Kevin
00:00:00.000
You start to think about the extra things you can now bring into this migration project if you are piecing it together as a lift and shift from A to B and expect B to operate exactly like A. I think you're losing out on a lot of advantages, when you're moving to something like KubeVirt.
Darin
00:01:18.347
Viktor. We've known some people that have worked for Broadcom in the past, correct?
Darin
00:01:26.720
Between the acquisition of VMWare and other things, we've known people and when Broadcom purchased VMWare, It seemed like a lot of people were really confused as to why they would raise the prices on ESX and every other product that they purchased.
Viktor
00:01:44.621
You know, when you're thinking about raising prices or no, you can think of it from the perspective, I'm going bankrupt, which is not the case, but you can also think of it from the perspective of how hard it is for my customers to go somewhere else, right? There are technologies that are easy to replace, there are technologies not so easy to replace, and there are very complicated technologies to replace, right? And VMWare or some of VMWare products are fairly difficult to replace, right? 'cause we are talking about years, sometimes decades of investment into something very, very specific.
Darin
00:02:28.484
Easy to replace. Hmm. If we only had somebody that could talk about that today. On today's show we have Kevin Jackson on. Kevin, how you doing?
Darin
00:02:40.794
Good. And did what we just talked about seem to align with what you've seen in market?
Kevin
00:02:47.285
well, yeah, a hundred percent. I think it's fair say that, most of us have grown up in a world of virtualization we've all got the stripes on our arm about, using and abusing, that platform. so it is pretty much ingrained into people's lives.
Darin
00:03:01.267
Are you seeing a lot of people trying to move away from VMWare right now? Or are they just paying the tax?
Kevin
00:03:06.782
Yeah, absolutely. We're seeing a lot of people moving away from VMWare. they are making those, decisions, aren't they? it's a trade off. It's a case of, do we continue to pay this? I don't see it as a. hiking in some kind of, tax, knowing the fact that everything is ingrained into their world, or is there a valid, place for them to move off into, like the world of, KubeVirt or even OpenStack?
Kevin
00:03:36.336
I've been around the OpenStack, block since, literally the very beginning. and it never went away. I, it had its heyday, going back. you know, 10, 13 years ago, kind of found its niche in the world of telco. and then, Broadcom VMWare, debacle, it's definitely having a little bit of a renaissance. so we actually both see here at Trilio. we see movement, to both OpenStack and, KubeVirt. So, uh, it's very interesting for us.
Viktor
00:04:05.572
so if cube convert is. Yet another CRD and controller in Kubernetes clusters, right? What is the role in the world of KubeVirt and Kubernetes in general of OpenStack to provision bare metal servers where will be running?
Kevin
00:04:23.354
KubeVirt is a very interesting, project. we kind of see KubeVirt as a third platform. we're all IT, experienced IT folks. Hey, you know, we've got OpenStack and we've got Kubernetes. Let's, let's call it that in the world of, Trilio where, I belong. KubeVirt is this Weird, anomaly, which sits in between Kubernetes and I guess the hardware. you think about Kubernetes, Kubernetes is that layer above the, the cloud for your applications. And then KubeVirt suddenly blurs this line between, your applications and the hardware itself. but I guess, the popularity of Kubernetes, Makes people explore, the possibilities and, you know, what KubeVirt can bring and bring virtualization to what people are used to using in, uh, in the world of Kubernetes and pods and containers. so it's very interesting.
Viktor
00:05:11.601
True, but my question is rather if people go all in to Kubernetes and start managing their virtual machines with KubeVirt and other infrastructure also through Kubernetes, right? what's up in that, in that world where, where you actually use Kubernetes to manage your infrastructure?
Kevin
00:05:33.438
and OpenStack are more comparable. Uh, let's put it this way. So, uh, VMWare and OpenStack certainly are more, uh, uh, comparable. And then on top of those platforms, you can run the likes of Kubernetes. So if you, if you actually think, if you strip away everything at the moment and just see the, the infrastructure layer, then Kubernetes naturally just runs on top of that. so how, KubeVirt fits into that particular picture is the fact that yes, it is to now manage the bare metal, control plane. You take advantage of the, well, I mean, we started off this conversation about, you know, how ingrained VMWare is into people's lives and how they manage their environment. that's what Kubernetes has done for a lot of organizations. People have very specifically moved over to managing Their environments, their IT environments, their applications through a common control plane, through, through Kubernetes. what KubeVirt now does is allows that same mentality, those same processes that have built up, that allows people now to, to manage the hardware, as well, or the virtual hardware as it were.
