Hi, and welcome to Backup Central's Restore it All podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm your host W.
W. Curtis Preston:Curtis Preston, AKA Mr.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup, and I have with me my pick and pull analyst, Prasanna Malaiyandi.
W. Curtis Preston:How's it going, Prasanna?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm good Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Unfortunately, I'm not doing a great job in helping you, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Just given the number of times that you sort of struck out
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I, I, um, I still want a part or two that I can
W. Curtis Preston:only get from a about 2012 to 2014 Prius and, uh, the silver Prius.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:I it's a very specific, uh, subset.
W. Curtis Preston:And the thing is, you know, with the pick and pulls, as you know,
W. Curtis Preston:it's like super cheap, right?
W. Curtis Preston:The, if you, if you have the wherewithal to go and pull a part
W. Curtis Preston:off the car yourself, you save tons.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, besides the fact that it's a used part, it's like, I don't know a fourth
W. Curtis Preston:of the price than, than a normal part.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, um, so, but I have to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:everyone has the same thought as you
W. Curtis Preston:what's that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that you go to the pick and pull.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's cheap, but the supply is limited.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and the, and I have, and the, the company that I use L KQ
W. Curtis Preston:pick your part, not a sponsor.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, that they, they have a really good system for notifying me with
W. Curtis Preston:when any, you know, uh, pick and pull yard within whatever radius I specify
W. Curtis Preston:has the car that I'm looking for.
W. Curtis Preston:And then I have to go like right away, because.
W. Curtis Preston:The Prius is popular and it's either get there like that day or you get
W. Curtis Preston:there and, you know, there's not gonna be much left, but so I, I had another,
W. Curtis Preston:I had another, uh, failed run, uh, at the pick and pull down in Chula Vista,
W. Curtis Preston:which is about a 45 minute drive.
W. Curtis Preston:But yeah, not a big deal,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Now I'm
W. Curtis Preston:here to counsel me on that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:well, and I'm sure some listeners are like, oh, why don't
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you just get like a red color Prius door?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:They don't understand how expensive it is
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, they, yeah, they don't, they just don't clearly.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Body work and paint is insanely expensive to do it right
W. Curtis Preston:it's ridiculous.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:This all started because I had a minor scratch on the door, a minor dent on the
W. Curtis Preston:door and they wanted $2,500 to fix that.
W. Curtis Preston:So I'm like I can get a used door from a pick and pull place for like 70 bucks.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway, anyway, we could talk about that for a while, but, I am once again, excited
W. Curtis Preston:to have a long time friend on the podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:She has been in the data protection space for a long time as well.
W. Curtis Preston:In fact, I got to know her in one of her previous lives at Spectra
W. Curtis Preston:Logic, They've been on the podcast a couple of times as you guys know.
W. Curtis Preston:She's a fascinating person, both from a technical standpoint and
W. Curtis Preston:also this other, very interesting, aspect of her personality that
W. Curtis Preston:she really likes large animals.
W. Curtis Preston:We're gonna, we're gonna talk about that because it's a fascinating part of her.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, she is now the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Hammerspace,
W. Curtis Preston:a global file system provider.
W. Curtis Preston:Welcome to the podcast, Molly Presley.
Molly Presley:Well, thank you so much for having me, Curtis.
Molly Presley:I have to say, um, Curtis is also a colorful personality.
Molly Presley:I've known him long enough to know that to be very true.
Molly Presley:And without him knowing I'm gonna bring this up, I will mention that
Molly Presley:I remember the very first time I met Curtis was at Storage Networking World.
Molly Presley:So those of you've been around for a while.
Molly Presley:SNW was a thing, um, both from a work as well as a personal perspective.
Molly Presley:So when I first met Curtis at SNW he was dressed like a clown, and
Molly Presley:we were sitting in the after hours, and it wasn't just like a clown.
Molly Presley:It was, I believe, a net backup, or it was actually maybe a backup
Molly Presley:exec seven launch or something.
Molly Presley:And they actually offered to do Halloween costumes for everyone.
Molly Presley:And Curtis chose to be a very flamboyant clown.
Molly Presley:So it absolutely stuck
W. Curtis Preston:I do remember that.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, that was,
Molly Presley:There must be somewhere
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Maybe.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, that was, yeah, that was a Symantec dinner event, like we were,
W. Curtis Preston:we, I guess we were both guests, uh,
Molly Presley:I think we were guests and it was on Halloween
Molly Presley:because it was the end of October.
Molly Presley:They tried to make right on keeping us away from home on Halloween
Molly Presley:by making a dress up event.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:event?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, I do, I do now.
