Divining Requirements out of the Organization
This episode follows the previous one in a very interesting way. We have a guest, Eric Bursley, whose job is to divine business and technical requirements from a vendor perspective at Presidio, an IT solutions provider. He consults with customers and helps them get from "I want" to "I need." This was a fascinating conversation that took a turn into (surprise) ransomware. Eric is a fan of the pod and knows his stuff.
As mentioned in the podcast, here is a link to the music video that is the theme song of the podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPoE7nlgYe4
The episode where we meet the voice behind the song: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/b60b207b-2dfc-4b38-b5ea-1cd4c6231025
Mentioned in this episode:
Interview ad
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.
W. Curtis Preston:And I have with me my vicarious Thinset removal consultant Prasanna.
W. Curtis Preston:Malaiyandi, how's it going?
W. Curtis Preston:Prasanna?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm good Curtis, and I think you had a
Prasanna Malaiyandi:really, really great weekend.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Between,
W. Curtis Preston:I did.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:between the Padre.
W. Curtis Preston:Oh yeah, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Baby Padres.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, it's funny.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Between the Padres and the thinset removal, uh, it was definitely a big
W. Curtis Preston:weekend for the Preston household.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, yeah, the Padres by the way, that, that game according to, you know, those
W. Curtis Preston:guys that talk constantly during the.
W. Curtis Preston:And they pull out the stats.
W. Curtis Preston:That game is the second biggest upset in the history of Major League baseball.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, if you look at the number of games that, um, LA has won the season and
W. Curtis Preston:the number of games the Padres have won the season, and the fact that they beat
W. Curtis Preston:them, it's the second largest spread.
W. Curtis Preston:The first one is it's, it's a distant second because the first
W. Curtis Preston:one, the winning team won 128 games.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and like that, that's also the highest record of the
W. Curtis Preston:number of games one in a season.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway, that was, and what's funny is I'm, as you know, I'm
W. Curtis Preston:not even that big of a sports fan.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I, I was actually surprised you were watching
W. Curtis Preston:Um, but you know, when the hometown team is playing and
W. Curtis Preston:they're in the playoffs, uh, you know, even when they were in the Wild card,
W. Curtis Preston:uh, I was watching, and that was great to see them, you know, win that and
W. Curtis Preston:then to see them beat the Dodgers.
W. Curtis Preston:To see them beat the Dodgers on the road first and then come home to win twice.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, it, it's, it's a big week to be San Diego.
W. Curtis Preston:It's, they're apparently, like, they're not even waiting for the World Series.
W. Curtis Preston:They're painting the town like yellow and brown right now, which are.
W. Curtis Preston:For the record, the worst colors for any major league team of any kind.
W. Curtis Preston:I think, um, I don't know, maybe the, maybe the Cleveland
W. Curtis Preston:Browns, cuz they're just brown.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You know when you said yellow and brown, you know, the first
Prasanna Malaiyandi:thing I was thinking, like pee and poop,
W. Curtis Preston:I know that's the first thing that comes to mind
W. Curtis Preston:when you think of yellow and brown.
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, the Dodgers, they had this beautiful blue and white, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, we, we get yellow and brown.
W. Curtis Preston:What the hell's up with that?
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway, Um, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and then the thin
W. Curtis Preston:course, Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And then the thinset, the removal of, you know, for those of you
W. Curtis Preston:following at home, how I've been laying down luxury vinyl tile.
W. Curtis Preston:This was when I removed I am, this is way past the point of no return.
W. Curtis Preston:I have now removed all of the tile and the, um, the pergo
W. Curtis Preston:that was in the dining room.
W. Curtis Preston:And now I had somebody come in and chisel down, um, the, the thin set.
W. Curtis Preston:And then I, I did, and then I did some scraping after that.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, uh, so now my, it's just really dirty.
W. Curtis Preston:It's like dusty and dirty.
W. Curtis Preston:Other than that, it's ready to, uh, and I got like air cleaners
W. Curtis Preston:running around the clock.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, you do not wanna be breathing that stuff in.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So then it'll be done next week.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, absolutely.
W. Curtis Preston:Because it only takes like an hour to lay roughly 500 square feet of, of.
W. Curtis Preston:Vinyl tile, so yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Mm-hmm.
W. Curtis Preston:, vinyl planking.
W. Curtis Preston:Sorry.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway, anyway, enough of that nonsense.
W. Curtis Preston:Before we bring our guest on, I'm gonna do the, uh, disclaimer Prasanna.
W. Curtis Preston:And I work for different companies.
W. Curtis Preston:He works for Zoom, I work for Druva.
W. Curtis Preston:This is not, uh, an official podcast of either company.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, the opinions that you hear are all Prasannas and they.