Darin
00:06:32.861
it seems like, to me though, that's a lot of extra moving parts. I mean, I'm not trying to be an apologist for VMWare right now, or at least the ESX part of things. But you have to admit, that's a fairly clean and straightforward way of managing things. And if I'm having to OpenStack and KubeVirt and blah blah blah blah blah, it just seems like it's way too much.
Kevin
00:06:58.081
yeah, I think in the world of VMWare, it's, it just seems more, I don't know, is it more coherent, is it more sort of like obvious to see the fact that you've got, it's that world of, I've got a server, it's a little bit too big, I'm going to carve it up into, to a number of slices, I now have 20 single. hypervisor VMWare, machine. it's a simplistic view, but that's exactly what virtualization is. everything iterating from that point, from the world of legacy virtualization, and then moving into cloud, just capitalizing on that same idea. We're just adding in software layers to manage that in a more. How can we make this more effective and a more operational friendly and consistent way? beyond cloud and infrastructure as a service, the open stack part of that conversation, it's not an added complexity. it just Um, and then moving on into, Kubernetes, that gave more consistency to a different group of people managing that environment. infrastructure world. The IT admins, the Kubernetes world are for the application owners, again, I'm simplifying this, but it helps with the separation. and so you know, between virtualization and cloud and cloud native or Kubernetes, is all about abstracting the process. so you've got focus in a specific area and the people who use Kubernetes, currently obviously are the people who don't want to get bogged down with the hardware. And if you think about going back to that VMWare conversation, you just said about the simplicity, it was all about the knowing about the hardware, you move all the way up the stack, and the people who use Kubernetes know probably less about the hardware than, they need to. it's about abstraction, the layers.
Viktor
00:08:39.840
can part of the problem be the other way around? People who know about hardware know less about Kubernetes. In a way, right? Because Kubernetes is, that's why, what I'm assuming you're going for with KubeVirt and other projects, Kubernetes is becoming that interface to manage hardware, right? It's not only about containers anymore. And then I see a lot of difficulty. In that area that there is usually a team in a company that says, Hey, we are focused on kubernetes. We know kubernetes. And we, and our focus is mostly applications, right? We make sure that your application kubernetes is running peachy. Great, right? Usually the first use case. Those are the kubernetes ninjas in a company, right? But then when it comes to Using that API to manage, in this case, virtual machines, that often falls into a group of people who are, I wouldn't say afraid of Kubernetes, but not necessarily that confident with the skills in it, right?
Kevin
00:09:44.600
yeah, exactly. you hit the nail on the head there. I mean, that's it. The summary for that is about the manageability of this. so again, go back to the simplistic world of, hypervisors and virtualization. It's a, it's more simplistic view. You literally just had a machine which just looked like a physical piece of hardware. that is almost like the genius of the, whole idea of, virtualization. I can see virtual disk, virtual storage, virtual RAM. I logged into a machine today, you have to go out of your way to go and figure out if this is a virtual machine or a bare metal machine. that's one of the key principles of virtualization. You shouldn't have to know what you're dealing with. As you move up this layer, you've got to realize that there's software layers in between that understanding. So to your point the infrastructure administrators Do they know, Kubernetes? No, but when, VMWare came along, did they know VMWare? No, they had to learn it. there are courses and courses, weeks long courses about, being, VMWare administrators, this day and age, what's the difference between learning VMWare as it is to learning Kubernetes. It's just another piece of software to manage something about infrastructure.