W. Curtis Preston:I was, when you first said me dressed up as a clown, I'm like, I think
W. Curtis Preston:she's sticking about somebody else.
W. Curtis Preston:And then all of a sudden I'm like, oh,
Molly Presley:No, it was
W. Curtis Preston:Yes.
W. Curtis Preston:The Symantec dinner, uh, where I was dressed up as a clown.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, yeah, that was, that was something.
W. Curtis Preston:Talk to us about the animals in your life, Molly.
Molly Presley:Wow.
Molly Presley:Well, yeah, as Curtis has mentioned, I have a particular interest in large
Molly Presley:animals, and this is both from having them cruising around my home with a few, um,
Molly Presley:very large 200 pound great Danes that have at one point I had three of them at once.
Molly Presley:In a very small Seattle apartment downtown.
Molly Presley:So we were,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Oh, my.
Molly Presley:tasked through COVID with walking 600 pounds of
Molly Presley:dog, um, without the apartment dog walk areas in downtown Seattle.
Molly Presley:So everyone of course knew who we were in the area.
Molly Presley:Um, we have Clydesdales and then a particular interest in elephant
Molly Presley:protection and conservation.
Molly Presley:So in Asia and Africa, a lot of holidays spent, um, tending to cleaning
Molly Presley:up after large elephants as well.
W. Curtis Preston:I like how you just casually mentioned
W. Curtis Preston:that you have Clydesdales.
W. Curtis Preston:It was like a parenthetical.
W. Curtis Preston:Oh.
W. Curtis Preston:And we have a couple of Clydesdales.
Molly Presley:course, of
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:like small to large, to larger.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So you
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, and you live and you live in, uh, Colorado, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Or you?
W. Curtis Preston:No.
Molly Presley:Yeah, I do.
Molly Presley:moved back Seattle a bit ago.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, what's, what's it like, um, caring for, you know, animals
W. Curtis Preston:like that, that are just that large.
Molly Presley:You know, they tend to be the classic saying the
Molly Presley:gentle giant tends to be true.
Molly Presley:They're very kind loving, good animals, but everything's just harder.
Molly Presley:You have to have bigger vehicles, bigger bags of food, bigger bags of cleanup gear.
Molly Presley:There tends to be just, everything is a little bit more complicated as far
Molly Presley:as how, I mean, just think about how do you get arounda 600 pounds of dog.
Molly Presley:We ended up dedicating a minivan with no seats in the back to that.
W. Curtis Preston:Wow.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I guess that makes sense, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
Molly Presley:And you have to be the type of person who doesn't mind
Molly Presley:being asked, in fact, enjoys being asked about them and people wanna pet
Molly Presley:them and know about caring for them.
Molly Presley:Or do you have a saddle for your dog or do you really ride your Clydesdales?
Molly Presley:Those kinds of questions, because people are, you know, truly interested,
Molly Presley:even though you may have heard the question before a few times.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Cuz I mean, I mean there are horse people.
W. Curtis Preston:But as just Clydesdales, you just don't, you don't see Clydesdales very often
W. Curtis Preston:unless you're watching beer commercials.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, you,
Molly Presley:So people
W. Curtis Preston:see them quite often.
Molly Presley:Yeah.
Molly Presley:Yeah.
Molly Presley:I mean, people are surprised to see you on a trail ride with the low quarter
Molly Presley:horse and the little arabian goes by, and then the big old Clydesdale
Molly Presley:comes clumping along with his crew.
Molly Presley:And you know, his back stands over six feet tall and people like what?
Molly Presley:I didn't ride a Clydesdale.
Molly Presley:I had no idea.
Molly Presley:This is incredible.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:how do you get up on
Molly Presley:Steps.
Molly Presley:they, they actually make steps, mounting blocks, type things to get onto.
Molly Presley:But even then when you use the ones that you would use for your traditional
Molly Presley:sized horses, quite a jump to go from the steps to the back of the horse.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I don't know if I've ever told you this, uh, Molly, but
W. Curtis Preston:I, when, when my kids were little, they, they wanted to do some horseback riding.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And so we went to one of these places it's actually on base I'm, I'm just
W. Curtis Preston:south of camp Pendleton in San Diego.
W. Curtis Preston:They had a trail ride, you know, uh, set up where you
W. Curtis Preston:could go and ride these horses.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and we, we came up, me, my wife had zero interest in getting up.
W. Curtis Preston:She, she actually has, she has a, a thing that happened to her when she
W. Curtis Preston:was a teenager that like a horse ran away with her and she's like, I'm
W. Curtis Preston:not ever getting on a horse again.
W. Curtis Preston:But anyway, so, so it was just me and the two kids and one of
W. Curtis Preston:which was like really little.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, we walked up and, and I hear the lady that's leading
W. Curtis Preston:this thing, say something along, you know, better get Bessy.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, and I was like, oh, it's cute.