W. Curtis Preston:If you, if you like what you hear or, or see by the way, uh, check out.
W. Curtis Preston:We've got a video version of this podcast@backupcentral.com.
W. Curtis Preston:Be sure to check that out.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, if you're a video person,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And check out Santa's beard
W. Curtis Preston:Sa Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Santa's, Santa's beard.
W. Curtis Preston:You, and then we say, you know, if you wanna join the podcast, if you
W. Curtis Preston:wanna join the conversation, just reach out to me at WC Preston on
W. Curtis Preston:Twitter or w Curtis Preston at gmail.
W. Curtis Preston:And someone did that.
W. Curtis Preston:They were a fan of, We have a, we have a fan, so one of, you know, there's
W. Curtis Preston:another, there's another podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:They, the phrase they use is, uh, you know, we have one of our 11 listeners,
W. Curtis Preston:uh, there's a, there's a podcast that I listen to that does that.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, so we have one of our 11 listeners on today.
W. Curtis Preston:Our guest today has over 25 years experience in it, A lot
W. Curtis Preston:of it in the storage space.
W. Curtis Preston:He's currently the enterprise architect for Presidio an IT
W. Curtis Preston:reseller and consulting company.
W. Curtis Preston:You can hear him on their podcast called Digital Decode.
W. Curtis Preston:Welcome to the podcast, Eric Burley.
Eric Bursley:All right.
Eric Bursley:Thank you.
Eric Bursley:Uh, and thank
W. Curtis Preston:big buildup there.
Eric Bursley:Yes, , very big buildup.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, we don't, we, we, we've only had like, I don't
W. Curtis Preston:know, three or four people that.
W. Curtis Preston:In the history, you know, we're coming up on 200 episodes and we've, I think
W. Curtis Preston:we've had like three or four people out of that that have reached out to us.
W. Curtis Preston:It's just like randomly, hey, I'm a fan of the pod and um,
W. Curtis Preston:you know, I'd like to come on.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:we need more people like that.
W. Curtis Preston:need more like that, you know, So if you're sitting out there,
W. Curtis Preston:you know, I think the biggest thing, I think people like, Oh, well my story
W. Curtis Preston:won't be as interesting or whatever.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, what, if it's got anything to do with backup, we're kind of desperate.
W. Curtis Preston:You know?
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, it's, this is a, this is a, a niche, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, if it, if, if we can somehow relate it to backup data protection information
W. Curtis Preston:security, information security is very closely related to backup these days.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, We should just convert this to a, you know, a ransomware podcast cause
W. Curtis Preston:that's all anybody wants to hear about.
Eric Bursley:Exactly.
Eric Bursley:Actually what drew me to your podcast, the first time I listened
Eric Bursley:to it, was your theme song.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Ah,
W. Curtis Preston:Hey,
Eric Bursley:It it, I thought it was great.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:There you go, Curtis.
W. Curtis Preston:I, Yeah, so, so an interesting story about that theme song.
W. Curtis Preston:The theme song predates the podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:The podcast got its name from the theme song.
W. Curtis Preston:The singer is my daughter.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, I wrote the lyrics.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, there's actually a video.
W. Curtis Preston:I dunno if you've seen the video.
W. Curtis Preston:There's actually a full video in which I play a, a cameo role.
W. Curtis Preston:I'll put a link to it in the, uh, in the show notes.
W. Curtis Preston:It's on, it's on YouTube and, you know, you can see me, uh,
W. Curtis Preston:dancing in the ocean at one point.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It is a dated pod or dated
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, it's, it's dated, um, uh, you know, I'm slightly, I have
W. Curtis Preston:slightly more hair and slightly less gray.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, um, Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:It, it was, it was a lot of fun.
W. Curtis Preston:And yeah, that's, that's my daughter and she has three
W. Curtis Preston:backup singers that are also her.
W. Curtis Preston:It, it's kind of funny, we, we had her on the podcast, I should put a link to that.
W. Curtis Preston:We had her on the podcast to talk about it, and she created three backup
W. Curtis Preston:singers and she gave each of them in her mind a name and a personality.
W. Curtis Preston:And then she sang like that personality, She was really all into it.
W. Curtis Preston:She's a great singer.
W. Curtis Preston:She actually, um, she right now gets paid.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, as a cantor for a Catholic church, um, you know, she, so she's
W. Curtis Preston:technically a professional singer.
W. Curtis Preston:She gets paid a couple hundred bucks a week to, to sing for, uh, for a church
W. Curtis Preston:in Carlsbad, go San Diego Co Padres.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway, so, so, I'm glad, I'm glad that that was, uh, that was
W. Curtis Preston:actually where we got our name.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So, uh, so now, we'll, we'll give you a link to the video so you
W. Curtis Preston:can see the, you can see the.
W. Curtis Preston:There's actually, like I got, I don't know, what do I have, like seven
W. Curtis Preston:or eight, um, parodies that I did.
Eric Bursley:Oh,
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I did that one.
W. Curtis Preston:We did a, we did a, um, uh, uh, shoot, help me Prasanna.
W. Curtis Preston:We did the, of course, the, the one about virtualization.
W. Curtis Preston:McLemore.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, we did a, we did a, uh, you know, the, I'm gonna pop some tag.
W. Curtis Preston:Only got 20, so mine was, I'm gonna build VMs, got do 20 guests in my server.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm, I'm a virtual getting rid of servers.
W. Curtis Preston:VMs are so awesome.
W. Curtis Preston:There you go.
W. Curtis Preston:So we did that one anyway.
W. Curtis Preston:Nobody wants to hear about this.
W. Curtis Preston:Let's move on.
W. Curtis Preston:Let's talk about, let's talk about stuff.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, how's it going over there?
