To DRaaS or Not to DRaaS? Comparing Disaster Recovery Approaches
Disaster lurks around every corner - ransomware, natural disasters, human errors. Are you thinking about all the data and systems at risk. Is your organization prepared?
In this episode, Curtis and Prasanna pull back the curtain on the disaster recovery decision - to build or to buy? They unpack the tradeoffs around cost, complexity, control, and even cybersecurity. Whether you're an anxious IT leader losing sleep over business continuity or just disaster recovery curious, you won't want to miss this episode.
Will your DR strategy survive? Tune in now to find out!
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W. Curtis Preston: Whether we're talking a ransomware attack, natural
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disaster, or other crisis, you need to have plans in place to recover
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your critical systems and data.
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One big question will be whether or not you should buy and manage the
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software yourself or take advantage of disaster recovery as a service.
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What are the trade-offs between running an in-house solution
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versus outsourcing to a provider?
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Prasanna and I will both share our perspectives on the pros
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and cons of each approach.
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My goal, as always, is to empower you to make the best choice for your
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organization's needs and budget.
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This podcast turns unappreciated backup admins into Cyber Recovery heroes.
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This is the backup wrap up welcome to the show.
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I'm w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr.
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Backup, and I have with me my deluge consultant Prasanna.
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Molly, how's it going up there in, in Northern California
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So today it's sunny and clear skies, so I can't complain.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's a complete shift from what it was Sunday all day where we had, I think it
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
was like four and a half or five inches of rain and 55 mile per hour gusts of wind.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, I lost power for a couple hours.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, ended up hanging out in the car to most expensive cell
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
phone charger in the world,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: That was pretty, that pretty good one.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That was a pretty good one.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It ha It hasn't been too, I mean it was, well, other than the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
fact that I'm dealing with a new,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
uh, minor roof leak, I'm super excited about that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, we got, you know, I looked at like LA and there were parts of LA that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
got three or four inches in an hour.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
We got three or four inches over the weekend.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Which is a significant difference, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
both, um.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You know, the amount you get and, and how, how long you get it, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And so I haven't seen too much, although I've talked to at least four people that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
lost something so far in the storm, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, I talked to somebody that lost a car, um, and two people lost an apartment
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and one person that lost their house and they do not have, uh, flood insurance.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So, uh, that's not
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
who thinks in say right in California?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Oh yeah, I don't need flood insurance.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It barely ever rains
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, I mean, there's a song, we wrote a song about that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It never rains in California.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But, um, yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So, well, uh, speaking of reasons that you might want to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
have a disaster recovery plan,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
on topic, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's almost as if Mother Nature planned it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Exactly, exactly.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So, um.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
We, you know, we've been covering Dr here for actually for four weeks.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
This is actually our part five because it's such an important concept.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And last time, you know, we talked about, um, you know, whether or not you wanted to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
do a cold site, warm site, hot site, and, and now this is, you know, even a more.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Well, just as if you will.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Foundational concept.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And that is whether or not you want to use your, you know, basically
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use some software, run it in your organization, whether you run it on-prem
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or you run it in the cloud, or if you want to use some type of DR service.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I think it depends on whether the organization has a
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skillset or even values disaster recovery.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Like if you don't have a very critical workload or if you are
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okay with having some outages or managing it on your own, or if you
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don't even have the skillset, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Some people barely have a single IT generalist who can't focus on
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DR with everything else going on.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I think depending on how.
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The organization, like what they're composed of.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I think that sort of helps dictate like whether they should even try to build
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it on their own and run it on their own, versus is it better for them to
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go towards like a managed provider.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, I, I think that's a perfect way to look
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
at sort of the first idea as, as of, you know, do backup is hard.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right Back, you know, recovery's harder.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, disaster recovery is an advanced recovery.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's one thing to be able to say, Hey, recover this file, recover
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this email, recover this server, even recover this folder that's
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been destroyed in the server or this database that somebody deleted a table.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That is one level of, uh, skill.