Viktor
00:10:48.573
To me, that's one of the big things about Kubernetes or advantages of Kubernetes. It actually levels the playing ground for different expertise, right? All of a sudden. Both the infrastructure people and, uh, application people and security people and whatever we call people, people are actually talking to and using and learning the same API. Not necessarily the same API endpoint. You might be interested in and managing virtual machines through kube virt cr. Somebody else might use some other CR, but it's still the same API, right? All of a sudden, we are all on the same page. Same platform, maybe for the first time, even.
Kevin
00:11:32.537
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, if you look at, this group, one of the panaceas is getting, infrastructure people aligned with, application owners, operational engineers, and you're right, it does make the playing field a little bit more level. Now Does it mean that the infrastructure people have to, learn key concepts about the application and how they're managed through Absolutely. Is there now an appreciation the other way around? And the fact that the application owners understand, the fact that you do have to talk and you have to understand a little bit more about the infrastructure. I'm of the opinion that you have to understand a little bit more than what you think to actually get the best out of it. and you're right. I mean, Kubernetes, whilst it is an abstract layer, into various parts of the layers, I can only see advantages that people learn about, each other's, part of the it organization. It just makes everything more efficient, and operationally friendly.
Darin
00:12:23.970
So let's imagine this. I'm a company, I've got VMWare, I got my double or triple or however much upcharge that I'm not used to paying, and I've decided I'm going to move. What should be my first thing to do other than maybe leaving the company?
Kevin
00:12:45.725
Yeah, I think, number one, is research. I think that's, that's pretty, pretty obvious. I think, one thing that I would do in those kind of organizations is understand how is the VMWare environment. Um, currently being utilized, if you are siloed as an it organization, if you're infrastructure owners and you have no idea what or how your applications are being used, then I think there's a bigger uplift to move from VMWare. To another platform, and that's irrespective of where you want to go. There are, there are tons of different hypervisors out there that you can move from VMWare to, to something else. All of them will take a little bit of research, but to make the best decisions of where you end up, you have to start understanding about what applications are running in those VMWare environments. so for example. If KubeVirt is a target, you don't just suddenly pick KubeVirt out of the air and just think, Hey, I'm just going to go to that from VMWare to KubeVirt without any kind of like notion or preconception. you must have engineers in your organization that are currently using, Kubernetes. because there is going to be a little bit of an uplift. if there's an environment in VMWare that does not have KubeVirt, then of course not going to pick that as your go to, platform. but if there is an aspiration to go into Kubernetes in the future, then KubeVirt makes a perfect place for you to land. So it starts with research, but it also starts with understanding about what is running on your environment in the first place.
Darin
00:14:13.202
Let's assume that I don't want to do that, because, hey, I'm a big enterprise, because I already know everything. Am I set up to fail at that point?
Kevin
00:14:22.937
At that point you start to engage partners at that point, yeah, again, plenty of partners out there that will help you, understand what's going on. What is running in your environment? And again, regardless of if you don't want to do something or not, that's entirely up to you. If you don't want to look at you and do any research about what you're moving, then you're already going to be setting up failure. I'm sorry, but that's just going to be case. But if you don't want to do that work, then there's partners out there. There are. Commercially supported platforms through Red Hat, for example, who have an OpenShift environment, there are commercial supported offerings, you know, Sousa or Red Hat or whatever that will help, in this particular regard. I just don't think that you would necessarily just pick KubeVirt out of the air and just go, Hey, I'm just going to choose an upstream open source project running on a platform that I do not know and just hope for the best. but yeah, you will at that point engage consultants and partners that will help you do that, research and help you make those best decisions.
Darin
00:15:18.724
You just hit on the point that I wanted to try to pull out. Why would I not want to just go upstream? It's like, Kubernetes, it's free. It's open source. I'll just use the upstream. KubeVirt, I can do the same thing, just all upstream. If my people have to learn something new, who cares? that way it won't cost me any, I will never get myself back into this Broadcom scenario again.