W. Curtis Preston:They got like a small horse for, for my little one.
W. Curtis Preston:No, they weren't talking about my little one.
W. Curtis Preston:There was a special horse just for me, was basically like Clydesdale sized.
W. Curtis Preston:They're like, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:That's your horse over there?
W. Curtis Preston:That, that gentle giant.
W. Curtis Preston:I was like, That's just, that's just harsh, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway.
W. Curtis Preston:So I just, you know, whenever I talk about you, it's just one of the
W. Curtis Preston:things I find most fascinating about you, even though you, you are, you
W. Curtis Preston:are like, you know, a nerds nerd.
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, you, you, I love how much you're into the technology and you
W. Curtis Preston:know how good you are at your job.
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, we've, we've talked for years about, you know, multiple
W. Curtis Preston:of your previous employers.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, obviously, you know, I spent so many years talking to you about Spectra,
Molly Presley:Absolutely.
Molly Presley:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And you know, yeah, great company.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, now you're, you're close to them again.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, uh, what do you call it?
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, geographically speaking,
Molly Presley:am just up the road.
Molly Presley:Now I can see all my old friends and probably the folks you've
Molly Presley:had is guests on the show
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, absolutely.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, yeah, we actually had them on, they had a, as I'm sure you're
W. Curtis Preston:aware they had a ransomware attack.
Molly Presley:I did.
Molly Presley:And they recovered successfully.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So we had
W. Curtis Preston:that was.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah to, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Tony talked about that.
W. Curtis Preston:That was great.
Molly Presley:Good on them.
Molly Presley:Nathan's always been good about using his own company as an example of technology.
W. Curtis Preston:And I will insert our standard disclaimer, uh, Prasanna
W. Curtis Preston:and I work for different companies.
W. Curtis Preston:He works for Zoom.
W. Curtis Preston:I work for Druva and this is not a podcast of either company.
W. Curtis Preston:And the opinions that you hear are all Prasana's.
W. Curtis Preston:, if you like what you hear or are, you know, watching us by the way, if you, if
W. Curtis Preston:you, if you're listening and you wanna watch, you can go to backupcentral.com.
W. Curtis Preston:We have the video version of it over there.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, if you, if you like what you see or hear, then, you know, go rate
W. Curtis Preston:us, at ratethispodcast.com/restore.
W. Curtis Preston:And if you wanna join the conversation, just, you know, gimme
W. Curtis Preston:a holler @wcpreston on Twitter, or wcurtispreston@gmail and we cover all
W. Curtis Preston:manner of topics, uh, backup, you know, storage, archive, protection storage.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You said that
W. Curtis Preston:what,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:you already said that?
W. Curtis Preston:oh, did I say, did I say storage twice?
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, well that I made a copy.
W. Curtis Preston:I made a copy I just, I just can't help, but make a copy.
W. Curtis Preston:The company that you work at now, how long have you been at Hammerspace
Molly Presley:about six months
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:I referred to them as a global file system provider, but I
W. Curtis Preston:don't think that it does justice.
W. Curtis Preston:So why don't we before we sort of say what, what, what it is, how about you
W. Curtis Preston:tell us, what problem do you think Hammerspace was designed to, to solve.
Molly Presley:Yeah, that's always a better place to start.
Molly Presley:And we were designed to solve the problem of kind of using industry
Molly Presley:terms, decentralized environments.
Molly Presley:So you think about what's happened with.
Molly Presley:Our industry from first, just a infrastructure perspective.
Molly Presley:It used to be all the data sat in one server.
Molly Presley:Then we started to maybe have multiple, multiple clusters in the lab.
Molly Presley:Then we started to have some clouds and your data became decentralized
Molly Presley:or dispersed into many places.
Molly Presley:And that idea of now I have an application or a data scientist or somebody who wants
Molly Presley:to take advantage of my data and it's all decentralized in multiple places.
Molly Presley:We make it easy for that computer or human or application who wants to use
Molly Presley:data that's spread in many locations to work with it as a single data set.
Molly Presley:. And then along with that, you think about the other decentralization, which has
Molly Presley:occurred is where human beings are living.
Molly Presley:And so people are working remotely.
Molly Presley:Applications may be sitting in multiple clouds.
Molly Presley:And so where the things are that need to use the data are also distributed.
Molly Presley:And so Hammerspace makes it very easy.
Molly Presley:Even if your data is geographically far from you over networking and latency,
Molly Presley:that would make it difficult to access.
Molly Presley:We overcome that, that barrier.
