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