Eric Bursley:It's going well.
Eric Bursley:It's going well.
W. Curtis Preston:How's it going at, at Presidio?
W. Curtis Preston:Why don't you gimme, gimme an overview of what, what you do as a company and,
W. Curtis Preston:and then how do you fit into that?
Eric Bursley:So Presidio is a, uh, solutions, uh,
Eric Bursley:provider for it, and we have.
Eric Bursley:Various, uh, capabilities within the industry from, um, hybrid cloud
Eric Bursley:to public cloud, um, private cloud, uh, communications such as, uh,
Eric Bursley:unified communications, managed services, um, you know, a lot of,
Eric Bursley:um, different silos within it.
Eric Bursley:Um, I like to think of us.
Eric Bursley:Um, more than a value added reseller because we not only
Eric Bursley:sell value with the traditional OEM such as Dell, Cisco, and hp.
Eric Bursley:Um, but we can also provide true consulting and management services
Eric Bursley:as well across various things.
Eric Bursley:So, um, lots and lots of capabilities within Presidio itself.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I would like to think that every VAR
W. Curtis Preston:should be like that, but clearly every VAR is not like that, right?
W. Curtis Preston:The i I think they start often.
W. Curtis Preston:Having dealt with a number of VARs over my years, um, I think they
W. Curtis Preston:often start with what are the three things we sell , and then how do we
W. Curtis Preston:shoehorn the three things that we sell into whatever customer comes up.
W. Curtis Preston:I think the, the biggest challenge, I think, for a var of any kind
W. Curtis Preston:is, okay, so we have to back up.
W. Curtis Preston:Have you seen the, um, miracle on 34th?
Eric Bursley:Uh, a while ago,
W. Curtis Preston:classic.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:Hopefully the original, because the others just stunk.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway, The, you know, there's the thing in there where Santa sends somebody, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, a little girl asks for something and he's like, you know, uh, they actually
W. Curtis Preston:had, you know, it said at Macy's, and, and, and Santa says, You know, Gimbals
W. Curtis Preston:actually has a much better ABC than we do.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, you should go to Gimbals.
W. Curtis Preston:And they were not very happy with that.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I think that's the biggest challenge is somebody comes in and
W. Curtis Preston:says, you know, we, they articulate to you their requirements and then
W. Curtis Preston:your requirements, their requirements don't match well to a product that you.
Eric Bursley:Right.
Eric Bursley:E.
Eric Bursley:Exactly.
Eric Bursley:And I, I see that a lot in my industry where.
Eric Bursley:One of our sales leads, um, is tightly coupled, um, with an OEM and wants to sell
Eric Bursley:that particular solution, whatever it is.
Eric Bursley:And it, it's like always putting in that square peg into a round hole.
Eric Bursley:Sometimes it will fit and I've seen it fit.
Eric Bursley:Um, other times it's not a perfect match because they're not
Eric Bursley:double checking and triple check.
Eric Bursley:What the actual business requirements were talking, uh, with the C levels
Eric Bursley:about what are they trying to achieve in the next year to 18 months to five year
Eric Bursley:business plan and, and understanding the direction that they wanna go.
Eric Bursley:Um, you know, one of the primary examples I've heard recently is we wanna move to an
Eric Bursley:operational expense structure, therefore we need to move to a public cloud.
Eric Bursley:And that is not always the case.
Eric Bursley:Um, in terms of the business objective, uh, it, it, it could be, um, that they
Eric Bursley:want to change the way their, uh, business costs are structured rather than a capital
Eric Bursley:expense move into an operational expense, but leaving some of their applications on.
Eric Bursley:Um, and, and Presidio can actually help with that, um, because we can
Eric Bursley:operationalize what would traditionally be a capital expense, put it into
Eric Bursley:an operational expense regardless of the, the vendor that's involved.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:One, one of the challenges with us, as you know, techies is we get
W. Curtis Preston:interested in a particular technology.
W. Curtis Preston:We see something, we see a webinar, we see a, you know, whatever.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I'll give you a perfect example and, and I'll, I'll use, I'll.
W. Curtis Preston:category that isn't as big as it used to be.
W. Curtis Preston:If we go back to sort of the turn of the century, , there was an,
W. Curtis Preston:there was a backup type that was everywhere and that was cdp, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Continuous data protection.