Molly Presley:So we solved the problem, making data accessible, that is decentralized, um,
Molly Presley:to remote users and remote applications.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Are you, when you talk about making data
Prasanna Malaiyandi:available, is it sort of intended for like the primary use case?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like someone's building an application and the data for the application might
Prasanna Malaiyandi:be stored across like different clouds with Hammerspace being that interface, or
Prasanna Malaiyandi:is it more intended for data is already being stored today in various spots and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Hammerspace sort of gives people who need to consume that data visibility
Prasanna Malaiyandi:in a sort of centralized way or both.
Molly Presley:It's honestly, a little bit of both.
Molly Presley:I'll give you a couple examples.
Molly Presley:Um, one of our partners is Snowflake and I think most people
Molly Presley:would listen to this show would know who Snowflake is, but snow.
Molly Presley:Primarily worse with data that's already stored in the Snowflake cloud.
Molly Presley:However, they've built an enormous amount of inter intelligence in the
Molly Presley:applications and the processing and analytics which Snowflake can provide.
Molly Presley:So let's just say that you wanted to use the Snowflake applications, um, but your
Molly Presley:data didn't live in the Snowflake cloud.
Molly Presley:We could bridge that gap and make the data.
Molly Presley:Still live, live, where it was created, but easily accessible
Molly Presley:to the Snowflake application.
Molly Presley:So there is that application piece, but there's also the
Molly Presley:visibility for the human being.
Molly Presley:Whether it's an AI engine or it's actually like a genomics researcher
Molly Presley:working on looking at COVID variants, um, easier ability to access data sets
Molly Presley:that are dispersed over multiple places.
Molly Presley:So one of our customers, um, if you think about, um, the research around COVID.
Molly Presley:There's variants coming out and different countries have their
Molly Presley:different data around which variants they have, how quickly is it spreading?
Molly Presley:Is there a new variant and ideally.
Molly Presley:You would look at all that data together instead of Ethiopia looking
Molly Presley:at it separately from South Africa.
Molly Presley:And this is a African, um, initiative that's underway right now is to bring
Molly Presley:all those data sets together with Hammerspace, to make it easier, to look
Molly Presley:at larger populations of data together instead of isolating the data sets.
Molly Presley:So it can be person too.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And I guess in the case of the COVID example, you brought
Prasanna Malaiyandi:up the research it's I guess another method people could do today is try
Prasanna Malaiyandi:transferring and synchronizing data manually across all these various sources,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:like moving the data, which is painful and probably not very practical either.
Molly Presley:I mean, that's exactly it.
Molly Presley:So of course it's been solved somehow today, but it's been expensive and
Molly Presley:inefficient, so maybe you've now got two or three or four copies of
Molly Presley:data, which you have to pay for.
Molly Presley:Storing two or three or four copies of the same data you have maybe ingest
Molly Presley:and egress charges around, moving in between clouds, networking issues.
Molly Presley:Um, and then just the human factor of an it person making
Molly Presley:scripts to move data around.
Molly Presley:And then you try to figure out what's the master copy?
Molly Presley:Who has it?
Molly Presley:Do I have all the data or not?
Molly Presley:So it's being solved, but not very elegantly today.
Molly Presley:And this is an elegant, automated software driven solution.
W. Curtis Preston:In our career, we are often fighting the laws of physics.
W. Curtis Preston:And once again, that's kind of what you're doing.
W. Curtis Preston:, you're trying to, you're trying to defy the laws of physics.
Molly Presley:I think one way you might look at that is, um,
Molly Presley:There are lots of different ways.
Molly Presley:People have addressed trying to move data around, make data accessible.
Molly Presley:And even in our space, what is a global file system or global name space?
Molly Presley:It's a bit confusing people, different approaches.
Molly Presley:But the thing that I think is super important to think about is, um, you
Molly Presley:know, for, to do data, data discovery, the more data you have access to the better.
Molly Presley:So Hammerspace really tries to solve the problem of breaking down the
Molly Presley:storage silo, making it so you can look at all of your data together.
Molly Presley:In one view, that would be a global name space, and then to solve that
Molly Presley:latency problem, you, we don't move the data around the data stays put.
Molly Presley:And so you were talking about physics and it's funny, it's something
Molly Presley:I talk about with our CEO pretty regularly that we actually don't
Molly Presley:believe the concept of data gravity is valid anymore with the Hammerspace
Molly Presley:technology, because you no longer have to move the compute to the data.
Molly Presley:We will let the data stay put, and our everyone interacts
Molly Presley:with metadata instead of data.
Molly Presley:So metadata is light, you know, for every petabyte of data, you know,
Molly Presley:you maybe have a couple hundred megabytes of metadata, whatever it is.
Molly Presley:And you can make multiple copies of the metadata.
