To Change or Not to Change Your Backup System
Changing your organization's backup system is no easy task - it requires careful evaluation of requirements, risks, and capabilities. Many admins get stuck with backup environments they've outgrown or that lag on modern demands.
On this episode, backup guru W. Curtis Preston and his cohost Prasanna Malaiyandi lend their expertise to help you determine if and when migrating your backup solution makes sense. You'll learn:
- Key indicators that your current system is no longer fitting your needs
- How to clearly define backup requirements and alignment to recovery objectives
- Ways to evaluate ease of use, security, and other qualitative factors
- Guidance on integrating specialized systems only when necessary
- The importance of prioritizing immutable storage and rapid recovery
- Change management best practices that curb instability
With ransomware threats growing, the bar for backup keeps rising. Tune in as our two hosts cover everything you need to make backup system change decisions that balance innovation, budget, and risk - avoiding needless switches while still meeting evolving data protection demands. You'll gain real-world clarity that turns unappreciated backup admins into cyber recovery heroes.
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W. Curtis Preston (2): Very few people like their backup system.
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So they're often thinking about making a change.
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When does it make sense to do that?
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And what's the best way to do it.
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Today, we answer these questions and we make sure you understand the
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risks of changing your backup system.
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Along with the rewards.
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Hi, I'm W.
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Curtis Preston AKA Mr.
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ATR2500x-USB Microphone & Logitech BRIO: Backup.
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And I've been where you are.
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I've been stuck with backup software.
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I hated and wanted so badly to change.
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So I know how it feels.
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On each episode of this show, we dive deep on one topic,
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helpful to you and your backups.
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And this week it's about change.
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We turn unappreciated backup admins into cyber recovery heroes.
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This is the backup wrap up.
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W. Curtis Preston: Welcome to the backup wrap up.
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I'm your host, w Curtis Preston, and I have with me my personal
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interface into the SpongeBob world.
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Prasanna Malaiyandi,
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am good Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah, it's SpongeBob amazing show.
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So growing up I didn't have access to SpongeBob 'cause I'm a little
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older than SpongeBob, but I remember I was probably in college and I
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went to a good friend's house and his six-year-old nephew was there.
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And that's the first time I saw SpongeBob Squarepants.
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And ever since then I'm addicted, so I do watch it.
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Even to this day, I may or may not have SpongeBob Squarepants socks that I wear.
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Also.
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W. Curtis Preston: And I have like zero connection to the SpongeBob world.
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Again, you know, if you're too old for it, I'm way too old for it.
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It was just a few days ago that I found out that the phrase, if you
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moments at Atar, uh, is from SpongeBob.
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I didn't know
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Great show.
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I think you should start watching it.
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W. Curtis Preston: Really?
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Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do.
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In the midst of all of
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a great background show to
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W. Curtis Preston: Oh, is it a background show?
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Yeah.
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And they have the first six seasons on Amazon Prime for free, so
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W. Curtis Preston: How can I resist it?
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You know, I've never actually watched an entire episode.
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I, maybe I'll watch an episode or two
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Well, it is time for us to get into the backup news or the, you
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know, the news of, of our world.
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Uh, do we wanna start?
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I, I should start with yours.
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Uh, our news from the AWS Storage Day back, uh, looks like about
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So this recently came out, um, it is AWS trying
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to help with ransomware attacks.
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Um, for folks who don't know, AWS offers a service called AWS backup,
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which allows you to protect and manage some of your AWS resources, like EBS
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volumes, EC2 instances, and others.
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And so what they've recently done.
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Previous to this new release, what they had was the ability to sort of create
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a vault, is what they called it, where you kind of squirrel away your backups.
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It would be stored there, it would be protected, so they
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had like retention settings.
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It could be supported using the immutable feature, object lock
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capability of AWS and basically prevent backups from being deleted.
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But this was all within the customer's account, and it was either AWS
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managed keys or customer managed keys, and so that was great, but someone
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could potentially still get into the system, start deleting backups.
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It's not completely foolproof.