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And then a completely different level of skill is going to be, um, you
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know, recovering an entire environment because there's way more than.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Recovering just the data.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
There's way more than recovering the servers that the data's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
going to reside on there.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You, you want to talk a little bit about the, the network side of things?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah, so some of the things you have to worry
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
about is network connectivity.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So you might have public IP addresses.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
How do you make sure that they are able to fail over at the right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Point in time, or how do you make sure that your environment still gets the right
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
IP addresses, like your database server?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Does it have the right IP address and DNS entry such that when you bring
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
up the application in your DR site, it can still connect down to the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
database without having to reconfigure a whole bunch of other things, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So all of these other things you have to worry about, and of
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
course with disaster recovery sites, you can't always just keep.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The same IP address up on both sides at the same time.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Things aren't always happy.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So how do you deal with sort of the process of Yes, before disaster strikes?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I still need access to those disaster recovery infrastructure.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Once the disaster strikes and now I need to recover, how do I make sure it looks
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
identical to what was there on the source?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So networking infrastructure, authentication infrastructure.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Your active directory servers, making sure those are all configured
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and everything else, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So it's like you said, Curtis, it's not just data, it's not just the application.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It is that entire environment and how do I make sure that that is properly
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
configured after a disaster strikes?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, it's, it, it's funny, I, I thought of this,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
but, uh, Dr is to back up and, and restore as brisket is to, um.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Barbecue brisket is, is up at the top in terms of complexity
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and difficulty and ease.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Ease with which you can totally destroy a perfectly good piece of meat.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You touched on a couple of things there.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You, you said both skill level and then also sort of what I like
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
to call the give a care factor.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Do,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: There was a recently, I, I forgot who it was, but they were
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
talking about disaster recovery and things like that, and they were saying that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, or perhaps they were talking about cybersecurity, but they were talking
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
about you need to have, uh, or I would say you need to have a recovery mindset.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Do does your company have a recovery mindset?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
When you put in new infrastructure, does someone always raise their hand and say,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you know, has this been made part of the.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, Dr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Plan, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, is ha ha Has anyone talked to Curtis Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
A about this new, you know, this new part of the infrastructure?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And so is that the way your organization thinks, or have you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
done, like many organizations have you deprioritized, backup.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And even beyond that, uh, deprioritized, uh, disaster recovery.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So if that's, you know, the,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's hard, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: because it's hard.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You know, we, we talk a lot on here about how backup is, you know, like nobody,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
nobody, no little kid says, I want to grow up and be a backup administrator.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
We love our backup
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You should change that, Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: audience.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That's what, that's what's gonna happen,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I wanna be
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: love our
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I wanna be like
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: you are.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah, you are.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Why we're here, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
We're here to help you do better at your job.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But those of you that are our core audience are really the exception, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So many companies don't have somebody that really wants to raise their
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
hand and wants to take on this really difficult job, and so backup.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and, and also there's management that looks at backup and Dr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And sees it just as a cost center and not a value center, they don't see it as
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
a revenue generating, um, organization.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, it's funny, I was was talking to a good friend of mine and they were talking
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
about, you know, cost cutting stuff that needs to happen in their company
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and the, the higher ups were saying.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, they were talking about, well, referring to his department, which is it?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Well, you're not really revenue generating.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and, and so, you know, you're deprioritized behind the company,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you know, behind the parts of the company that generate revenue.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And he's like, okay, except.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And he could be very, uh, he could be very sarcastic.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
This guy, he's like, just, I'm just curious.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Can you point out any parts of the company that generated revenue without it?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: I I was like, oh, yeah, that's, that's a great conversation.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So, so they look at, they look at that and they're like, oh, it's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
not really generating your revenue.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's, it's insurance.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Backup and Dr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It has been and always will be basically insurance and there will be, what's that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
it's risk reduction.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That is what the purpose of backup and DRR.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The risk of you losing everything.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And there will always be this pressure for some people within the company to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
say, um, you know, I don't really see what value that it has, or, you know,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
can't this, this here, that's good enough.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
We've got backups, we've got a, you know, we, you know, Hey, look, look, we get, we,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
we bought you a replicated, you know, we let, we let you know we're paying for a
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
replicated copy of the data in the cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You know, all our data's sitting in S3 in object lock storage.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
What more do you want?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And so if that's the attitude of your company, you really
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
have to look at ways where, um.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Where you can reduce complexity, reduce cost, um, and, and I, I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