W. Curtis Preston:If you went to storage networking world, shout out to SNW.
W. Curtis Preston:Haven't seen you in a long time.
W. Curtis Preston:Storage networking world.
W. Curtis Preston:There'd be like 10 CDP booths.
W. Curtis Preston:. Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, and CDP as a technology sounds amazing.
W. Curtis Preston:There are CDP companies that are out that are here now, and
W. Curtis Preston:I, I hope they're doing great.
W. Curtis Preston:The problem was that there were like three companies, , that, that had business
W. Curtis Preston:requirements that map to cdp, right?
W. Curtis Preston:And so you had like a dozen companies that were selling CDP solutions.
W. Curtis Preston:And you had, it was the classic thing of a problem waiting for,
W. Curtis Preston:or product waiting for a problem.
W. Curtis Preston:And the problem is, as techies we're like, That sounds amazing.
W. Curtis Preston:I can get a zero, an RTO, and an R and an RPO of zero.
W. Curtis Preston:That sounds amazing.
W. Curtis Preston:Where do I sign?
W. Curtis Preston:But if we don't have a business requirement that goes with that,
W. Curtis Preston:It seems it might seem wrong.
W. Curtis Preston:Oh, but that would be the best, right?
W. Curtis Preston:That would we want the best backup system for the company.
W. Curtis Preston:No, you want the best backup system that meets your requirements and spending
W. Curtis Preston:beyond that is, is a waste of money.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:It's a bit like, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Do you want a Bugatti to drive on the
W. Curtis Preston:That's exactly where I was going.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, my only job is to drive my granddaughter to school,
W. Curtis Preston:and so I'm gonna buy a Bugatti.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, it would be cool, but, um, you know, I'd be the coolest, you know, grandpa
W. Curtis Preston:pulling up the, with my Bugatti, uh, I was gonna go Lamborghini by the way,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Nah.
W. Curtis Preston:
Speaker:whatever for the record.
W. Curtis Preston:
Speaker:One of us on this podcast has actually driven a Lamborghini once,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You win.
W. Curtis Preston:and by the way, it was only from the showroom
W. Curtis Preston:floor back to the dealership.
W. Curtis Preston:And it was like, keep it under 45, Curtis.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, anyway, I digress.
W. Curtis Preston:But yeah, that's, I think as technologists we get, we get
W. Curtis Preston:excited in a particular technology.
W. Curtis Preston:Another thing that happens as technologists and in the backup
W. Curtis Preston:space, we get angry at our current backup product, right?
W. Curtis Preston:We, we have challenges with our current backup product, and we think
W. Curtis Preston:our, what's our immediate idea?
W. Curtis Preston:Our immediate idea is to replace the backup product, right?
W. Curtis Preston:I, I did 20 plus years of it consulting.
W. Curtis Preston:and the, the answer to the problem was almost never
W. Curtis Preston:replaced a backup product, right?
W. Curtis Preston:It was, you are using it wrong.
W. Curtis Preston:, right?
W. Curtis Preston:The problem was not software.
W. Curtis Preston:The problem was not hardware, the problem was wetware, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, it was the whole, like the tape, uh, the, the streaming problem
W. Curtis Preston:to get the tape strip that, that was the problem 90% of the time.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, anyway, I'm sorry, I digress.
W. Curtis Preston:But that, but that, that's the problem is we get, we're techy people.
W. Curtis Preston:We see a technical problem, we wanna solve it with a technical solution, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Or we see a cool technical thing and we want to just bring it into
W. Curtis Preston:the environment, but we have to go back if we're gonna spend money.
W. Curtis Preston:have to go back to the business.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, I'm sorry for that really long rant, but it just, I, I, I felt,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I
W. Curtis Preston:felt, I dunno, it wasn't even a question,
W. Curtis Preston:Eric, so good luck answering.
Eric Bursley:actually one of the struggles, um, that I have, um, almost
Eric Bursley:on a weekly basis is, you know, the account manager coming in saying, We're
Eric Bursley:going to put vendor X into this customer,
W. Curtis Preston:Hmm.
Eric Bursley:Without alligning those business objectives, they could be
Eric Bursley:perfectly fine with it, but like in the backup products, they're.
Eric Bursley:The new HTML five interface, they gotta have that new HTML five interface, or
Eric Bursley:they need to have ransomware protection built in, not realizing that there's
Eric Bursley:more to ransomware protection than just what's in the backup product.
Eric Bursley:Um, that's like I have in my ransomware workshop that I,
Eric Bursley:I provide to our customers.
Eric Bursley:Ransomware protection is kinda like an.
Eric Bursley:It's multilayered approach.
Eric Bursley:Um, and much like an ogre, it gets ugly and green it's, um, so yeah, it,
W. Curtis Preston:yeah, and it's like an onion that the more you
W. Curtis Preston:look at, you know, the more you dig into it, the more you cry.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Eric Bursley:exactly, and it, it surprises me the number of times
Eric Bursley:they come in and the customer could be a very happy customer of Veeam.
Eric Bursley:But they wanna put in the new hyper-converged backup solution because
Eric Bursley:it has an HTML five interface, and that's what they're selling it on.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah,
Eric Bursley:So,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:which doesn't quite align.
W. Curtis Preston:pretty interface,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Well, I think one of the challenges there too is if
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you, like you said, if you don't go to the back to the business and have
Prasanna Malaiyandi:those conversations, then even if you do push out this new hyper-converged
Prasanna Malaiyandi:solution, right, the business may not be happy with it, and that's gonna
Prasanna Malaiyandi:look bad to you who had recommended picking a certain technology, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:They're like, Oh, we just gave you a bunch of money, and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:what did it really do for us?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Not much, and it caused all these problems, or it had
Prasanna Malaiyandi:all these gaps, et cetera.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right?
