they at, you know, backup design.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

How good are they at, at, at compartmentalization?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, Separation of powers and all

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And how good are they gonna be in an ongoing fashion, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Because features are gonna change.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Backup landscape and the threat actors are gonna change as well.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So are they gonna be focused on investing into keeping up with their backup

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

offering, or are they gonna be like, Hey, we have something out there that

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

kind of checks the box, if you will.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And really we're gonna go build out the rest of Microsoft 365.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: I, I hope, um, and we should, we should look into

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

this once it actually comes out.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I hope that it's essentially a completely separate service.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Like, you know, pick your favorite way to back up 365, that it has a separate

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

authentication and authorization system.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You know, um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I doubt that

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

though.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I doubt that.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I doubt that it'll have a completely separate uh,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: know what?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's gonna be all, it's gonna be all administered by Azure

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

No, not called Azure AD anymore.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: What's it called now?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Entra.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: You know what?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I'm gonna log into X and talk about how stupid, I think renaming things are x.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

My, my man, my man, Elon can make nice car, but I don't know what he is doing

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

over there with that, with that company.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, sorry, I digress,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But hopefully, like you said, when they do, when

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

we do find out more information about what the service offers,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

we will do an updated episode.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I think we should do that for that and also for the Salesforce thing.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But the summary statement is, I told you so Microsoft 365, Google Workspace,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Salesforce, pick your favorite product, uh, you know, JIRA, that if, if it's,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

if it is a service that is creating and storing data that your company needs,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

that stuff needs to be backed up.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yep.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: The, the only question is how is it being backed up?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

In most cases, there's either no backup at all, like none.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Or um, like in the case of 365, they do have a delayed replicated copy

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

of exchange that will be used if like the O V H fire happens, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Microsoft purposes.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: For Microsoft's purposes.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And I have verified with them as a Microsoft customer, I have verified

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

with them that we cannot get access to that delayed replicated copy.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So there may be some backups like that that are used.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

If the entire data center is, it goes up in a, you know, conflagration.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But there's nothing that you can use for, let's say, a ransomware attack,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

which is probably much more likely.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

yeah,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: or there's no backup whatsoever.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Like they just back up the configuration, but not your data.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Because the shared responsibility model says

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

that the data's your responsibility anyway.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, so just, you know, I'll just, I'll, and I think we'll end here

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

with saying, talk to your vendors.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Talk to them and ask them, how is the data being backed up?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

How would you respond after, let's say a ransomware attack, somebody

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

gains administrative control over your account and deletes all your data.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

How would you get that data back?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

That's that, that, that one question.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And, you know, a, a rogue admin gains administrative control over

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

my account and deletes the account.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

How do I get it back?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: The answer to that question should

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

determine what you do next.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yep.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Any debate there?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

No,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Okay.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Sometimes you, sometimes you like to argue with me.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I know I've gotten better.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Have you noticed?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: At, at arguing, but yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah, sometimes it's annoying.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Just, just, just, you know, just admit I'm right with everything.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And, uh, basically the same thing I tell my wife.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

our listeners want to hear, Curtis.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: I, you know, if you're out there and you think

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

that, that I am off my rocker, uh, I quite possibly may be.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But, um, you know, reach out to me and, um, we'll get you, we'll get

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

you on the thing, but all I wanna say is I was right and I told you so.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But anyway, well, thanks for, uh, thanks for hanging out again, Prasanna.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

As always, and good luck with the car.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

W. Curtis Preston: Thanks.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And uh, yeah, good luck getting rid of that thing.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, and uh, again, thanks to our listeners, be sure to subscribe

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

so that you can restore it all.