think that lends you more to the DR as a service, uh, way of things
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you want, you want to talk about.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, and before you move on, I think one of the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
other important aspects there is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
As that IT person, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Sometimes companies might be more willing to allow you to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
spend OPEX rather than CapEx.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So for you to go and say, yes, I want to go contract out with the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
service provider to deal with my Dr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Because then I don't need to buy infrastructure.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I don't need to worry about that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's not hitting my books.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
All of those other aspects, and so that might make it easier for some companies
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
to sort of move in the direction of, yes, I am gonna use a managed DR solution.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That, because when you look at do, doing it yourself, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And th this goes back to, um, you know, we, we, we've had a couple episodes where
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
we talked about whether or not you want, wanna do this on-prem, or you wanna do
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
this in the cloud, whether or not you wanna do a cold site, whether you, you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
know, you wanna do a hot or a warm site.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The, the, um.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Anything that falls under, like the sort of that idea where you're going to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
roll it yourself with your own hardware, that's gonna be a big CapEx expenditure,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
a cap, a big CapEx expenditure.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Which is not going to add anything to the company.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Anything other than peace of mind, like you said, risk reduction earlier,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: but if you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
the challenge,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: if you, if you did the, but if you did the service idea, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So you're, so you're gonna spend all this money and, and you're
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
not gonna get a lot to it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So if you did the service idea, this is what you're saying, if
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I understand correctly, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Is if you do the service idea, it, it's still a cost, but it's a cost.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's a little bit each month.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And they don't have to, they don't have to account for it in the same way.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah, exactly.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And I think that's the key, right, is in your books, right, in your
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
financial records, the way you account for an opex is different than CapEx.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And so sometimes it makes it easier from a budgeting perspective as well.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So Curtis, I know we were just talking about sort of, okay, what are some
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reasons to go towards managed service, but what are some of the pros that
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people should consider when they want to roll their own DR solution
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or manage their own DR solution?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Control, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You and, and this is control.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
In many aspects, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So you get to control, um, exactly what hardware is used.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You get to control where that hardware is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You get to control how that hardware is accessed from a, from a, both a physical
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
aspect as well as a cybersecurity aspect.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You know, you get to control, let me rephrase.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You get to know, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And this is a big, this is no
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
touch, feel, and hug.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: underline.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Well, you No, no.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You get to know exactly where that hardware is and isn't.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I'm alluding to the OVH.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Disaster where people paid for physically separated backups and they
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thought they had physically separated backups, and it turned out that just
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meant that the servers were over in the corner in the same data center.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
When you buy your own hardware, you decide exactly where that hardware's going,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and so you know exactly where it is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You know, you, you can touch it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You, you alluded to it earlier, like, you know, you got this touchy feeling.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
There is a, there is a control aspect.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And those who, um, have I told you my control freak knock, knock joke.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
No.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: So, so, knock, knock,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Who's there?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: control freak.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Now you're supposed to say control freak who?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
See,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that's it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That's, that's the joke.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
so that's my control freak, knock, knock joke.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, if you're, this is sort of alluding to what I said in the beginning,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
if your attitude towards the cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Is one of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, I, I interact with, uh, people on LinkedIn.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
We just have a different opinion about the cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You know, anybody who's listened to this podcast knows that I'm very pro
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
cloud and I was that way before I.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, worked at Druva.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I'm now that way after having worked at Druva.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I think that Dr is the killer app for the cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And I know, so you're, you're, you're rolling your eyes a little bit.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I, and I know that not everybody could do the cloud, but, but
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
let me go back to my point.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And that is if you think the cloud sucks, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
If you think it's insecure, if you think it's costly, if you think it's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
whatever, if you, if, if everything you think about the cloud is just negative,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
then you're not gonna wanna do DR as a service because it's most likely
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
going to be, uh, done using the cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Now there might be, there probably are some MSPs.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That will run a DR as a service with your own hardware.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, but that, that's a, that's a, in, in this conversation, mainly
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
we're talking about either doing it with your own hardware or doing
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
it in the cloud as a service.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Now, what was with the big grin?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I wanna
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
yeah, no, the big grid was, there are other
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
pros to running your own Dr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, I know you alluded to some of it, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, when you were just talking right now, it's if the cloud
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
cannot run your workload.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Then it doesn't make sense to have a cloud Dr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So you might have an application or an operating system or some specific
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
hardware that is not compatible with the cloud version, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