Kevin
00:15:43.599
that's a good leap to make. the whole successful world of cloud pretty much is based on open source. I think that particular decision would come down to obviously managing risk. you'd timelines. At the end of the day, this Broadcom, VMWare. Price hike is to do with contracts. most people with data centers and the way they license, there is a period of time before they have to move. So 100%, could you move to upstream, uh, Qubert? Absolutely. 100%. if you're expected to do that, Within three months, and you've got 2000 or 3000 or even 40, 000 virtual machines to move to that particular platform. And you have never done an installation of Kubernetes in your life. Would that be a recommended strategy? I don't think so. Certainly if you're an organization of that size, you must have a lot of pressure to make sure that the company is running. successfully at that point, so it comes down to time and it comes down to you managing risk It comes down to your again your your skill set and the ability to train on that particular platform but I just don't think people would necessarily do that particular leap of faith outright without a little bit of understanding of where you need to end up
Viktor
00:16:56.342
The interesting part of what you said was, at one moment you mentioned, you said, and you never managed Kubernetes before, right? Should something like Qubert be the entry point in those cases to Kubernetes? Is that a viable strategy?
Kevin
00:17:19.092
could well be, there's a word we've not used here at all, using the word migration or we're using words like moving from one platform to another. there's a phrase of lift and shift that we've not even brought this kind of conversation. you can lift and shift workloads To this other platform, if you have an aspirational goal for the future where you want to improve on what you currently do today, then technically you could see KubeVirt as a gateway drug to something which may be a little bit more efficient in the world of containers. And I'm not saying that you can, run everything as containers. I think we've all learned, the hard way that you cannot just containerize everything just because. you want to there's perfectly viable workloads that work, Efficiently as virtual machines as the whole world of VMWare will tell you. but Can you use that as something where, Hey, look, we want to go to KubeVirt. We know we can't get to this next stage of converting our virtual machine applications to a containerized world where you have this lovely scale out world, that's a lot with a lot of portability, but if you have, a want to eventually get there. Then this is where the conversation around Kubernetes and KubeVirt comes in really, really nicely because you can do that lift and shift into KubeVirt. And I say that with a little bit of caveat. You can't just lift and shift everything. I'm going to, obviously we're going to have to come back to and revisit that little part of the, uh, my answer here. But go with the flow that things you can lift and shift and just things just work out of the box on KubeVirt. And at that point you then go, Hey, look at this. I've got this great platform. called kubernetes. What else can I do? Can I then move this into a world of containers and start to just take advantage of native kubernetes itself?
Darin
00:18:59.736
That's an interesting thought process of letting KubeVirt being a gateway drug to the bigger Kubernetes ecosystem. Viktor, were you thinking that's a bad idea or a good idea? Because I didn't follow you initially on that.
Viktor
00:19:15.526
I feel that right now is hardly any company that is not running something in a container or containers, right? Now, I'm fully aware that there are many companies that actually probably most of the companies are not running 100 percent of the workloads in containers. Many of them will never run 100 percent of foreclosing containers. Simply, it's not viable strategy. It doesn't make sense. You know, you still have your legacy applications. Why would you move them to containers? They don't work there well, for one reason or another. So, I'm fully aware of that. I just don't think that there is a There are many companies right now that don't have some new application, right? Something developed A year ago, I want one application out of 1000. That is not Running in containers, right? Maybe not even Kubernetes, maybe Docker, who knows? given that there is always something, let's call it modern for, for a sake of not being able to find a better word. Then, KubeVirt still does not sound in my head like a viable first contact with Kubernetes, right? You know, start with, there is that pet project over there, that frontend, backend, something that is microservice, something modern. Explore Kubernetes like that, right? Because that's the easy part. Less problems. And then once you get some experience with Kubernetes itself, move into other areas, one of them being KubeVirt. Definitely. I love KubeVirt. I think it's absolutely amazing. I just don't think that there are companies that don't have something easier to start with, uh, Kubernetes journey.