Molly Presley:You can easily move that to a new location, a new application
Molly Presley:to solve the latency issue, but the data can just stay put.
Molly Presley:So all of a sudden this idea of are we trying to overcome physics and this
Molly Presley:concept of is there data, gravity and all of that, we're trying to make it where
Molly Presley:really create your data where you want to.
Molly Presley:And then use it where you want to, and we'll use smart software so
Molly Presley:you can interact with it without expense and everything else that has
Molly Presley:become kinda, almost a truth in our.
Molly Presley:That's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:in the end you eventually will be pulling
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the data of some sort when you're reading or accessing, if that's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:what your application needs.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's just because.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Correct me if I'm wrong, because you're sort of processed things by the metadata,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:which resides close to you, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So you deal with the latency issue.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It helps you filter down what, in the end you need to access.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So you don't need to necessarily pull all the data, just the select data you need.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Molly Presley:That's right.
Molly Presley:And then we of course take care of interesting technologies that exist today
Molly Presley:and, you know, using object storage in the cloud to move things around efficiently
Molly Presley:and low cost object, stored object store.
Molly Presley:Even though what we present is a file system, but we use the backend of
Molly Presley:smart object stores to move things around efficiently when it's needed,
Molly Presley:but we only move what we need to.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I guess I'm, I'm, I'm trying to fathom how that works.
W. Curtis Preston:Obviously I get the difference between metadata and data.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm trying to understand, like, if you could gimme an example of an
W. Curtis Preston:application that's first just using the metadata to make a decision.
W. Curtis Preston:Then later accessing the data, I guess maybe because I spend so much of my
W. Curtis Preston:time in the, in the backup space and we're, you know, I mean, yeah, obviously
W. Curtis Preston:metadata is important, but the data is like, we're all about the data.
W. Curtis Preston:So
Prasanna Malaiyandi:we, yeah, maybe we can expand on that COVID
Prasanna Malaiyandi:example from the beginning, if, and show that if that works.
Molly Presley:we can definitely talk about that.
Molly Presley:So, if you go back to the COVID example that we were talking about, and you're
Molly Presley:looking at variants of different, um, you know, generations and whatnot,
Molly Presley:that's occurring within COVID a great example would be in a lot of cases.
Molly Presley:What organizations need to do is keep their data set in country for maybe
Molly Presley:compliance patient care regulations.
Molly Presley:And they need to leave it in place, but they wanna be able to have a view to an
Molly Presley:analytics application through metadata of the, the amount of test results that
Molly Presley:have occurred maybe specific results, but they don't need the entire data set.
Molly Presley:So we use something called objective based policies.
Molly Presley:And so this is getting super, like nerding out and I'm not gonna nerd
Molly Presley:out on you, but, um, you would set an objective saying really my objective,
W. Curtis Preston:We love people that nerd out, Molly.
W. Curtis Preston:It's fine.
Molly Presley:as the, you know, so my objective as the data administrator of
Molly Presley:this in the organization is, to be able to look at the number of tests and the
Molly Presley:number of variants that are occurring and all the rest of the data around that's
Molly Presley:being collected, which could be location, um, you know, whatever ethnicity,
Molly Presley:gender, that stuff doesn't matter to me.
Molly Presley:So they would only interact with the metadata that's associated
Molly Presley:with their objectives and pull in.
Molly Presley:If they need to move data, they would only move the parts that's
Molly Presley:relevant to that objective.
Molly Presley:So there's, and this is all automated and set through the Hammerspace
Molly Presley:interfaces so that you can say, these are the bits I care about.
Molly Presley:I'm not gonna get a human involved with it.
Molly Presley:And then you can also set rules about, you can move my data, but only to
Molly Presley:this country and not that country.
Molly Presley:So you can manage your compliance.
Molly Presley:There's a lot of different things that occur within an objective
Molly Presley:that helps to automate all of this.
W. Curtis Preston:Interesting.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and so like when you, when you say those, the data rules, if you
W. Curtis Preston:can move my data, but only here.
W. Curtis Preston:So when someone is accessing the data, are you a portal through
W. Curtis Preston:which they're accessing their data or is it just sort of giving
Molly Presley:We're yeah, we're actually the name space.
Molly Presley:We're a network share an NFS Mount point, an SMB Mount point that all the users.
Molly Presley:So if the three of us were using Hammerspace technology, we would
Molly Presley:all see the exact same folder structure, directory structure.
Molly Presley:As each of us made changes.
Molly Presley:We'd see each other's changes, but that would be done on a single.
Molly Presley:We would be interacting with the metadata and that's what we would
Molly Presley:be presenting the directory tree.
Molly Presley:So it is a NAS, it's just a NAS that has storage environments
Molly Presley:that can be in many places.