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And I know Curtis, we've talked in past episodes, just actually just
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recently, about air gapping and what air gaps mean and virtual air gaps.
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And so now what Air AWS has offered is, let me make sure I got the words right.
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A logically air gapped vault.
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That's a mouthful.
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Yeah.
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W. Curtis Preston: fine with that term.
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I'm glad that they used that term, right.
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The, put the logically, um,
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what it is, is it is a more locked down vault
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where unlike before, uh, where the customer was managing the keys or
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using AWS managed keys, these are keys that are actually owned by AWS.
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You can't delete the keys, which means if you can't delete the keys, then you can't.
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Prevent access to the data.
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Um, and once again, they also have the ability to set retention
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that says, okay, make sure that the minimum anything between like
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this retention and this retention don't allow anything to be deleted.
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And once you set these policies, you can't actually go back and change it.
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So it's a good thing because it prevents people from like malicious
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actors, from going and changing the settings and sort of changing your
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retention policy down to one day and boom, all your backups are gone.
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Which
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W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
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thing.
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W. Curtis Preston: It looks like, um, it looks like it's
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designed to be used cross account.
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So one of the things we've talked about in the past is to create an account
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that holds the backups for everything.
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And that's what it looks like this is designed for, because also
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it talks about offering direct cross account, restore, um, which
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again, I'm not exactly sure what,
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I today, order do your restores, you kind of have to
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copy it back into the account first before you can start accessing it.
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And so they've, I think, integrated with AWS resource account access
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manager to allow instant access to those copies having to first copy it across.
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Which is cool because I think that's another piece that a lot of people
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W. Curtis Preston: Right, right.
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Yeah.
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So I, I think this is, you know, again, it's another step in the right direction.
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I like the idea of having the, I do wonder, and I would like to know,
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does having it ecr encrypted with AWS owned You know what I'm asking?
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Yeah.
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Does that mean that AWS can my
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I am sure a lot of enterprise customers would be concerned
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about, um, is how do you prevent AWS or someone who has access to the AWS
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infrastructure that that data is secure?
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Um, in my mind, I think customers today could almost hand roll
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this solution on their own.
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By using a third party key management service with the current AWS backup,
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where they're kind of using customer managed keys, but they're using
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a third party service for that.
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Uh, and so AWS in AWS fashion is like, Hey, see this as a customer pain point.
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Let's build something in natively to simplify things for customers.
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So kudos to AWS.
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W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
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Kudos to AWS.
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Uh, although I do want to ask that.
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Oh, by the way, this is in preview,
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Hasn't been, yeah, so it hasn't GAD yet, but should probably be
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coming out soon-ish is my guess.
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W. Curtis Preston: So the next is another.
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Completely different solution, but aimed at the same problem.
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A lot of companies are worrying about this, the, the concern of, of
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backups being attacked or whatever.
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And one of the things that we have consistently said is that one of the
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things that you want to do is to make sure that you have a different, you know, a
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separate authentication and authorization system for your backup and Dr.
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Data, which.
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Which would mean that if you're an on-prem system and you're backing
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up to the cloud, that you would, uh, that if active directory, for
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example, was hacked, it wouldn't be able to attack your backups.
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And that is, by the way, no one does this from what I can see.
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Right.
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One of the most often requested features that I remember back, uh,
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when, when I worked at DVA was, you know, active directory integration.
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It's like.
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But it's not a good idea.
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Right.
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Um, so the, um, anyway, so this is taking, it's not the opposite
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approach, but it kind of is.
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So this is from Cloud, cloud casa, um, which I guess is like
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a house for your cloud, I guess.
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Is what they're going for there.
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So it's from Cata Logic, the, the, the company, and it's
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specifically designed for Kubernetes.
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Uh, it's a Kubernetes backup, uh, system.
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And what they're now allowing is for you to do self-hosted, uh, versions of
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this soft of this software, and they're specifically billing it in that, let's
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say you're running in the cloud and you want to get an air gap backup of that.
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The only way to do that in their mind, or one way to do that in their mind
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is to put the, the backup on-prem.