Eric Bursley:or they complain about the performance of their backup
Eric Bursley:solution when they bought a brand new production array, production servers,
Eric Bursley:and reestablish those older servers as their backup servers because they
Eric Bursley:want more longevity out of it, and then complain about the performance.
W. Curtis Preston:Does performance matter in a
Eric Bursley:Only on restores,
W. Curtis Preston:That is very, very true.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, and, and, and to, to go back, you know, and that really is
W. Curtis Preston:the only thing that matters, right?
W. Curtis Preston:I often say on the podcast, right, no one cares if you can back up.
W. Curtis Preston:They only care if you can restore and.
W. Curtis Preston:The challenge we had back in the day was the only solution to the
W. Curtis Preston:tape problem that any of the backup vendors had, uh, for the most part was
W. Curtis Preston:multiplexing right to, to interleave multiple backup jobs together into
W. Curtis Preston:one faster backup job that would.
W. Curtis Preston:Hopefully make the tape drive happy and, and, and allow it to stream and
W. Curtis Preston:not be shoe shining all the time.
W. Curtis Preston:And the problem with that is that it totally screwed over restores, right?
W. Curtis Preston:You had to read the 20 different backup jobs and throw away 19 of them for the
W. Curtis Preston:one that you needed, which meant your restore performance was crap, right?
W. Curtis Preston:That's the one thing I do not miss, um, from the, the backup days.
W. Curtis Preston:But let, let's talk.
W. Curtis Preston:. Um, how, how do we get, what, what's it like?
W. Curtis Preston:You, you, I'm sure you've had some conversations where, in your head,
W. Curtis Preston:what you're trying to get to as an RTO and an rpo, you know, but as you said
W. Curtis Preston:that, that's too, too deep for many of the conversations that you're having.
W. Curtis Preston:What questions are you asking, uh, to get to that question?
Eric Bursley:So I, I ask, uh, more open-ended questions, and the
Eric Bursley:more the business leader talks, the, the more information I get.
Eric Bursley:Um, so I will ask a question like, you know, what would
Eric Bursley:happen if Cerner disappeared?
Eric Bursley:You know, what, what, what would you do?
Eric Bursley:Um, and that gets into their business continuity.
W. Curtis Preston:What
Eric Bursley:do they do?
Eric Bursley:Um, doctors and nurses that use the Cerner application, they
Eric Bursley:could go back to pen and paper.
Eric Bursley:That is a legitimate, you know, uh, business continuity plan.
Eric Bursley:It's not a long term plan.
Eric Bursley:So what's the next phase on the recovery process?
Eric Bursley:And that gets into the disaster recovery portion of the business continuity plan.
Eric Bursley:Um, How long can they function on pen and paper?
Eric Bursley:Okay.
Eric Bursley:If they can continue to function for another hour or two, that helps
Eric Bursley:me to develop those service level objectives around do we need to create
Eric Bursley:the application more highly available with no single points of failures.
Eric Bursley:Um, with a potential zero RTO rpo, um, which I have created and can create,
Eric Bursley:but you still have to have multiple recovery points because in, in a
Eric Bursley:ransomware attack, for example, both copies of your data set are now corrupted.
Eric Bursley:So you still have to be able to recover back in.
Eric Bursley:Um, so I, I get into those discussions at a, a higher level as well.
Eric Bursley:What exactly does that mean?
Eric Bursley:Um, what would happen if they lost five minutes of patient records?
Eric Bursley:Well, many times it's like, well, five minutes.
Eric Bursley:That could be life or death, depending on the situation.
Eric Bursley:It may not be cuz they could roll back to the pen and paper.
Eric Bursley:Um, or the, the doctor will remember what he.
W. Curtis Preston:that's interesting.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I, I immediately started thinking about, so currently
W. Curtis Preston:I, so I'm a poll worker, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, for the upcoming election, I have been for like, the last four elections.
W. Curtis Preston:And in San Diego.
W. Curtis Preston:San Diego, based on, you know, some pushes from.
W. Curtis Preston:California basically has updated to, you know, an electronic system
W. Curtis Preston:from beginning to end your check.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, we have an electronic poll book.
W. Curtis Preston:We have an electronic, um, you know, system.
W. Curtis Preston:The, the, the ballot marking devices, electronic.
W. Curtis Preston:It produces a paper ballot, but it is an electronic system that you're,
W. Curtis Preston:that you're voting on, um, the.
W. Curtis Preston:That it's an electronic system that produces a paper ballot, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and then all of that communicates through a single point of failure.
W. Curtis Preston:which is a cradle point router, right?
W. Curtis Preston:That, that, um, that provides an encrypted communication channel back
W. Curtis Preston:to the, the registrar of voters.
W. Curtis Preston:And.
W. Curtis Preston:Being the type of person I started asking, you know, it's not really a business,
W. Curtis Preston:but business continuity questions, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Because.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, a business, the big problem is if you're down, the customer
W. Curtis Preston:might go somewhere else, right?
W. Curtis Preston:That's not really a choice in an election, right?
W. Curtis Preston:The, the, if, if the business is down, you get disenfranchisement of voters, which
W. Curtis Preston:is the number one thing you don't want.
W. Curtis Preston:So I was very, I was very pleased to see that they had included that, uh,
W. Curtis Preston:both for the, the easy answer for.
W. Curtis Preston:If a, if a site is down, is the nearest site is two miles that way, Right?
W. Curtis Preston:You know, we are dead.
W. Curtis Preston:We have a, if they don't wanna do that, we have a backup plan for that.
W. Curtis Preston:But the, the nearest site is two miles that way.
W. Curtis Preston:And that's not a big deal.
W. Curtis Preston:And that's something that I don't think an average business might, it
W. Curtis Preston:might not have that in its tool chest.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, but we do.