Kevin
00:21:12.959
I think taking that particular approach, I think we're forgetting the fact that there's, probably time constraints of moving from VMWare. Sometimes you just don't have that luxury of going, Hey, I can, I'm going to explore Kubernetes at my leisure. but instead I'm, I'm now. Thinking, do I have to sign this contract for another year? I've now got services on my contract that I didn't really, you know, sign up for. but that's just the way my subscription model has changed. so I, a hundred percent, I get the fact that like, there's a weird chicken and egg and I don't know which is the chicken or the egg in this, kind of scenario, but certainly you look at the, so again, pure upstream Kuvert, and Kubernetes, I think it's in a weird way. I think that has a less of a draw for people to go, Hey, I'll go to use Kuber first and then Kubernetes second, I think more of the commercial offerings, the open shifts or the, the harvesters and that kind of stuff, I think that has a, as a different type of draw and a different feel, for that type of process, in a weird way, as I say, from, pure upstream, you would naturally go to Kubernetes first. cubevert2nd, but I think there's the commercial supported entities that have mature products to do these movements they are certainly pushing, vert cubevert first, to bring them onto those type of platforms. and I think that's an interesting thing that certainly that we're witnessing
Darin
00:22:31.392
So let's assume that I made that decision. I started going down a path. What are the pitfalls I'm going to hit? Because I've got. Unknown unknowns, like the only thing that I know is I'm coming from here are my host machines. Here are the guests that need to be on those machines, right? Cause all I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get off VMWare first. that's my core item. I care less about Viktor's application. I just don't care. I'm just trying to get everything off so I can save what is considered to be potential money. Is that one of the pitfalls too? Is it possible I could end up spending more than just sticking with the upcharge invoice from Broadcom?
Kevin
00:23:15.601
again, you're moving, IT, so there's risk, there's cost, there's everything that you would normally associate with any, kind of movement, so the pitfalls, the pitfalls, I guess you're looking at it's the fact that, hey, you've got a stable environment, you've got a mature environment, and you've also got a highly skilled, team looking after, uh, the pitfalls is, going to be around compatibility as the other restrictions around licensing are the network challenges, on the new platform. you're highly skilled engineers. what if there are engineers, which, they don't want to retrain on another platform. They're going to move to a, another organization that is not making any leaps to a different, platform. So guess what? You're going to lose highly skilled, highly tenured, staff as well. So these things all have to all be considered and factored in when you're looking at, moving. but from a, I guess, from a. Simplistic binary point of view. you are looking at, compatible, and things of that nature. they're, they're vitally important because again, we're talking about licensing of the infrastructure layer itself, but there's also the licensing of the application that runs there itself.
Darin
00:24:22.754
There has to be other pitfalls. Because those seem like you were saying, this is just a move, right? These are just changes. You have people that don't want to change how they want to work. Is that really a pitfall? Because if those employees are that flaky or those contractors are that flaky, it seems like I've got even higher risk than I even thought about.
Kevin
00:24:45.721
the, reality is there, again, VMWare is like part of people's lives. it's quite religious, the, it, you know, industry, you know, you have your, your allegiances, there's people who you cut them in half and there's, they're either the Microsoft or the, Red Hat or the Linux or the Windows, and that's just how. People are inside and outside of the world of it. And unfortunately we do get to see those flaky people who will go into, you know, what I'm going to move off. Is it one of the biggest pitfalls? It isn't the biggest pitfalls because they can guarantee the people that move out, there's going to be a replacement, you know, in the wings, or there's going to be 10 of them in the market that will replace them. What you do lose at that point is the 10 years of experience of that company, not necessarily The platform itself. So it's one thing to factor in. however, uh, yeah, say in terms of all the pitfalls. ecosystem. We've not talked about the ecosystem, at all about this. We've talked about VMWare to a, to a platform. We're talking about moving from one place to another. Other pitfalls are a case of, Hey, I've got my integrated services that work out the box on VMWare. I've now got to think about how do I set up my monitoring, my alerted, all the other stuff that fit into this new. platform. that's another consideration. You can't just assume that my monitoring system will work as expected on my, new KubeVirt for example.
Darin
00:26:01.487
But why can't I assume that it seems like I should be able to, because Hey, this is all enterprise stuff. Google let it, like, Kubernetes out in most of the world. I mean, to me it's like, again, I'm playing sort of the contrarian here, but it seems like I'm used to paying for one thing and it's got everything I need. now you're telling me I'm having to go and piece it all together myself? Ugh.