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So it kind of follows the logic that we have used.
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I myself, I would prefer that the, that air gap ba, you know, that air
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gap, as I make quotes in the air, I would prefer that they are on some
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sort of right protected storage.
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Some
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and case Cloud Casa, they do say they
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support an S3 compatible backend.
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So if that is the case, then I'm sure that there are mechanisms
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to provide immutability.
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W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, I, yeah, I, I would like to see that.
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But the idea here is that you can run their software now on-Prem, separating
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it from your cloud environment.
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I guess it's very common to run Kubernetes in the cloud.
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So then you run this on-prem and so that you have a backup in, in a different, um,
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again, that different authe authentication
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I think the other.
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Thing that this could be useful for is for those customers who are
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running Kubernetes internally, right?
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It gives them a mechanism to have a completely siloed environment where,
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'cause I think a lot of more modern, uh, Kubernetes data protection
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platforms sort of have some sort of SaaS connectivity, if you will.
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And for those people who want complete control and complete isolation, this
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gives them that mechanism where if they're running something locally in
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their on-premises infrastructure, they have the ability to protect those in a
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simplified way without having to require centralized management and other things.
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I.
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W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, so it looks like, I guess if you have an on-prem deployment
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of Kubernetes, you can use the Cloud casa service that already runs in the cloud.
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But if you have, uh, Kubernetes in the cloud and you'd like
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to protect it on-prem, you can now run the, the self-hosted
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So
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are good.
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W. Curtis Preston: um, options are good.
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Well, there you go.
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That is the news of the day.
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I hope you enjoyed the news.
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Today.
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I thought we would focus on.
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Basically, how do we make sense of everything we just covered?
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We covered a whole bunch of different ways to do backup, right?
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We covered like the traditional full and incremental backup system, which
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may go to disc, may go to tape.
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Most likely we go to disk, it may go to cloud.
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We talked about CDP replication near CDP.
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You know, cloud-based system.
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I mean, we, we covered a whole bunch.
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Like,
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Prasanna Malaiyandi: You just throw a dart.
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W. Curtis Preston: is just, just throw a tart.
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So now you are thinking about picking a backup product.
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How do you do that?
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Right?
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How do you pick a backup product?
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just starting with the basics, I think it is figuring
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out what are your requirements, what are you trying to solve for?
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Because if you don't know what those are, it's gonna be hard to pick a backup
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product that meets those expectations.
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W. Curtis Preston: If you don't know where you're going, you'll
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probably end up somewhere else.
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Um, if you've ever heard that before.
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Um.
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I, I, I completely agree with you I think that's a message that we put out
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pretty consistently here, is that the more you can set expectations and document
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expectations, the more success you will have at meeting those expectations.
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If you don't set expectations and document expectations, then.
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No matter how good you are, you can't compare them to anything.
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Right?
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So the same is true of requirements.
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If your requirement, I mean, when I go back, I go back to the early days
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back in the day.
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W. Curtis Preston: commercial backup product.
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When I think back in the day I remember going to a bunch of backup vendors
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and I went with what at that time were really basic requirements, but
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they very quickly knocked out many, if not most of the backup products
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that were on the market at the time.
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And so and so what I remember is, and, and that's a great way to do it.
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If you have solid requirements that you can dictate let's say a requirement of
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you've got to be able to back up Mac oss that's gonna NOC out a bunch of vendors.
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Well, why is that a requirement for you?
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Well, because we run on Mac oss us.
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Well, and I think that gets to a key point.
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It's make sure your requirements are justified and valid because sometimes
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people are like, oh, I want a Ferrari.
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Right?
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But they only have a budget of like a Toyota.
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So you have to make sure you understand what are the requirements that you really
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need to hit versus what's your wishlist.
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W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Wishlist versus requirements, right?
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So you, you can have, you know, when we talk about requirements, I put
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them in three categories, right?
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There is.
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Basically showstoppers.
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You either do or you do not.
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Back up Mac oss or whatever it is, whatever that is for you.