W. Curtis Preston:Emergency ballots.
W. Curtis Preston:We have a big stack of emergency ballots, and this is in the case
W. Curtis Preston:of, um, catastrophic system-wide.
W. Curtis Preston:The registrar of voters goes down, We get attacked by a ransomware attack
W. Curtis Preston:on, on one of the election days.
W. Curtis Preston:We actually have up to 11 days of, of in person voting.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, we have paper ballots.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, so just like those doctors, we can go back to pen and paper.
W. Curtis Preston:It is a giant pain in the ass because you actually have to write, they're not
W. Curtis Preston:pre-printed ballots like the old days with, with the names of the candidates.
W. Curtis Preston:You actually have to write the name of the candidate you want and then, and
W. Curtis Preston:then check, you know, and then check the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But there's a mechanism for
W. Curtis Preston:But there is a mechanism, right?
W. Curtis Preston:And what matters for us, what matters for those businesses is it fits in, This is
W. Curtis Preston:why I brought it up, is that it fits into the purpose of that, that organization.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and, and what, Like if the system, if the systems go down in
W. Curtis Preston:a hospital, for the most part, most patients are not going to immediate.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, die.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:Some, some patients might, right?
W. Curtis Preston:The, there are, there are systems that must be highly
W. Curtis Preston:available in a hospital, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and those systems, I'm guessing have redundancy after redundancy
W. Curtis Preston:after redundancy, because you can't, like the, the, a ventilator or a,
W. Curtis Preston:um, what, what do they call it?
W. Curtis Preston:The, when they put you on a, when they talk about pulling
W. Curtis Preston:the plug, whatever that,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's a ventilator.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:not not just a ventilator, but well, whatever.
W. Curtis Preston:It doesn't matter.
W. Curtis Preston:Clearly, I am not a doctor and please don't take any medical advice from me.
W. Curtis Preston:, you, you.
W. Curtis Preston:That's another, that's another thing is also that you can have multiple
W. Curtis Preston:SLAs within your business, right?
W. Curtis Preston:For different applications.
W. Curtis Preston:You wanna talk about that a little bit?
Eric Bursley:right.
Eric Bursley:So, um, yeah, I, when I describe, um, what a service level objective is to
Eric Bursley:the business leaders, I describe various cases of business continuity and, you
Eric Bursley:know, if it's just a simple I need to file restored, for example, that would have.
Eric Bursley:Potentially a five minute sla if I need to restore an entire virtual
Eric Bursley:machine, that could be a 30 minute sla.
Eric Bursley:Um, and you know, if I have to restore an entire data center,
Eric Bursley:we're looking at multiple day sla.
Eric Bursley:If that is not sufficient for the business leader, it's like, well, in
Eric Bursley:order to achieve this, we're gonna have to create a new system that can get there.
Eric Bursley:And that's when I started designing.
Eric Bursley:Uh, the IT infrastructure to meet their objectives.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And typically that probably comes with a cost though, right?
Eric Bursley:Exactly.
Eric Bursley:But if they desire it, I'm giving them the cost to achieve it and
Eric Bursley:then they can back off on it.
Eric Bursley:Um, if I tell, if I just point blank, ask them the question, So what's your RTO?
Eric Bursley:And rpo, if they understand what that acronym is, immediately they're
Eric Bursley:gonna come back and say, Zero.
W. Curtis Preston:Zero.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:then
Eric Bursley:Exactly.
W. Curtis Preston:
Speaker:Yeah, we say that a lot.
W. Curtis Preston:
Speaker:Yep.
Eric Bursley:and it's like, well, in order to achieve that, I'm going
Eric Bursley:to need to sell you and construct this new highly available solution.
Eric Bursley:It's, you know, one point x billion dollars and my sales
Eric Bursley:person's gonna be extremely happy and they're gonna come back.
Eric Bursley:I don't have a billion dollars to spend.
Eric Bursley:It's like, Okay, well let's talk about what you can do.
Eric Bursley:And as Curtis was mentioning earlier, different, um, applications within the
Eric Bursley:infrastructure will have a different sla, therefore tiered approach on recovery.
Eric Bursley:And you could create a highly available solution for 1% of your applications.
Eric Bursley:much less than, you know, a zero RTR PO for a hundred
Eric Bursley:percent of your applications.
Eric Bursley:So
W. Curtis Preston:can, Yeah, we can get you that RPO and RTO of Zero for just
W. Curtis Preston:that one application for $200,000 instead of $1 billion, and they're like sold.
Eric Bursley:e.
Eric Bursley:E, exactly.
