Storage Unpacked Podcast

In this podcast episode, Chris talks to Brian Biles (Chief Product Officer and co-founder) and Tim Page (CEO) from Datrium about the announcement of Automatrix.  The Datrium Automatrix platform implements five important components needed to deliver a consistent approach to application mobility.  These are primary storage, backup, disaster recovery, encryption and data mobility.
Automatrix brings together existing products that include DVX and Cloud DVX with the general availability of ControlShift (previously Project CloudShift).  ControlShift provides full automation of the disaster recovery failover and failback process, currently between on-premises DVX instances and by the end of 2019, to and from VMware on AWS.
In this discussion, Brian explains the importance of combining the five components into a holistic solution.  Without the ability to implement a consistent data plane across clouds, implementing application mobility becomes complex and expensive.  Automatrix provides the data plane, onto which virtualisation can be layered, either in the form of VMware or through containers.  Today container support means Docker, but will be extended to Kubernetes in the future.
Find out more about Datrium and Automatrix at https://www.datrium.com.
Elapsed Time: 00:35:50
Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intros
* 00:01:00 – Background on Datrium – DVX
* 00:04:10 – What is Cloud DVX?
* 00:05:10 – What is ControlShift
* 00:06:55 – How much of a problem was automated DR for customers?
* 00:08:30 – DR is complex, with runbooks and compliance requirements
* 00:11:30 – How do you know where you backed up an application 6 months ago?
* 00:13:30 – Reducing DR costs represents a big saving for enterprises
* 00:15:30 – Surely primary and secondary data not the same platform is a problem?
* 00:18:00 – DR & backup/restore are pretty similar – just differing on scale
* 00:21:50 – What are the new announcements from Datrium?
* 00:23:00 – Five components, primary storage, backup, encryption, mobility, workflow orchestration
* 00:25:55 – Insurance shouldn’t be more expensive than buying the product itself
* 00:26:50 – ControlShift is now GA for on-prem to on-prem workloads
* 00:27:40 – ControlShift offers much more than DR – optimisation, consolidation
* 00:31:00 – Virtualisation layers are standardising – VMware & Kubernetes
* 00:31:54 – What’s the future? VMware on AWS support, primary storage on AWS, Azure, Kubernetes

Transcript

 
Brian’s Bio
Brian Biles is Chief Product Officer and co-founder of Datrium. In 2001, Brian was a founder of Data Domain, a pioneer in building large-scale data deduplication systems. He served as VP of Product Management and Business Development until the company’s acquisition by EMC in 2009, where he became VP of Product Management, Backup Recovery Systems. Previously he held leadership positions at Sun Microsystems, VA Linux and Data General. He has a BS in Computer and Information Sciences from the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1998, Brian earned a “special thanks to” credit in the movie The Big Lebowski.
Tim’s Bio
Tim Page is the CEO of Datrium. He was previously one of the founding members of VCE, helping grow that venture to $3 billion in revenue in 7 years.