In which case you're gonna roll your own.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So that's kind of one thing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The other case for rolling your own is you may not have the ability to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
move all your bits into the cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Just the amount of data you have, the change rate, other
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: perspective.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Physics.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
From a physics perspective, that may not be feasible.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, the other thing also is you might need, based on regulatory requirements
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
to always have two DR sites.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And so failing over to the cloud and trying to bring back your data from
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
the cloud becomes very expensive.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I think a lot of folks who fail over into the cloud, I think once they fail over, I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
don't know if they really wanna come back.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Although most vendors say, yeah, you could bring your data back.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I think trying to bring your data back from an egress cost or just the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
amount of time it takes to bring all that data back may be too expensive.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Versus, Hey, I have data.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I can just bring my own other equipment into my data center, copy the data
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
locally, and then just ship my hardware back to the production site.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So I think those are some of the benefits potentially of rolling your own.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That may or may not apply for you if you go to the cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: yeah, I, I didn't have those as benefits as on-prem.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I had those as disadvantages of the cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Oh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Um, yeah, but, but your, but your, but
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
your point is valid, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Not everybody can use the cloud, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Not everybody can use the cloud from a, from a, um, you know,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
for, for various reasons, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You, it, it just might not be possible.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You might have, uh, gov data governance rules.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It says, I can't, I can't have data that leaves this, this vicinity.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And the, you know, your nearest, uh.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, AWS region is in another country.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You might have that problem.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, and then, you know, physics, you know, I, I, I've spent an entire
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
career just battling physics, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You, physics will win and there is only so much data that you can send over the,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
over the wire, uh, either way, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, I will say that it's a very.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The companies that have that problem, I'm not sure they
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
have any good solution to them.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I'll agree with you that this is an advantage of doing it yourself
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
in that you can buy enough.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Network hardware and computing hardware to, to do this.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Whereas you can't really do that in the cloud, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So if you, if you know, if you're like, like I, I live in San
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Diego, we do biotech here, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I've met companies over here that are making exabytes a week.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Okay, so if, if, if you fall into that category, there is no amount of
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
bandwidth that is going to be sufficient because they're making exabytes of
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
new data that that doesn't compare in any way to the previous week's data.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And, uh, they can't get rid of the previous week's data.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
They need to keep both of 'em and they.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and when you, when you do de-dupe of that, there's nothing to de-dupe.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's all new stuff, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
New data.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: And so the only way when you are gigantic and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
gigantic is a relative term, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
If you are so large that you, that the concept of buying enough
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
internet bandwidth to get to and from the cloud, it's just like,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that's just crazy talk, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The only way you can do that is I, I still think that the way to do
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that is by using replication, but it's just you have to own the wire.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You have to have
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
people lay dark fiber
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: get
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
their sites.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
They like dark fiber between two different locations, hopefully far enough that they
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
wouldn't suffer the same natural disaster.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, but not so far that the, you know, the latency's gonna be an issue.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That's really only possible, um, if, if you own all the infrastructure.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and, and, and by the way, somewhere between, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So there's, I'm gonna, you know, you know how I like to categorize
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
people, I like to categorize, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So there's a, I'm gonna say like, I'm just gonna make up numbers, okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
These are totally like pulled outta, you know, aware numbers.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
All right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I'm gonna say that like 75% of the world, there is no way
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
in earth that they can do DR.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Cheaper or faster or better than they can do it in the cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That's, that's, I, I'm, I'm making up the percentage, but I'm gonna say that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
the vast majority of organizations in the world can do DR in the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
cloud cheaper, faster, and better than they can do it themselves.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
On the opposite end of that, there's a 1.5% of the organizations in the world
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that there's no way in hell, there's no amount of bandwidth in the world
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
to, to, to, to do DR in the cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That leaves 23.5% of organizations that in my totally made up statistic, who could go
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
either way and they could lay dark fiber and own the infrastructure, or they could
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
go into the cloud and those are the people that really need to do a cost benefit
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
analysis and a give a care analysis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Is this really something that we want to do and do it right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Pay all the, you know, the money for that, or is this something
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
that we wanna do with a service?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
What do you think of that?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and no, I.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Other than the exact percentages, I think your categorization is right, and also
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: You, you don't agree with
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
size of each.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
No, no, no, no.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And just the relative size of those categories I agree with.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I think if it's like 75% or 60%, I think that's like right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But like you said, I think in general, just the scale of those and the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
differences I think is accurate.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Now the one.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Point I was gonna mention is, uh oh.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
When people think about DR as a service and using the cloud, I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