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Oracle AWS, whatev, whatever that is, you know, for you that, that list.
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Then there's g We'd really like it if you could do this.
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Right.
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Backups by osmosis.
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That would be really nice.
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Right.
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Um, and those aren't going to.
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Rule out products, they're gonna help you make a choice when you're confront,
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when you get down to that, like three, that list of three products, all
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three products meet the showstopper requirements, but one of them has.
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75% of your nice hat, nice to haves.
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Right?
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Um, and then, and then there's like a third category of these sound cool, right?
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But honestly, you know, we're, it's not gonna, it's not gonna
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swing us one way or the other.
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I, I, I can't think of a good example of, of what that might be, but I remember
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having that, having that category right.
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You know, so it's sort of like required important.
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And I guess the third is
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Yeah.
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And even for these three categories, Curtis, I think it's important to also
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consider, it's not just what you need today, but you also wanna think about
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sort of the next three years, right?
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What those requirements, the must haves, the nice to haves the moonshots will be
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W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, that's a good point.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
keeping around
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W. Curtis Preston: Exactly.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's a good point because you should think about the requirements, not just for
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today, like you said, but for the future.
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So if you are aware of an upcoming project where you're going to migrate
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your entire environment to Azure.
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Maybe Azure backup might be important to you, right?
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It's not today, but it will be in a year or so.
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Now would be a time to think about it.
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And, and by the way, that's when you can, when you're having that conversation
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with the backup vendor and you say, Hey, we really need this feature.
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I.
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a year, and they go, okay, well we're coming out with it in two to three months.
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Right?
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And again, get that contractually and all that kind of stuff.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
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But, the big thing with the needs is, you know, you, you talked about making
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sure that they're tied to something.
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I just wanna make sure that we dictate the difference between
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a requirement and a design.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So I, I, I've used this example before.
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Uh, I live in San Diego.
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We have, um, Coronado on the other side of the, of the San Diego Bay.
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It's not an island.
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It's technically just a really big peninsula, but so many
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people call it Coronado Island.
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The, there are two ways to get there.
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One is to go, you drive all the way down to Imperial Beach and
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then you drive all the way back.
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Right?
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If you're downtown San Diego, that's a, like a 30 mile round trip.
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Um, the other way is to go over the Coronado Bridge.
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That's a mile and a half.
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So what, what has that got to do with the requirements?
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So, so.
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At some point somebody said, we've got to get a bunch of cars from here
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over to there in a lot quicker way than driving 30 miles round trip.
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That's the requirement, right?
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Then somebody else said, well, we, you know, we need a bridge.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
No, you, you need a way to get cars from here to there.
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That's your requirement.
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The bridge is the design.
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Another, another design would be tunnel.
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Another design would be ferry,
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like the how.
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W. Curtis Preston: Um, yeah.
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That's the how a lot of people, they very quickly get excited about the how.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
They forget to look at the why and where this happens a lot, you know, nerds like
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you and me, we see this presentation you've likened a CDP to TiVo, right?