W. Curtis Preston:interesting.
Molly Presley:I'm gonna give you another example that sometimes a little, so the
Molly Presley:fastest adoption that we've had of our environment is in visual effects studios.
Molly Presley:And this is environments where again, you think about that, what happened with
Molly Presley:COVID and nobody was flying actors to have physical shoots of film, because
Molly Presley:they're worried about travel and proximity and all social distancing.
Molly Presley:So visual effects and animation was how a lot of the entertainment
Molly Presley:and production films were done.
Molly Presley:So the need for animation and visual effects went up dramatically.
Molly Presley:Like orders of magnitude.
Molly Presley:And in the meantime, the artists were scattering to all over where they wanted
Molly Presley:to live, where their families lives and they were no longer close to the studios.
Molly Presley:And so what they have done is used Hammerspace as the way to, um, make
Molly Presley:it easy to spin up a new artist.
Molly Presley:So a new artist could be in Africa or India or wherever
Molly Presley:they happen to be living.
Molly Presley:You give them access to the global name space and they instantly can see.
Molly Presley:What is all the content, all the clips, they aren't actually moving them.
Molly Presley:They're making copies of the video close and they're just viewing.
Molly Presley:Okay.
Molly Presley:I have, um, Moana and I have this Netflix show depending on who the studio is and
Molly Presley:I can see, okay, here's all the content.
Molly Presley:My job is only to edit the motion of the faces in this particular clip of film.
Molly Presley:So I'm just gonna move that one clip.
Molly Presley:The rest of the film can stay wherever it is, and they can work on that animation.
Molly Presley:And then as they do their work, this metadata is being synchronized.
Molly Presley:So if another artist says, oh, I thought I was supposed to be working on the
Molly Presley:animation of that face, they can see what the other person is doing and not step
Molly Presley:on each other or later have to figure out how do I merge changes, things like that.
Molly Presley:So it's, it's really helped ramp up remote artists working on content, that's
Molly Presley:massive and you can't move around easily.
Molly Presley:And so they can just work on the clips and segments that they want to.
Molly Presley:And this is all done integrated with their tools.
Molly Presley:So with Autodesk shot grid and Tara deci their virtual studio tools.
Molly Presley:So there's a lot of tools that's integrated with to make it really easy
Molly Presley:that they're using their own tools and this kind of data orchestration.
Molly Presley:The background is automated.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think that's interesting.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I feel a lot of storage vendors tend to sort of say, Hey, here's an NFS
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Mount point or an SMB Mount point, go at it versus kind of what, uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Hammerspace is doing is giving you that automation, those policy management,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:integration into the consumers or the end users tools, rather than just
Prasanna Malaiyandi:saying, Hey, here's a point go for it.
Molly Presley:Yeah.
Molly Presley:I, I really think this is just the next generation of how storage and data
Molly Presley:management and hybrid cloud will work.
Molly Presley:And I've worked in all of these types of companies.
Molly Presley:And I know this is a thing that customers and I've been using the term, the
Molly Presley:missing link in what customers expect will work when they go to a hybrid
Molly Presley:cloud versus how it actually works.
Molly Presley:So if you think about the technologies that exist today, sure.
Molly Presley:You can run a NAS instance of any of the popular NAS vendors in the
Molly Presley:cloud and in the data center, but they're separate silos of data.
Molly Presley:So you as user would still have to say, Hmm, okay.
Molly Presley:Where am I gonna put my data?
Molly Presley:Where is the data I created before?
Molly Presley:How do I make that available to someone else?
Molly Presley:And.
Molly Presley:Then the matter of opening a ticket with it and say, okay, now Curtis
Molly Presley:needs access to this share and let's open up a share and set up the
Molly Presley:IP networking for him to do that.
Molly Presley:And the DNS servers and everything is very manual.
Molly Presley:The way Hammerspace handles it is: you just set up both
Molly Presley:of you with access to our.
Molly Presley:NFS share.
Molly Presley:Let's say the Hammerspace share and no matter where the data is stored, if
Molly Presley:Curtis says you can have access to it, um, he just says that permission in TaDa!
Molly Presley:you have access to it.
Molly Presley:There's no it involved.
Molly Presley:There's no data silos where you're saying, gosh, I don't
Molly Presley:know what's in, Curtis' share.
Molly Presley:I only know what's in mine.
Molly Presley:How would I ever know?
Molly Presley:We, we overcome that so you can see the data that's being created and
Molly Presley:collaborated on by many data users.
Molly Presley:And you know, most environments need that.
Molly Presley:It's not designed for where you want your own personal information.
Molly Presley:Well, to yourself.