think they should go back and think, let's go back and talk about email.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
People used to manage and host their own email servers on premises, and then over
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
time they're like, Hey, I should just use Microsoft 365 or Google Workspaces.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Why am I running my own infrastructure and managing and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
dealing with all those issues?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
If there's a service for me, yes, it might be more expensive, but
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I don't have to worry about all these things in a similar fashion.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I think with DR as a service, that becomes a great workload to sort
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
of offload and say, Hey, I don't have to worry about that anymore.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I can now use someone else.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And then the other thing to consider too is there are some companies who might
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
be on premises and slowly starting to migrate to the cloud and they're trying
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
to figure out what workload should I move?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Backup is a great workload because like you said, Curtis, at the very beginning,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
it's a risk reduction thing, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And so moving that workload to the cloud makes sense.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I think in a similar fashion, moving Dr from on-premises where you're managing
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
the infrastructure and everything else and moving it to the cloud also
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
makes a lot of sense because you don't have to worry about messing with
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
your production environment, any new requirements or differences, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
All that stuff.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You're still operating production as it is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You're keeping your DR copy in the cloud and you can do testing,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you can get comfortable, and then you could figure out later on,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Hey, am I gonna move my production workload to the cloud now or not?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, agreed.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, the, you know, I was thinking about the percentages that I was throwing out.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
One of the reasons that I threw the, what did I say, 75%?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
actually think that percentage is actually probably larger.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The, the reason, the reason why I think that percentage
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
may actually be larger is that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
If I recall correctly, like, not like, at least in the us, I don't
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
know if it's the same way everywhere,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Percent are
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: in the US 90% of businesses are small businesses, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
They're SMBs, s small medium businesses, and SMBs, the cloud man, like it's gonna
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
be really hard to do it faster, cheaper, or more secure than doing it in the cloud
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
so that that 75% may be as high as 90%.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Regarding the, you know, DR.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And backup being perfect workloads in the cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You know, I agree with a
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
caveat and that is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
With a caveat on that is I don't agree if all you're gonna
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
do is lift and shift, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
If all you do is take your net backup server, your Veeam server
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and just move it into the cloud, that is not necessarily going to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
add any value to your organization.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, in fact, all it will do.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You know, for the most part is add cost.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, it, it's one thing to send a copy of your data to the cloud,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
but actually moving your backup infrastructure if all you're doing
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
is taking your favorite on-prem.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Piece of backup software and then putting it in a VM in the cloud, it, all that's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
gonna do is increase your costs and it's gonna lower your, you know, your, uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
carbon footprint on-prem, but just move it up there and you're going from buying
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
servers to renting servers and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So, if what you're saying is, you know, just leveraging a service based.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Company, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
A SaaS company, DAD, DPAs, bass, dra, whatever a acronym you wanna say, backup
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
data protection or DR as a service.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
If you've, if you've got a company who's figured out the economics so that they
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
can offer you a, a backup as a service or DR as a service for less money than
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you can do it yourself, then yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I completely agree that, that that's a great way to do it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So since you threw out that stat earlier about SMBs in the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
US being 90% of companies for those.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
SMBs, typically they are using some SaaS service.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Say for their email, they're probably using something for
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
storing their data, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, for synchronizing, be SharePoint or Google Drive or other things like that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
What does Dr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
As a service look for those types of users?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, it's not there.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So, so generally when we're talking about DR as a service, we're talking about it
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
for your own infrastructure that you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Own and manage, whether it's sitting in, uh, EC2 or you know,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Azure VMs or you sitting on, you know, VMs in your data center.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
We don't generally talk about, and we, and we should talk about, just
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
for a minute here, uh, about DR four, let's say micro Microsoft 365.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, there really isn't anything for that, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Like, like, pick your favorite cloud service or pick your favorite SaaS
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
offering and just, and, and I do think it should be backed up, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Definitely.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But, um, even if, uh, lemme just get really down for a minute, let's say.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You've been back, you've been doing what I said, and you're back.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You're backing up Microsoft 365 and then Microsoft goes outta business tomorrow.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
There is no direct way to restore that data to anywhere
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
else other than Microsoft 365.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You could probably, assuming your backup software has this ability create PSTs.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Of each user and then import those to something like Google Workspace.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Um, and, but, but like, I think of like,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
um, I think of like Salesforce.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Is there any, is there any way to download that data, like at least with
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
365, 1 of the typical restore options is to restore to A PST, but you think
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
like Salesforce, is there a restore option in any of these products other
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
than to restore into Salesforce?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I don't know.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You know what?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
This is a great Prasanna.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I think that everybody should go ask that question of their vendors.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
yeah, it's something that we don't think about,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