Eric Bursley:Um, and you know, along with that one application, it's dependencies
Eric Bursley:that come along with it and understanding what they are so that
Eric Bursley:they get recovered in the same.
Eric Bursley:Point.
Eric Bursley:Um, I actually had one customer that was leveraging, uh, a, uh, particular
Eric Bursley:backup set and they were recovering into, um, a recovery data center.
Eric Bursley:I don't wanna get into specifics about the vendors to be
Eric Bursley:disparaging of any of the of them.
Eric Bursley:The customer had valid backup sets.
Eric Bursley:Okay.
Eric Bursley:They were a hundred percent valid backups their.
Eric Bursley:test with is we're gonna sever communications from production
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or.
Eric Bursley:and we are going to recover just from that backup set
Eric Bursley:into the bare metal servers that this provider was providing up.
Eric Bursley:They couldn't authenticate to their backup set because the
Eric Bursley:active directory was not there.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, that's the same problem that we had with
W. Curtis Preston:the, with this, this guy that, that recovered after a hurricane.
W. Curtis Preston:He, he, they had to, they had to authenticate back to the mainland, uh, cuz
W. Curtis Preston:they were on an island and they had, and they couldn't, they couldn't get there.
W. Curtis Preston:But, Well, but let me ask you a question.
W. Curtis Preston:So what.
W. Curtis Preston:The failure there to me would be in the system, the initial system design, right?
W. Curtis Preston:A backup system needs to be a DR.
W. Curtis Preston:System, needs to be kind of self-sustaining, right?
Eric Bursley:It should.
Eric Bursley:And as I, um, talk through the scenario with my customers about how to test it,
Eric Bursley:developing a test plan, um, I go through, Well, how's it gonna authenticate?
Eric Bursley:Well, active directory is how we authenticate.
Eric Bursley:Okay, great.
Eric Bursley:So do you have a synchronous copy of your active directory at the DR site and it's
Eric Bursley:like, it, it, it's, Oh yeah, we need that.
Eric Bursley:Right?
Eric Bursley:Yeah, we need that.
Eric Bursley:Um, and you know, one of the things that comes up frequently
Eric Bursley:is certificate authorities.
Eric Bursley:You know, how, how do we make sure that our certificate authorities
Eric Bursley:are valid, um, at the DR.
Eric Bursley:Site.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Hmm.
Eric Bursley:How do we recover that if it, it's uh, you know, we lose our
Eric Bursley:certificate chain, Um, because now you get invalid SSL certificates as an example
Eric Bursley:when you're trying to authenticate.
Eric Bursley:So, um, I go through how that functions and how to protect
Eric Bursley:that and how to restore that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because, But here's a question is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Who are the right folks to talk to in this case?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because if you talk, like going back to the Cerner example, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:If you talk to the Cerner developer, right, they would know, okay, for
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Cerner, the application, here are the components that are required.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:If you talk to the IT admin, they may not know everything for Cerner,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:but they may know, Okay, here's the things I need for SSL certificate
Prasanna Malaiyandi:authorities and for active directory.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:do you just basically get both those folks in a room and be like, Hey, let's walk
Prasanna Malaiyandi:through what this looks like end to end, and what are all the app dependencies?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or do you basically try to connect the pieces together?
Eric Bursley:Uh, many times, uh, Presidio as a whole, um,
Eric Bursley:will have multiple conversations.
Eric Bursley:Um, and sometimes where we're getting conflicting information, we will
Eric Bursley:bring both teams into the room.
Eric Bursley:Um, that happens quite a bit with my ransomware workshop where security
Eric Bursley:is saying one thing, the, the.
Eric Bursley:Network engineers are saying another thing.
Eric Bursley:Um, and the backup data center engineers are saying a completely different
Eric Bursley:thing and they're not in alignment.
Eric Bursley:So with my ransomware workshop that Presidio has free to
Eric Bursley:our customers, by the way.
Eric Bursley:Um, sit in the room typically with a C level who's just there
Eric Bursley:to listen and provide input where he or she needs that input.
Eric Bursley:Um, but it's like, so how are you detecting ransomware?
Eric Bursley:How are you able to recover from ransomware?
Eric Bursley:And it really brings more of a camaraderie because many times these IT organizations
Eric Bursley:are siloed and they're not talking.
Eric Bursley:We help to develop that conversation.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, that, that siloed business, you know, the, the departmental
W. Curtis Preston:silos is definitely a huge problem.
W. Curtis Preston:I, um, now I'm gonna, I'm gonna preface my following statement with, uh, to a hammer.
W. Curtis Preston:Everything looks like a nail.
W. Curtis Preston:When I was hearing, when I was hearing your, all of the problems that you have
W. Curtis Preston:with authenticating all of that and bringing things up in a, in a, um, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, in a DR environment, my immediately thought, We wouldn't have that problem.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, having a cloud service, I think this is one of those things I think
W. Curtis Preston:that makes a strong argument for a cloud service and against an on-prem system.
W. Curtis Preston:It's not that you can't do it, right, It's not that an on-prem system can't do it.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, it's that you will have challenges that you wouldn't have otherwise.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I would, I would challenge you on that though, Curtis.
