Michael Cade, Veeam | KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2023

This is Textron tv. Hi everyone. Hey, we're back.

We're here in Chicago for CubeCon wrapping up our cut three days of coverage here in Chicago. Um, it, it's our last day. I think we have maybe one or two, uh, more.

I think the expo floor closes around two o'clock Chicago time It does today. So we gotta wrap it up. But, you know, in many ways we saved the best for last.

Right. Let me introduce you to my friend Michael Cade. Unfortunately, I don't get a chance to see Michael as much as I'd like.

I think the last time was Amsterdam a so I'm gonna assume I'll see. Maybe you in, I'll maybe see you in Paris. We will indeed.

It's my wife's birthday though, so I'm My wife's birthday too. So You gonna have to bring either We got a party to make here, man. Either we're, uh, bringing them with us or Oh, I'm bringing her.

Yeah, exactly. I'm bringing her. I'll send it now.

It's on camera. Uh, maybe she'll Watch for a small fee. I'll make sure this never sees the light of day.

Kidding. But yes, my wife is gonna be there for her birthday. If you're there with your wife, let's do Drinks.

Yeah, very good. Yeah, we'll do. All Righty.

Hey, for those who don't know, Michael is with Casting by Vem. And you know, before we get into anything else, Michael, there are people who are watching this who says, I never heard of those guys, or I'm not, I think I heard of 'em. I know Vem, but I don't know casting.

Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. So we're focused on Kubernetes backup, right.

So, or in fact, a little bit more than it's easy just to say Kubernetes backup. Think about data management, data resiliency in particular in Kubernetes. Now Veeam is a platform we can back up virtual machines, physical, unstructured data, nas, cloud SaaS.

Yeah. We are focused here. We are focused on Kubernetes, data protection, data resiliency.

So when you put your database inside of Kubernetes, we are gonna give you the ability to protect that, orchestrate that, offload that onto a different cloud if need be. Provide that mobility of that. But equally, if you've got a data service such as A-W-S-R-D-S and your bit of your application lives in Kubernetes, we can protect the whole, whole story, the whole application.

Sure. Got it. So it's really the, the, the two minute, this is who we are and this is why we're here.

You know what, that's a good start of where we're going now. We are here though, and, and you guys have been, as always right, ca there's always things going on with cast and for our audience, and this goes to the people who do know who you are as well. What have you guys been announcing or, you know, highlighting at the show?

So, so every cube con we bundle up everything that we've done over the last six months or whatever it was since the last cube con, right? 5, and there's two key focuses. One is around security.

Everyone's talking about security, data backup or data resiliency. You have to have security in involved in that. And then you're also about scalability.

One thing we're seeing is people are deploying multiple clusters, not just one or, but as well as, or one big massive cluster that holds everything. A bit like what we saw in the virtualization days, right? You just have a big, big cluster full of virtualization, and that would be where you'd run all your workloads.

From a security point of view, it's about integrating into your scene type projects or products like Datadog. So we know what our swim lane is, we're going, we're not gonna go and create our own Datadog type offering. So we're gonna leverage the best, best ones on the market.

We've made it extensible, we are launching it with Datadog, but really can very cool, it can really go to any other scene that that's available. And that's really about, I I'll talk about the, or the US Navys talk about, they talk about, um, left and right of bang. If you think about a bang being something bad happening, like a security threat, malicious activity, ransomware type situation.

If you think about left being prevention, I want to prevent something bad from happening, or at least gimme visibility of that. And then right of bang is remediation. How do I get things back as fast as possible?

That left of bang is more the Datadog. How do I get insight when something bad's about to happen and what can I do? What, what would we do from that point of view?

It might be take a backup. It might be, uh, like, encourage us to then start a replica replication or a migration of that workload into a different cloud. So that was a big part there.

The other part of that security story is around secure supply chain. So we've always had that secure supply chain building our software, but a lot of the DOD Fed type, uh, environments, they want, uh, they use a, a secure hardened repository called Iron Bank. So we've, that's another part of our launch is making sure that we've got casting K 10 in Iron Bank, secure, safe, and we're the only, only data protection, uh, enterprise data protection service inside of that Iron Bank repository.

It's, that's big stuff. It's big stuff, you know, uh, we do a lot of work with Datadog and uh, AWS with them as well. And, um, it's a, that's a gotta be a huge channel for you guys, right?

And, and to have that integrated in there, as you said, rather than trying to go out and reinvent the wheel and get someone to, and the last thing we need in the world is so people have to adopt another interface. Exactly. Another, They already know it, right?

We already, and, and that ecosystem trend of us partnering with these, uh, enterprise solutions, whether it be like verno or whether it be open policy agent or OpenShift and all, everything, all the good stuff that come with OpenShift around like guard duty and uh, ACS, we're not gonna go and build it ourselves. People want to roll their own platform with their choice. And it, and that freedom of choice is important to keep and Yeah.

You, you can't shove it down people's throats. It's just, it don't work. Yeah.