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I remember the first time I saw TiVo the first time you got to pause live tv.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
was like the most amazing thing, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You, you remember that, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The first time you get to pause live, I'm gonna go to the bathroom
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
for a minute, pause, live tv, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Or somebody wants to, you know, my wife wants to say something to me
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and I can just pause, answer her question and I can go back to the show.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That was amazing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Well, the same thing happens when you, you know, when somebody shows
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you CDP for the first time or, uh, you know what, whatever, pick
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
your, you know, backup by osmosis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The first time you see that, you get excited about that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
point is, do you need that?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You have a requirement to have an RPO and an RTO of x and CDP could meet it because
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
CD can meet all the way down to zero.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But what is, what is X for you and what are the other ways that you can meet
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And remember that X may be different for different workloads
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
in your environment as well.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So those are other things.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You have to think about it
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Right, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Exactly.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, we're gonna cover that here in just a minute.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That, that, that's, we're gonna take a turn
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and, and, but wait, before you get there, since you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
threw out some acronyms, do you want to define RTO and RPO for our listeners?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: sure.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and then we'll throw on two more acronyms.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So, recovery time objective, recovery point objective, recovery time
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
objective, or RTO is the amount of time that a restore will take.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, well, that it will take to bring the system back to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
operational readiness, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So within that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Let's say we've got a four hour RTO within that four hour RTO.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
One hour of that might be dedicated to the actual restore.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Three hours might be dedicated to getting the, the hardware back up
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and running and connecting it back to the rest of the environment, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, but that's what recovery time, objective, recovery point objective
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
is how much data we can lose.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
As measured by time.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So one hour, we can lose one hour's worth of data.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And then we talk about RTA and RPA recovery time, actual recovery point,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
actual, so this is the RTO and RPO.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That's your objective.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That's the thing you're gonna try to meet.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and you maybe you have to meet RTA and RPA are what the system
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that you actually have, what, what it's actually capable of doing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Because sometimes they don't match.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Especially if you didn't go through this
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
process on the front end.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
aNother thing that's very closely related to what I said before is sometimes
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you don't need to make a change.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Sometimes you see something really cool, you're like, oh, that looks
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
like a really cool new backup product.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Sometimes the best choice is to do nothing, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The question is, are you meeting the requirements with what you currently
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
have and slash or could you meet your requirements with what you currently
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
have and perhaps some re slight redesign or replacement of a, of a piece of it,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
changing the, the backup target that you're using or something like that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Or do you need, need to replace it?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Is there no way right to,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But, but we all like new toys, Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Come on.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
We all like new
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and I think the other thing people sometimes don't think about
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
going to that point you just mentioned is you could replace the system, but
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
sometimes you have to also take into consideration retraining, retooling, uh.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Thinking about your existing infrastructure, keeping that up
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and running, migrating all your workloads over to use the new system.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
There's a big cost with migrating a backup system that you need
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
to take into consideration.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
If you do decide, okay, I wanna swap out my existing system.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: that is absolutely a reason not to migrate.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
If you don't have to migrate, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, realize that this is your last line of defense and every time you make a change,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you introduce instability and risk, uh, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: It's just like everything else in it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The other the other thing with backup systems as well is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
If I look at it, budgets, typically, most of your money is probably
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
gonna be spent on the production side of the house or other things,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
not so much on the backup systems.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And so you need to be wise with your dollars.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So deciding, Hey, I'm gonna swap out my existing infrastructure for something
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
completely different and it's not gonna make a huge difference for me.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That's kind of a waste of money that you could have been
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
using to do something else.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Exactly.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So once we have a handle on the requirements, it's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
time to start talking about.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The, the various different ways that we can do this.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And I think that nowadays one of the things that should bubble up to the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
top from a requirements perspective and, and should really take the lead
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
in this part of the discussion is when we start looking at the capabilities
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
of the different products is the cyber.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Aspect, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Because it's no good to have like the fastest backup and recovery system in
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
the world and the one that has the most beautiful ui, et cetera, et cetera, and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
maybe costs the the least if that system can be hacked in a ransomware attack.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I agree.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But I think no, but, but, but I think that there is various
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
degrees of cyber resiliency.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And you could also look to figure out, like it may not be directly supported
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
by the backup vendor itself, but there might be say, storage systems