W. Curtis Preston:What's that?
W. Curtis Preston:Go ahead.
W. Curtis Preston:Challenge
Prasanna Malaiyandi:uh, that just given how the technology works at
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the company you work at, Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Um, if you are using some components like the on-Premises active directory
Prasanna Malaiyandi:component used for authentication, you as a company would have to be aware of
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that and make sure that gets replicated.
W. Curtis Preston:you could have, you could, you could create problems.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You could create problems.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yes, that
W. Curtis Preston:could create problems.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, but again, I'm, I'm back to the same thing as well.
W. Curtis Preston:First off, don't do that.
W. Curtis Preston:Don't authenticate your backup system to active directory.
W. Curtis Preston:Done.
W. Curtis Preston:Don't do it.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:So, so, yes.
W. Curtis Preston:If, if, if you do that, in my opinion, really dumb thing.
W. Curtis Preston:Yes.
W. Curtis Preston:You could bring an on-prem problem into the cloud,
Eric Bursley:Right.
Eric Bursley:I, I
W. Curtis Preston:if I, Yeah.
Eric Bursley:on that.
Eric Bursley:Um, and not only the backup infrastructure should be in its own authentication
Eric Bursley:domain, but the entire IT infrastructure should be in a separate authentication
Eric Bursley:domain from the user domain.
Eric Bursley:One way trusted, but not in the same
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I wanna do like the football guys goal
Eric Bursley:Yeah, I, I, I've had conversations where it's like, we just
Eric Bursley:finished consolidating all of our active directories down into one forest, and
Eric Bursley:I'm telling them to break it up again.
W. Curtis Preston:Right, right.
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, it, it sounds great until you start to think about cybersecurity, right?
W. Curtis Preston:And when you think about, especially, and again, you know, I hope it
W. Curtis Preston:doesn't sound like I'm picking on, but especially if you are running a
W. Curtis Preston:Windows based backup system, right?
W. Curtis Preston:You know, your active directory gets hacked, this gets compromised, and
W. Curtis Preston:then boom, they just slide right on over into the backup server and
W. Curtis Preston:then do bad, bad things, right?
W. Curtis Preston:So I, so you're right, you're right.
W. Curtis Preston:Persona.
W. Curtis Preston:We could bring on-prem problems into the cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah, but that's why it's, You should be aware of what you're
Prasanna Malaiyandi:bringing because if you had just gone and replaced your backup product, right,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you might still have had the same issue.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So it's, I think it's like what Eric said.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Think about the entire application, the dependencies, everything else, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because you might fix one problem, but you might still have exposure in another.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So, so talk to someone.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and the thing is for, for those of you listening at home, we actually have
W. Curtis Preston:no idea how long we're running today because we've had technical problems
W. Curtis Preston:with our recording system that has broken this up into three separate recordings.
W. Curtis Preston:It's been a lot of fun.
W. Curtis Preston:But I'm gonna, I'm gonna sort of round us out here because I think
W. Curtis Preston:we're somewhere in the neighborhood of our usual recording time.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and dammit, I had a, I had, I was going some.
W. Curtis Preston:, What were we talking about?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I was just saying like, don't look at everything
Prasanna Malaiyandi:holistically, like don't just look at one component and replace
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it because you might still have exposure and gaps in the other parts.
W. Curtis Preston:Got it.
W. Curtis Preston:And I'm gonna say find the Eric at your vendor.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, we could, we could pick on sales guys all day long, right?
W. Curtis Preston:But.
W. Curtis Preston:The reality is their goal is to sell product.
W. Curtis Preston:And the, the Eric at your company, the, the vendor that you're working,
W. Curtis Preston:makes sure, you know, you can't, you can't dismiss either side.
W. Curtis Preston:You need the techie side and you need the business side.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and, and Eric is, you're, you're not unique Eric, but
W. Curtis Preston:you're definitely a, you're.
W. Curtis Preston:You're an endangered species.
W. Curtis Preston:People that can talk both the, the business side and the technical side.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I was gonna say hot commodity, but
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, hot That's, that's uh, what do you call it?
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, better than endangered species.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So talk to the Eric at your company.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, do you have any, do you have any final thoughts for us, Eric?
Eric Bursley:Um, so I, if you're interested in my company,
Eric Bursley:um, you know, you can find out more about us@presidio.com.
Eric Bursley:However, we've got a great website that tells you everything about us.
Eric Bursley:Um, we also have a podcast, uh, that you can listen to called The
Eric Bursley:Digital Decode that gets into more about what Presidio can offer, um, in
Eric Bursley:terms of our products and solutions.
W. Curtis Preston:right, sounds good.
W. Curtis Preston:And persona, have you had a good time today with all our, all
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I
W. Curtis Preston:fun?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It has been interesting and I'm really
Prasanna Malaiyandi:curious why it's been behaving the way it's been behaving.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But yes, other than that, it's been fun.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Thanks, Eric.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
Eric Bursley:All right,
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, we hope that you enjoyed this episode.
W. Curtis Preston:I just want you to know this one was really hard.
W. Curtis Preston:. If that matters to you, be sure to subscribe so that you can restore it all.
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