Molly Presley:It's environments that are collaborative and are doing
Molly Presley:research or that type of thing.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I, I will say I, I understood the second example
W. Curtis Preston:a lot better than the first one.
W. Curtis Preston:So that's so that's good.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, it's something that, you know, I've spent a lot of time in and around
W. Curtis Preston:the, the media and entertainment space.
W. Curtis Preston:I've worked with companies trying to back up that stuff.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, because one of the problems that I remember I was working with the folks that
W. Curtis Preston:were making Shrek 2, back when that was new, and their problem was each animator
W. Curtis Preston:needed the entire set of data that at least they needed it to look like they had
W. Curtis Preston:the entire set of data in order to select which backgrounds they wanted to to use.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, that was an interesting problem to solve.
W. Curtis Preston:And it sounds like that this would, this would help to solve that problem.
Molly Presley:Yeah, it does very much.
Molly Presley:Um, and that kind of problem occurs when you think about a studio,
Molly Presley:maybe that advertises the same film.
Molly Presley:In different countries and they have to localize a look and feel, or the clips
Molly Presley:they'll carry for an advertisement in Japan may be different than America.
Molly Presley:That type of thing.
Molly Presley:It works beautifully for that type of solution.
Molly Presley:It's just overall, it's become difficult as we have so many technologies that
Molly Presley:come out, one's a little better, a little different, or has a little functionality
Molly Presley:than another in the storage space.
Molly Presley:And you need those differences.
Molly Presley:You need the fast performance of Pure Storage or Vast Data, or you need the
Molly Presley:hybrid cloud, um, image that Qumulo has, or, you know, whatever it's, as you go
Molly Presley:through the different technologies and you bought something for those reasons,
Molly Presley:and yet your users don't have access to all the different storage vendors
Molly Presley:and need to know what data exists.
Molly Presley:So having the name space that sits above it, that makes it so it can have
Molly Presley:the performance or capacity or security that they need in their storage systems.
Molly Presley:And that doesn't limit a user from having visibility to all of the data is really
Molly Presley:kind of a simple way to think about it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And I know you talked about some of the features that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:these individual storage vendors have.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I know Hammerspace brings its own innovative features.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:For those other storage vendors, do things sort of get least
Prasanna Malaiyandi:common denominator, if you will.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:In terms of the features functionality of those underlying storage arrays,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:or is Hammerspace still able to allow those storage arrays to bring their
Prasanna Malaiyandi:innovative features, functionality and Hammerspace leverages, or
Prasanna Malaiyandi:has its own capabilities on top.
Molly Presley:Yeah, it's a really good question.
Molly Presley:Um, So when you take, let's say you assimilate the metadata out of your
Molly Presley:NetApp and your Vast and whatever it is.
Molly Presley:Um, at that point you're using the features in Hammerspace, so they
Molly Presley:can be done at a global level.
Molly Presley:So if you wanna set that, you know, a specific replication functionality,
Molly Presley:or if you wanna be able to have ransomware policies put in place,
Molly Presley:um, if you wanna have encryption set, you can do that at a global level.
Molly Presley:So you don't have the risk of, oh gosh, I'm encrypting on this environment and
Molly Presley:not this one or, um, that type of thing.
Molly Presley:So we take over the management at that level.
Molly Presley:So really in the end, the other storage systems become capacity and performance.
Molly Presley:Um, and the features are handled at a global level within Hammerspace.
W. Curtis Preston:By the way while researching Hammerspace,
W. Curtis Preston:the company I come, I came across.
W. Curtis Preston:I I, what I'm absolutely sure is the origin of, you know, why you
W. Curtis Preston:would name the company that, and this, this idea of a, uh, so I just
W. Curtis Preston:found the, the Hammerspace Wikipedia page, and, you know, they say a fan
W. Curtis Preston:envisioned, extra dimensional, instantly accessible storage area in fiction.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and it it's used to describe how, how characters can seemingly
W. Curtis Preston:out of thin air make objects appear.
Molly Presley:That's where the name came from is that idea of, you know, bug's
Molly Presley:bunny has the appearance of very small pockets and yet can pull a massive hammer
Molly Presley:out of his pocket and Bonk his bow on Um, Hammerspace is that extra dimension
Molly Presley:of what appears small, you can actually pull this massive amount of data out of.
Molly Presley:So it's that metadata kind of analogy.
W. Curtis Preston:I will ask one very obvious question.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yes,
W. Curtis Preston:So does this beautiful, multidimensional, storage space, impact
W. Curtis Preston:how I would back up the data because in the end, that is, you know, one
W. Curtis Preston:of the things that we care about.
Molly Presley:It definitely could.
Molly Presley:Backup is one of those things that I think most storage vendors have
Molly Presley:not tried to take on too much.