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that go alongside with the backup system that offer that capability.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Or how you, going back to what you were saying, Curtis, how you design the system
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
might lend itself to cyber resiliency.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So I do agree with your requirement that your system needs to have
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
cyber resiliency, but how it goes about may not be one specific
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
vendor providing that solution.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: You, you may be looking at an overall solution to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
solve the, to solve the problem, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And, and I think that that would be, you could say, well, with this vendor,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I need to buy this box and I need to buy that box, and I need to buy
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
this oss and I also need to buy some stuff from Amazon with this vendor.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I get all of that in one place.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Mm-Hmm.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Um, so that's part of your discussion.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
What, what was that?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
simplicity.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: yeah, simplicity.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Simplicity is, is the, it is the, or.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Complexity I will say is the enemy of security.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, I think, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So yes, while I agree with what you're saying, the sometimes you can get the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
things that you need from multiple pieces.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I would also argue if you had two systems that are equivalent in every other
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
way, the one with fewer pieces wins.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Oh agree.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
For sure.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and so you look at all of the different aspects, things like RTO and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
RPO, you really, really should look at ease of use, ease of configuration, ease
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
of basically daily management, what kind of daily management that you have to have.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And you should also be looking at.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The, again, these security aspects.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I think when we look at requirements, I, I think perhaps we should just do a
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
whole separate episode of what are the things that I think are table stakes
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
at this point for a backup system.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Now, you're right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Some of these things may be provided by a second vendor, for example.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I think that at this point, true actual complete immutability.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Is table stakes.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The, the problem is that there's a whole lot of companies that use the word
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
immutability when it, it, it's, it's not
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Like air gap.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Like the term air gap.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and so you, you have to ask specific questions to find out, you know, because.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You have to ask questions.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
For example, if I change, you have to ask them.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, I'm a little devious.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I dunno if you know this, but you have to,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I never expected that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: you have to ask the questions in such a way that it
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
makes it sound like you're asking for something good, but you're
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
actually asking for something bad.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Let me give you a perfect example.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Your product offers immutability.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
What if I change my mind?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Is there a way for me to, as the administrator, undo the immutability
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
of a particular set of data?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And, and give a reason as to give an example.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, let's say we decided we're no longer backing up an
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
entire section of the company.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
We sold off a company or whatever, and we, you know, we, we'd like
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
to reclaim that storage, but we turned on the immutability flag.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, is there a way to undo that?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The best answer?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The best answer is no, sorry.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The worst answer is, oh yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You just, you just push the thing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You just push the thing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's not really immutability, it's just, uh, you just, you just
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
push the little, the super secret button that's over here, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, that only we know is there.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Somewhere in the middle is, yes you can, but we make you jump through 10 hoops.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and we do all sorts of manual, human based, face based verification.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Although as I, as I say that, I'm like, I immediately go deep fake.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and I, I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Can't be trusted anymore.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Goodness gracious.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
What a world we live in.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
What a world we live in.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
soon.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
This podcast will be a deep fake.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: how do we know this isn't a deep fake, I'm just saying.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Ah, good point.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: I mean, all you have to do is watch a
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
couple of those videos where.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You, you know, it's a fake video, but it really doesn't look like a fake video.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's a little freaky.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Oh.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So how do you, those are, those are your answers.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And I think that that is to, that's question number one in this system.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
If I, so for example, if you use AWS and Object lock, the answer is no.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Unless,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Unless, unless
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Prasanna Malaiyandi: unless you are using No.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So there are two modes of object lock, if I recall.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
One is governance, one is compliance.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I can't remember which one is more strict, but one does allow the admin
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
to change it, the other one does not unless you delete your account.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: So you should be using whichever one is the, the one
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that doesn't allow you to delete it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: And, uh, although there, there is,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
least I believe that's the case.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: yeah, there is still that question.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And I, and I really want to get an answer to this que a
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
definitive answer to this question.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
What happens when I delete my account?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Now I've been told that it doesn't go away right away.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And that, um, there's a way to recover that account if it's,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
uh, if it has optic clock on.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But I haven't, I don't see that in writing and I haven't, and I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