Kevin
00:26:31.442
well, I mean, it's not as bad as all that. You've got to, again, anybody who's going to do a migration will literally start to think about these extra things just as a matter of course, and if they're not thinking of that, then you start to question the value and worth anyway. And I'm sorry, but that's, that's just what it is. Uh, but you do have to start thinking about how these extra things are coming to be, but it could even be in a positive way. It could even be the fact that, Hey, I have got this legacy system that is, Working with my VMWare system today, there might've been, an itch to move to something more mature, more modern, and you just haven't been able to, because it's one of those, projects, which it would just take monumental effort to replace on my VMWare. Type of platform now i've got the choice one of the best things and i've been through these many times of the organizations I've worked with When migrations occur there is an opportunity to improve I mentioned lift and shift before lift and shift is the hey look i'm It's like panic. I need to to move stuff from one place to the other Anytime there's a migration, whether it's a data center migration or a platform migration, you have to consider all the extraneous, benefits that I can now take advantage of, of replatforming, I can look at native tooling, you know, I work for Trilio. We have native backup tools for. kubernetes an open stack that allows me to move away from legacy backup systems For example, which didn't allow me to have flexibility and orchestration of certain things You start to think about the extra things you can now bring into this migration project if you are piecing it together as a lift and shift from A to B and expect B to operate exactly like A. I think you're losing out on a lot of advantages, when you're moving to something like KubeVirt.
Viktor
00:28:16.986
Oh, yeah, that I can confirm 100%. But the curious thing is, isn't, in a way, the idea of lift and shift, which is definitely necessary, also the idea that I do not want to modernize unless I'm forced to, in a way. Right? Because you wouldn't be lifting and shifting if you actually wanted to. Do better, in a way, without being forced to, you know.
Kevin
00:28:50.559
but is it time constraint though? I think most lift and shifts are just the fact that like oh I've got so many other projects to do i've got no other choice But to lift and shift at this moment in time and don't get me wrong I mean how many lift and shift projects out there, have literally started off as What we'll do is we'll move this over onto this new platform and then next year we will then, you know Look at modernizing etc, etc. And then 13 years later. We've still got that same lift and shifted application that is just running
Viktor
00:29:17.474
Yeah. But what you just said to me sounds like, actually, I don't want to change, right? Kind of, I just lift and shift it as a temporary solution, my interpretation of your words, and then 10 years later, I'm still there. I did not want to do it, really. You know, because Kubernetes just celebrated half a year ago, 10 years. We have, what, 13, 14 years of containers. And when I say containers, I mean Docker. If I say containers in a more generic way, I would say 20 years, right? Because they existed before Docker. So it's, yeah, it's been 15 years, 20 years. What were you waiting for until now?
Kevin
00:30:02.780
doesn't that go back to the fact that like, you know, everything runs well in a container, you know, it's, to be fair, that's the, look, you know, the, I guess there's a few kind of like mindsets in this whole VMWare thing, right? At the end of the day. This has always existed. There has been an aspiration to move from one platform to another for a variety of reasons. I started off in the world of OpenStack because the organization I worked for, we had a very mature VMWare platform and we had aspirations of doing something better. more efficient We're only having or it's top of mind for a lot of people these days certainly in the boardrooms because of a financial burden Associated with things there's an extra Bit of fire raging, to force these decisions. I think it organizations have always wanted to be more efficient I think there's a drive for a lot of organizations to be operationally more effective Is this an excuse for some people I think it is I think it's an excuse for some Some organizations go. Do you know what we've been talking about this for so long We just never had a drive To do this migration and now we've got some kind of like, situation that's forcing us To actually action on these things but yeah, you know, I think Are people complacent and happy with things the way they run and work. Absolutely. I mean Nobody likes too much change in it, but I can guarantee there are certain parts of organizations that want to drive change and want to drive operational efficiency.
Darin
00:31:37.500
me go back to my scenario. I've been at company X. I've been tasked with moving off of VMWare to something else. That's great. This has been an ongoing thing for three to five years. I'm tired. I'm leaving. New person comes in to backfill me that has a buddy at company Y that said, hey, we used this vendor. So this whole time, now the CEO president is saying, okay, well, we just spent the past five years doing this one thing. And now you're telling me we're going to go off and go into a completely different direction and spend even more money and still not ship anything. This has been the ongoing it problem since computers have existed. Are we ever going to get out of that doom loop?