Molly Presley:Of course we have data protection, we have snapshots and replication
Molly Presley:and all those types of things.
Molly Presley:But in the end, if you were setting up a Druva backup policy, you would point
Molly Presley:it at the Hammerspace name space, and set it just the way you always have.
Molly Presley:You know, whatever your requirements are, your retention, you, your network shares.
Molly Presley:If you're used to backing up NFS, you present NFS.
Molly Presley:So the process is the same.
Molly Presley:You just would do it at the Hammerspace level instead, backup for individual
Molly Presley:silo within the Hammerspace environment.
Molly Presley:It's easier if you think about that, you can only set the policies once
Molly Presley:and it covers all of your data.
Molly Presley:Um, but it do you know, it does require just integrating with
Molly Presley:Hammerspace file shares instead.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and I'm guessing because backup, you kind
Prasanna Malaiyandi:of need access to everything.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Your policies might be slightly different, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:For someone trying to do a backup or like a tool trying to do a
Prasanna Malaiyandi:backup, then like a normal user,
Molly Presley:Yeah.
Molly Presley:There's a lot of access optionality built in, you know, super user access
Molly Presley:to everything versus you as a user only are allowed to access a certain
Molly Presley:thing for a certain amount of time.
Molly Presley:And of course, a backup environment would need access at a massive
Molly Presley:level, but you know, you can set it just as read, not write.
Molly Presley:Those types of things, which often would be a best practice.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You mentioned ransomware.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I know that's a hot topic these days.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Could you talk about how Hammerspace protects you prevent or how you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:handle ransomware situations?
Molly Presley:Yeah, definitely.
Molly Presley:I think anybody who's in any sort of data management or data storage
Molly Presley:environment needs to be thinking about ransomware as a problem.
Molly Presley:Obviously that is top of mind for many companies, um, well for every company.
Molly Presley:And so if you think about a global data environment, which is what we call it, so
Molly Presley:you create this global data environment, which incorporates all of your data and
Molly Presley:you can think kind of ransomware person kinda putting their fingers together,
Molly Presley:going, Ooh, I want access that thing.
Molly Presley:Um, certainly there's multiple layers of what we have built into
Molly Presley:the environment, as far as access protections, um, immutable, snapshots.
Molly Presley:Um, we keep, because we have this very intelligent metadata layer.
Molly Presley:We actually have the ability to do undelete.
Molly Presley:So at a administrative level, even if somebody did maliciously delete data, um,
Molly Presley:we can do an undelete, which is housed in a location, you know, a different metadata
Molly Presley:environment that they can't touch.
Molly Presley:So there's, there's quite a few pieces.
Molly Presley:If you think about the different layers of access encryption.
Molly Presley:Um, taking of the data, things like that, that are built into the environment.
Molly Presley:Um, I wouldn't say that we are a ransomware company.
Molly Presley:I think all of our technologies need to do things to help protect against ransomware.
Molly Presley:There may be cases where somebody would go partner with a company whose
Molly Presley:job is to protect against ransomware.
Molly Presley:Um, and of course we would integrate with that, but there's several
Molly Presley:levels of controls and we've had customers, you know, who know
Molly Presley:they've had are undergoing attacks.
Molly Presley:It's very common.
Molly Presley:You know, that customers know that they've see, they see 'em having almost daily.
Molly Presley:I think
W. Curtis Preston:That is a perfect application for the metadata only access.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:So if you have a SEIM/SOAR tool that's monitoring what's happening with
W. Curtis Preston:the metadata changes to the files would react, would, would result
W. Curtis Preston:in changes in the metadata, right?
W. Curtis Preston:And you being able to provide access to just the data data without all the data.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, that sounds like a perfect application for your tool as well.
Molly Presley:Exactly.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Another example I could think of is,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:especially with multi-cloud right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:People might be choosing different clouds for cost reasons or feature
Prasanna Malaiyandi:reasons, and they may not be experts at it, but with Hammerspace, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You could kind of give them that seamless interface across the clouds as well.
W. Curtis Preston:cool.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, Molly, I'm glad we had you on.
W. Curtis Preston:Thanks for joining us.
Molly Presley:Really interesting conversation.
Molly Presley:I've known you for a long time.
Molly Presley:Curtis.
Molly Presley:Prasanna's a smart, fun podcaster as well.
W. Curtis Preston:a, he's a great co-host.
W. Curtis Preston:I am very lucky to have him, so thanks.
W. Curtis Preston:Thanks Prasanna.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Thank You, Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Molly, it was a pleasure to meet you.
W. Curtis Preston:And, thanks again to our listeners.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, you are why we do this after all.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, that, and we're bored, but, uh so we thank you for listening and remember to