but might be a huge blind spot.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, there, there's no might.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's a huge blood spot.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
There's no, there's no might about it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
One other area, and this is quite possibly the area as to whether or not you think.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
A SaaS based backup or DR.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
System is appropriate for you and that is your opinions about security and the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
cloud or security in the data center.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I will give you my opinion.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Feel free to use your own, and I, I'd love to hear your opinion maybe
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
unless it disagrees with that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Here's my opinion.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
After having been in a whole bunch of companies, I will take the security,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
the cybersecurity of the average cloud vendor over the cybersecurity of the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
average data center from Joe's data center any day of the week, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And, and that is because companies who are specifically companies that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
are in the data protection space, they know that if they go down, if they
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
disappear because they got attacked, they are done as a company, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
This is their raison detra, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, the, and I know I totally pronounce that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Apologies to anyone who actually speaks French.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, rah, I don't know.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I don't know.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I totally make that up.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I really, again, further apologies.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, it is French, right, not Latin, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It's French.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I believe it's French, I should
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: This is what, this is what happens when I throw out fancy
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Don't say it a.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Um.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Absolutely.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
All right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So, um, yeah, they know it is their entire reason for being right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So they know they have to get cybersecurity, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And, and, and they're making money on this.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
This is their, the, the reason for their company versus you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Your company may or may not see cybersecurity as like the only
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
thing between you and the wolves.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and so it just might, it's sort of like what we said
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
earlier about backup and Dr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Where does cybersecurity fit in the realm of things?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Hopefully it's in the for because of everything that's been happening recently,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
but I know that I should see that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
In a cloud vendor.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Again, I'm just saying on average, don't ever believe anything.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Don't ever trust anything, you know, test everything, do
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
penetration testing on your vendors.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, and, and hopefully your vendors do penetration testing as well,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
and hopefully that it will provide you results under NDA, et cetera.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, so there you go.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That's my opinion.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And I, by and I know because I'm on, you know, LinkedIn and Reddit, I know that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
There are people who think the exact opposite of the cloud.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That the cloud is just a bunch of leaks.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The cloud is where you put your data if you want it to get leaked.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, what's your thought?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah, I think I agree with you that for the majority, a cloud
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
vendor is going to have a much better security posture than someone on premises
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
because people, once again, it just goes back to skill sets and time, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You don't have time.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
To focus on cybersecurity day in and day out when you have
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
10,000 other things to do.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
So, and keeping up with the latest threats and everything else going on,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
versus a company which is dedicated.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I'm not going to go to a random spot and just be like,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Hey, I have this broken bone.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Can you fix it?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Versus, Hey, I'm going to go to a specialist and get that bone set in.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Unless that person who I go to is like a really smart person and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
maybe they have like wilderness skills and can set a bone, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
But you know what I mean, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You wanna go to the person who that's their day in and day out, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
This is what they're doing, and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: surgeon you're saying.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yes.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Exactly.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
you wanna go to that person who is a specialist.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
This is what they think about.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
They're trying to figure out ways that things will break.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And so those are the people you wanna trust versus trying to roll your own.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, exactly.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, you know, my, my orthopedic surgeon's name is Dr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Stark,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Does he have a thing on his chest?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Does he?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
A little, little,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
the nuclear
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: arc reactor.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Um, I, I can't think of anything else that we would want to cover on.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
I mean, this is a giant, uh, basically we spent 40 minutes saying it depends.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
This is, this is your decision.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You gotta think about cost, you gotta think about risk.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You gotta think about, you know, um, you know, you talked about
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
the, um, uh, CapEx versus opex.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
You gotta think about the, the, the skill level that you have in your company.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And, and, and again, I don't have a better word for it, other than the give
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
a care factor in your company, how much the people of your company care about Dr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Versus, um, you know.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
The, the other things that are going to take their attention away from Dr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And in the end, make a decision for your organization.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Can you think of anything else to say there?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
No, I think that was a good summary.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
All right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Well, thanks for, thanks for being here again today.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Prasanna.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Likewise, Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, not too depressing of a topic today, so that's good.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Other than it all depends.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, it's a giant.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
It depends.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
And thank you so much folks for listening.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Uh, you know, you are why we do this, and hopefully we can turn you into a cyber
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
recovery hero here at the backup wrap up.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
That is a wrap.
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