Kevin
00:32:30.021
Well, again, I think anybody that's new into an organization always wants to, I don't know, make a mark on something there are certain organizations, certain like levels of it, which will go, Hey, look, we need to drive this change, or we're going to do this change, or I've, worked with this technology at another organization. I've seen it work really well. I think what's missing in those scenarios is, is understanding what made that work. Very very well, you can't just come into an organization and go. Hey, i'm going to change something. there needs to be a very valid, reason there's a very valid reason To move, say from a VMWare, environment, for one part of the organization that's cost. the resistance would be a case of, well, everything works as it should. One is the, the trade off of paying this tax burden versus, moving to a different platform. But then what are the benefits if we do move? do we get some cost savings, it's easy to think hypothetically about A movement it's easy to have these conversations about, um, you know, a hypothetical organization that's come in that is only considering one type of outcome. from this, I think it's a multifaceted sort of conversation, which I guess comes back to a lot of, in fact, probably what your first questions about what to consider, uh, and the fact that you've got to involve more than just the it department in making these, decisions.
Darin
00:33:49.386
Yeah. Do we get cost savings? I mean, when I hear that question, it sounds like, okay, that's just money, but that's not the only thing in play. We were talking about people leaving, right? You, you lose that institutional knowledge and now I've got to bring in somebody green and help them get. Up to speed on how we do things. I, you know, that that has to be factored into the cost as well, because now if my labor churns and maybe that's now two to 3 million, am I going to get, you know, I don't want to spend another two, 3 million because Hey, there's Kubernetes stuff. It's going to save me money. I don't need as many people. It's like these data centers. That we hear are being built for all the AI stuff. And then you look at the number of people being hired to run these data centers, like 50, 50 people. That's all you need. I come from a place where textiles was a big thing. And in the modern textile mills, these things are massive, hundreds of thousands of square feet. And they run with a team of less than 10 people because it's all lights out. As a CEO, when I hear I can do that, that means I get more time on my jet. I get to go play more golf. I get to take more vacations. Heck yes, I'm going to do that. I am not going to invest in people for this.
Kevin
00:35:15.125
yeah, I think from the, cost point of view, yeah, there are hidden costs. there are hidden. benefits, trade offs like this, for example, again, hypothetically, figures out of the, uh, you know, 20 people on the VMWare platform, it could be the fact that, you know, through consultancy and through. A lot of research, it shows that you can run this environment with say 10 people. in a black and white scenario, that's like, Hey, that's great. You know, on a spreadsheet. Hey, look, we're going to, harbor, our costs. The thing is though, to go from like that point from A to B and again, sitting on the fence, playing devil's advocate on this one. there is still going to be an up, I think there's going to be an initial increase in costs to actually get to that, point. You know, a lot of organizations, it's very hard to look at longer term gains on things. You know, this VMWare scenario is a, is a short term. and then people want to have, I don't know. People don't want to make the situation worse. People are making decisions on the fact that, Hey, my subscription costs coming up and I've got to pay, you know, instead of paying whatever figure it is, it's seven times, my previous bill, was for example. but if you do look at moving from one platform, to the other, You've got to accept the fact that there is going to be an initial outlay, an initial training and it's an increase in costs to actually get those cost savings in the future. And so you've got to normalize this over a longer period of time to recognize some of the gains. Can you get there? Oh, absolutely. I think, you hit the nail on the head in the terms of the technology, what it can bring, the operational efficiency, whether or not it needs less staff to, manage. That is going to be one factor into this overall, cost, problem. But the other thing that needs to be in there, again, it's, it's not just all about the money, and I know, you know, certainly I'm, I'm an IT guy, and I work with our, finance people and I work with the financial decision makers of the people that we talk to. but the benefits that you don't actually see is the fact that you, For those that are willing, the staff that are retraining, are getting trained up on new technologies, there might be there's other side benefit that again, needs to be factored into this, you're keeping your staff happy because they're now learning new technology instead of just coming into the do their day job and just It's just, just VMWare, just friends.