Simple. Let's talk, what else you got coming on here? Uh, so another big thing that we did, so we have, we've, we've had an open source project called Canister probably since 20 16, 20 17.

I think I've spoken to you about it. Yeah. And, and, and the focus there was around enabling the community to have something that would allow them to take a consistent copy of their database Yes.

Or data service. And what, what that means is that, let's say with Postgres for example, they use a a tool set and a built in tool set called PG dump, and then we offload that off into object storage. Canister gives that that functionality to be able to do that.

So what we've done is we've donated canister to the CNTF landscape, so as a sandbox project, and that's really our, our, our aim as Caston is to drive and Right. Raise awareness of, uh, data protection, but also application consistency across data services within and external to Kubernetes. And this gives us that, that capability for the community to go and use this framework to try to, to get to where they need to be from a protection point of view.

Absolutely. Let me, let's, let me peel the onion back a little bit on that. 'cause I, I think it, you know, not everyone in our audience sure knows what it means to donate a, a an or a, A project to CNCF.

So CNCF at this point, I, I think they have like 140 or some weird number. There's a lot of Yeah. CNCF projects.

But when a company like, you know, CAST and does, you are actually assigning the handing over the IP management and marketing of that project to the Linux Foundation and CNCF Exactly. That our native computing foundation. And they own it.

They operate it. Now, that's not to say that you, you know, you orphaned it or you shoved it out Yeah. Won't stop Door And said stop.

We Won't stop maintaining it. Hey, you're on your own. Yeah.

You, you're still going to be, you know, I imagine very involved in the maintaining of Absolutely. Of IT and of, of steering it, right. Of help managing where it's going, what the audience needs.

The flip side of that though is that this now becomes part of the ecosystem. This now becomes part of the, the class, if you will, where all of these projects begin, you know, working together. They have some common, uh, road mapping and common, you know, there's an end game in store here where these Yeah.

Absolutely. Play nicely together. And I mean, in many ways, you know, you, if you love something, set it free.

Right. And you set it free and it really grows. And so it benefits not just you, it benefits, and not to sound corny, but it benefits the whole community.

EE exactly. That. And the value of that is that we, we are already drinking from our own fire hose.

Agreed. So the perspective that we can get from the community, the feedback that we get from the community will help us how take the blinkers off. Yeah.

And we can get really into, or what is it you need? Like I expect we've been working quite closely with EnterpriseDB around Postgres. Yeah.

So having that, that community meet in the community type model, which I mean canister, it's not like it's a brand new project. It's been around for 5, 6, 7 years. Absolutely.

But open source is different to A-C-N-C-F guided visibility and, and a, and a community. It's a focused community around everything that we do. So, yeah.

And, and it's also in an environment where they have, it's a very structured environment. We say, okay, how many contributors do we have? How many downloads do we have?

How many maintainers do we have? Right. Based upon what we know, a successful open source project needs to be really successful.

These are the metrics we want to see the project happen. Exactly That. Like, so you can't just go, oh, I've created something open source and throw over the fence and C ncf f go.

We'll have it. Right. There are, there are entry requirements to get in there, whether it's star and then there's The graduation.

Exactly. That makes you Were sandbox. So we go sandbox, then we look into that Inc, Inc.

Incubating and then graduated. If you look at that as well, like you mentioned, if you're go and look at the C NCF F landscape, because I've spent a lot of time on there. There's a, there's over a thousand projects that there's a logo's everywhere.

Then you start drilling it down to what is not a commercial or a proprietary bit of software, it starts to slim down. And actually, if you look at like the graduated and incubating and you start filtering that out, there's actually 55, 56, I think it's 55 of actual projects that are in that incubated and graduated phase of there. And you like the likes of Kubernetes and the likes of Helm and Prometheus, the big ones.

Right. They're the ones that you expect to see, Uh, open telemetry. Actually, the third biggest one I found out this week is Argo.

Yeah. I can quite believe that. You literally, you walk around this show floor and everything is using Argo.

Yeah. Like we, and we've, we integrating backup into your CICD pipeline, a hundred percent big fan of Argo CD and absolutely. What that brings to The, but no, but that, but that, when I say that's the class you're in.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Exactly. You're in that class and they're, they're all, you know, they're all going to the same school, if you will.

Yeah. Right. As a parent parents out there, you wanna send your kid to the school where the other smart kids are, so they they network and they do their thing.

It's the same kind of thing. Exactly. That.

And Hopefully s in a good open source project today. And hopefully like come, come Paris, where we've, you've got the open source, I think it's called the Project Pavilion, where you see all of those, those graduated incubating projects. You hopefully we can see.

Yeah. Hopefully we can get a canister, canister one over there and we can We are, we'll have you there. You know, bring your wife with you.

Yeah, There you go. And we'll, we'll, She can, can happy birthday and then have a demo cany here for us. Very good.

So that's great. What else do we have, Michael? Um, so I think, I think the other thing is that, that evolution of the conversation, when I first started coming to CubeCon, we were talking to developers, engineers, I'm not a developer or an engineer, a hacker.