certainly haven't, uh, tried it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That's what I need to do.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Try it, Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Just create an account, create object clock, delete
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
some data, or put some data in there and then delete the account, and then,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
See what happens.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: so what else?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, we, we look at the different, um, you know, the different areas of
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
functionality for the different areas of your environment, and then to allude
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
to something that you had said earlier.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, I think it's important to talk about the fact that, let's talk about
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
basically best of breed versus all in one.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So is it better to have one backup system that does everything, or three backup
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
systems that do three things really well?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That's a question.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So assuming that everything is equal, it's better to have
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
the one system that can do everything.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
However, that's usually not the case.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And there might be certain workloads that are more optimized
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and significantly better than that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
all-in-one solution in some areas,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
which case, for those specific cases.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And so for those specific workloads, you might decide, okay, everything else
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I'm gonna protect with this all-in-one.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And for this one particular specialized use case, I'm
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
gonna use this special product.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: and this is kind of what I wanted to talk
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
about is that the answer should be.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's okay to do, to, you know, to, to have that specialized workload
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
protected by the specialized product that specializes in that workload, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
If you're unable to meet your requirements with the more general product, that's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
really the only time to deviate.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And this is, this is just like when, when I talked in the beginning.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The only time to move off of a backup product is if you can no
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
longer meet your requirements with the current backup product.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The only time to deviate from the central design and the central, you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
know, one sort of product to rule them all is when you can't, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you can't meet your requirements for one part of your organization.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
With the, you know, the, the one big backup product that you're
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
planning to do everything with, and then suddenly somebody brings in.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I don't have a modern equivalent of this, but I'm thinking about back when.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You know, back in the day when I was in the data center, we had like
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
nine different types of Unix and we had, we had the top three databases.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
We had Oracle and Informix and Sybase, and, and pretty much any popular flavor
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
of Unix we had in the data center.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And then we had an AS400.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
There was no backup product in the world.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That backed up Unix and AS400.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So we needed a separate backup product for the AS400 because there was just,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
there was just literally no other way.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That's an example of what I'm talking about.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, can you think of a, of a modern equivalent to that?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
At one of my previous employers, one of the things that I ran
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
into was when you had very, very, very large databases running on tier one
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
storage, backing them up was too painful,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: mm-Hmm.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and I'm talking about hundreds of terabytes.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And so there was a solution developed called Protect
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
point to allow direct backups of those.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
From the storage rate to a data domain system
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Mm-Hmm.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and intended only for that particular use case, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But it allowed them to actually get a backup done rather than all of the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
pain that they were going through, or the fact that they weren't able
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
to backup at all to start with.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, I, that, that's, I think that's a good example.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I was thinking when I was trying to come up with a modern equivalent, um, I.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I was thinking of like, maybe you're not running VMware or HyperV or KVM, you are
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
running some other hypervisor, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, I know people that work at some of these other hypervisor companies
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and they're, they're doing just fine.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
They're doing, they're having an exciting time right now with the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Broadcom acquisition of VMware.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's a, it's, it's fun days for these guys, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So you're obviously not going to be able to use your.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Mainstream backup product to back up the non-mainstream virtualization
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
product, you're going to have to have something else for that product, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and that, and that is okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, if you have no other choice, um.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But yeah, and that's just life, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You need to back up that data.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's important to you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You'll figure out a way the perfect.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The other example, Curtis, as we were chatting, I was just thinking about this.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Most SaaS applications, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Most of those are the common vendors don't always support it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And so you might have one that requires a specific backup product to back it up.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: exactly, because we're gonna back up our SaaS apps, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
No, SAS doesn't need to be backed up.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Don't make,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I am not serious.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: When I look at all of the different ways
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that we do backups, I think that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, the cyber requirements need to be, I think they need
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
to be front and center, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Because it doesn't matter how good the system is, if it disappears in
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
a ransomware attack, it's no good.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And I think that the ways that we can do backup today, that offer s restores
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that are so much quicker that, um, it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
May cause me to waffle a bit on this.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Don't do it unless you have an absolute requirement bit.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And here, and here's what I mean by that, when you think about cyber recoveries,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
when you think about recovering from a ransomware, uh, attack, well, it
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