Darin
00:37:26.469
So Trilio, you've talked about Trilio, you're the chief product officer, correct?
Kevin
00:37:32.148
yeah, I'm the director of, uh, product management at, uh, at Twilio. So, yes, I've got the, the products under my, under my hat.
Kevin
00:37:41.007
I do, well, I have product engineering, uh, and system Administration. My, my background is architecture in CIS admin, to be fair. So more, geared towards the, the, the user rather than the, the code.
Darin
00:37:52.346
So if I was to come to you today and say, Hey, whatever platform we're using now, we've got to change it. Right? We just can't keep using it because of costs. Fill in the blank. What would you say to me?
Kevin
00:38:07.885
this is a conversation about like, you've got a, an existing platform you want to move because of costs and you want to move away from onto a, a new environment. And you're talking to the product owner who has software, which allows people to migrate from one platform to another. the core of our product is backup and recovery. So. From certainly from a, from a Trilio only hat and standpoint, what part of that conversation were, you've got to think of the bigger picture of the migration. It's not just about the migration itself. It's all about the fact that you're moving to a platform that still needs to, make, money for a particular business. It still needs to fit into my existing systems and processes and, and then with a bit of, foresight, a future, which can, lead to again, greater efficiencies, you know, a better life for the IT organization. So we're, product that fits into, the ecosystem. Part of conversation. We provide backup and software of that target platform, KubeVirt or OpenStack, if that was ever part of the equation. My conversation to USA will be along the lines of, research, we will help you, in terms of understanding what you've run. we will bring in partners that will help you understand your own environment. as I say, from my product owner point of view and my lens from years of infrastructure architect or owning IT systems. don't go into this alone. make sure that you do have robust partners. make sure that you understand what the end goal looks like for you. just make sure all your vendors. That, you're supporting on your existing platform is compatible on the, the target environment. and, the fact that, ultimately it just satisfies all the, dependencies that you would expect, in a movement.
Darin
00:39:53.235
Let me ask this. This is a concrete scenario that I've been through a couple times in my career. We're needing to migrate. Just because. For whatever reason. But I can't change hardware. I have to stay on the same hardware that I'm on now and I cannot have any downtime. How am I going to do that?
Kevin
00:40:16.610
Yeah, interesting. kind of like a, a movement within the, the platform. and you have no way of getting extra hardware. this is a world where, capacity management, I guess is going to be vitally, important. aspirationally, you've got a, world where you need to end up. Say you've got, I don't know. 100, 100 servers, and your workloads run across those 100 servers. utilization hopefully isn't a hundred percent. There is a world where you start to have to carve out your new environment on your existing, architecture. So if we're purely from a data center, physical hardware point of view, you're going to have to start allocating, parts of those resources, those, those physical machines to your new platform. so for me, if that was me and I was, I was completely constrained into the fact that I have no budget for anything else, I would start to, build out my new Kubernetes platform onto this new hardware, not this new hardware, the existing hardware. So what is that existing hardware? I've now had to, basically move my workloads, I'm running VMWare, that's fine. I can migrate my workloads onto other hypervisors. I can free up hardware in that data center, I will go through the process of installing Kubernetes and then I would start testing my workloads on that, those Kubernetes, clusters. And then I'd start to do, concertina, I would start to like move workloads into, the environment, freeing up hardware and then bringing that hardware into and expanding my, worker nodes of all my hypervisors in kubernetes or kubert world.
Darin
00:41:44.312
It's like playing the 16 piece puzzle where there's only 15 pieces. Here's a little bit at a time and just then you can start shrinking one and growing the other and it will eventually get there.
Darin
00:41:58.342
I understand why people don't want to go with that. Maybe they do have budget for hardware, but they don't have budget for racks. If they're in a colo facility, they don't want to go to a cage. They want to stay in the racks and they're already filled up the racks. So there's always trade offs.
Darin
00:42:14.252
So Trilio can be found@trilio.io. I'll go ahead and spell that. That's TRIL io.io. Off to work. I go io io. Okay, that's, I know you didn't do that on purpose, but it was too easy to say it that way, and all of Kevin's contact information will be down in the episode. Description. Kevin, thanks for being with us today.