A hacker at best. Um, but now we're starting to see it, and this probably started in Amsterdam where we're now starting to see people that are responsible for the data. So, and I think that's a, that's another important milestone that we're seeing.

So you've got the developers still there here, but equally the, uh, the, um, the SREs, the platform engineering, the, the people that keep the lights on, the people that are responsible for when bad things happen. They're not necessarily always ransomware or newsworthy headlines, but people make mistakes. We delete stuff all the time, so we might need to recover, recover that workload.

So conversations how Start swap, Yeah. Conversations is a, is a big evolution that we're having here as well. Definitely.

Like people are coming up to me, up to us at the booth, oh, I know Veeam, what do you do for Kubernetes? So we then tell 'em that, that whole story, right. The, what we started the, the session with, uh, around we can back up Kubernetes workloads.

Very cool. Hey, last area I wanted to ask you about. So, you know, you're AQ Con, uh, veteran.

What, what'd you think of the show this year? And she in Chicago? I think the weather's been pretty good.

Uh, Could've been worse. I mean, look, I'm from South Florida. It's not exactly big good.

Yeah. But it could have been Worse. Oh yeah.

Well I'm UK so this is, this is Basically, it's good for you. Yeah, I get it. But weather aside, I think the show floor, great conversations.

I think the maturity of some of the projects that we've seen, maybe that would've been in that, uh, like the star up grow are now they have a bit bigger, they, they're like, they're mature. Yeah. No, it would, it's definitely progressing.

And I think that is, that's exciting to see the different, uh, tele like observability, the, the storage, the security side. Like I think there's some incredible projects and products that we have here. And I think there's a maturity around, there's al where there's open source, there's always a, an enterprise requirement for supportability and actually just the well, And some enterprise features that really doesn't appeal to the mass.

That tends to, you know, open source projects work on volume. Yeah, Very. I mean, that's part of the CNCF Right, exactly.

That. But, You know, a lot of enterprise pro, uh, type features may not appeal to that broad base. It's, it's like a pyramid.

Yeah. And so if you want the top of the pyramid kind of functionality, I mean that's, that's the open source business model right there. Exactly.

That funnel, right. That funnel. Yep.

So I, I, I get it. And, and that's what a lot of these companies up and down all these rows are here for. Exactly that.

Yeah. It's been good. It's been like, like I say, conversation community, big part again of the C ncf F is around that community.

Um, I think there's still a lot of people learn on their learning journey. I think that's great to see as well, that, that change. But people embracing change, there's one constant in it or tech, there's always gonna be change.

Right. Every 10 years I'm quoting Kelsey Hightower's talk that he did on our booth, but basically he said, you have to look to reinvent yourself every 10 years. And I think we, we are definitely seeing that.

I, I think we do. Yeah. I think we are coming up on that boundary That, that yeah.

It feels like we're on the cusp of that. The adoption is real. Oh, the adoption's real.

I think. I think you have one. You know, it's like being the scrappy kid on the block, the underdog who has to fight for every inch versus being the heavyweight champion of the world and defending your title E Exactly.

That and, You know, staying on top. I think the other thing as well that I've been excited about is seeing virtual machines, like think about like, so Kubernetes, and I know it's not just about Kubernetes here, it's about cloud native. Absolutely.

But Kubernetes being that container orchestrator, and we've always said about it being a container orchestrator, but now think about it as a, as a control control plane, an API that can drive anything. So have a, like speaking to OpenShift and they have OpenShift virtualization running VMs inside of Kubernetes and MongoDB. They have a, an operator that controls their paths, MongoDB Atlas.

So it becomes a, a reconciliation loop for so much more than just containers. So we are focused over the last year about protecting those virtual machines, OpenShift virtualization, using Cuba, all of that. So it's been exciting to see as well.

And there's some stuff out there in the, in the virtualization space that is like maybe a, a, a potential bump, some bumps in the road coming from acquisitions and stuff like that. I think that it's very interesting for Bert as a project, but also OpenShift virtualization. Suse have, uh, harvester that does something similar, uh, kind of flips things on its head a little bit.

If you start running virtual machines under the Kubernetes hood. I think that's exciting for me coming from that world. Last question for you.

So I'm hearing rumors that Yes, Paris in, uh, in March, yeah. Salt Lake City next, uh, fall for the US and then London. Oh wow.

Have you heard that? I haven't. I've not heard that.

So I have heard though, that there is gonna be a cube con in India as well. I know there was one in, in China, be in New Asia. Yeah, there was Shanghai, but, but I think there'll also be in India.

One in India. They should, Yeah. I think a lot of projects and a lot of the talent is, And there's also a lot of pe there's just a lot of people there too.

Exactly. That, exactly that. Gotta know where the people are excited for that.

I might see you there. It's not my wife's birthday, but there you go. I'm you, my Michael.

Always a pleasure seeing you, mate. We're live here. We're wrapping up.

I think we have one or two more interviews before we conclude our day Three coverage here at CubeCon Cloud Native Con. Stay tuned. We'll be back on in a moment.