might not be an absolute requirement.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
For a normal restore to be of a certain speed.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The recover, the RTO, the, the previous part.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, I guess I'm not, I'm not changing my answer.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I'm just saying I'm, I guess I'm saying, I'm going back to the beginning and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
saying, when you're determining your RTO and RPO, just think about the cyber
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
aspects When you have a cyber attack, you are going to spend your entire
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
RTO and probably past your RTO, just figuring out what needs to be restored.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: So then think about the likely recovery that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you're going to need to do.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And think about how that potentially affects the RTO capabilities
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
of a backup product or a DR product that you're buying.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Because basically they're gonna finally figure it out.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's taken 'em two weeks and they're gonna be, okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Prasanna just now just restore these 17 boxes, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And they're not gonna go, oh, well, okay, well I guess I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
can start my 24 hour RTO now.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
No.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You got no minutes at this point.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So I guess what I'm
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
go run as quickly as you can.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: yeah, yeah, exactly.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, I'm just saying that perhaps in the modern climate, the, the restore aspects,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
perhaps you should give a little bit more weight to products that can do restores.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Really, really, really, really quickly.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
This, I get, this is what I'm saying.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I'm, I'm kind of waffling on the requirement, but I'm kind of not,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
because you're not gonna have the RTO set to two weeks, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You're gonna have the RTO set to something probably in hours, and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
when you get a cyber attack.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's gonna, whatever, whatever you set it to, it's gonna eat it up.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And then you're just gonna need, need to be able to restore as quickly as possible.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and so just think, just figure that into, when you're talking to,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
uh, vendors, when you're thinking about their backup products.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I like that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: yeah, it's all cagey and weird and, uh, it's just,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I'm trying to, I'm just trying to.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Get you to think about that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
If you're thinking about changing your backup product, just think about how,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
think about what a likely cyber recovery will actually look like, um, and how
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you'll, um, it, I don't know if I've told this story on the podcast, but
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I'm pretty sure I've told it to you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I go back to.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
One of the first major restorers that I participated in, and I was
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
at a bank and we had a, we had a NOC right network operations center.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And when we were doing a large restore, there was someone who was at a console
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that was a remote console to system we were restoring and they were sort of,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
they were the operation center, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And so they were talking to people on phones and you know, we had, we
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
had, uh, um, I'm trying to remember.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I don't, I don't think we had.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Flip phones.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I think we just had, we just had phones, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Regular hardwired phones and beepers.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yep.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: And I remember that, um, we had the guy in the data center.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, I only saw the other half of this story.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I didn't, I didn't see this, the, the, the funny part
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Because you were out in the data center
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: 'cause I was the one in the data center doing the thing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
In the NOC.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
There, there was the, the, you know, the guy sitting at the, um, at the,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you know, the console and standing behind him were two managers.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
His boss's boss and his boss's boss's boss standing, you know, and it just
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
so happened that their first name, they're both, first, both of their
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
first names were Tom and, One of my cohorts was talking to this guy on
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
the speaker, on speaker phone, not knowing he was on speaker phone.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Oh
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: And so we were in the middle of this big recovery.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And, it's just what I thought about, you know, when you come
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
time to do the restore, you've got, you've got the attention of the,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you know, the powers that be right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So he said, you know, so yeah, where are you?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Oh, I'm in, I'm in, you know, this data center and you know, where are you?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Oh, I'm in the NOC, you know, sitting here at the console.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And he goes, let me guess.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You got Tom and Tom over your left and right shoulder.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And apparently Tom and Tom just took like one step back.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Because yes, when the feces hits the rotary oscillator,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that's exactly what happened.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You've got all that attention, a very unwarranted, unwelcome, uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
well not warrant, unwarranted.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's warranted, uh, unwelcome.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
All eyes on you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So, uh, just my final thought, just make sure that the first time you're firing the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
backup system in anger is not the first time you're firing your backup system.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Make sure that you've got a solid handle.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Once they say, go, and I know I've got 15 systems to restore, I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
know how long that's gonna take.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So that you can, you know, and hopefully that, that you can reduce
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that time down as, as much as you can.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Anyway.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, well this has been fun.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Anytime I can reminiscent over a, uh, a scary event from my
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
past, it's a beautiful thing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Well,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
which you have quite a lot of, I must say.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: I do, I do that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I'm a storyteller.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
What can I say?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So thanks for hanging out, Prasanna.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
as always.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Thanks Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: All right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And thanks to our listeners.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
We'd be nothing without you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That is a wrap.
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