Tech Talks Daily
00:06:06 · Neil C. Hughes, Paul Speciale
[00:06:06] S0: And I'm curious. What is it that makes data placement so difficult when performance, cost, sovereignty, which is proving to be a big topic over here in Europe and beyond, and cyber resilient, when they're all pointing in in different directions? [00:06:20] S1: Yeah. That's really a hard one. Right? And and it's one of the things we thought about when we came out with the latest version of our software is that you can't just put everything on flash anymore. Right? It's too simple of an answer, and we all know what's happening with memory prices like NAND flash. It's gone through the roof. It's hard to get. So there's really no single rate... Right place for the data. There's only a right place for each workload, and performance obviously wants things next to the GPUs. It wants it fast, but if you want things inexpensive, you want a denser, colder tier. Right? The thing that you can't trade off is sovereignty. Right? If you need to make sure that that something's located in a certain geography, that's something we can control. But the practical answer is this. If... As long as you have one namespace and that names case can namespace can move data between hot flash, warm HDD, cold tape, or cold cloud, it's a policy decision where you put things. It's no longer a big migration project, which used to be a huge headache.
00:06:20 · Paul Speciale, Neil C. Hughes
[00:06:20] S1: Yeah. That's really a hard one. Right? And and it's one of the things we thought about when we came out with the latest version of our software is that you can't just put everything on flash anymore. Right? It's too simple of an answer, and we all know what's happening with memory prices like NAND flash. It's gone through the roof. It's hard to get. So there's really no single rate... Right place for the data. There's only a right place for each workload, and performance obviously wants things next to the GPUs. It wants it fast, but if you want things inexpensive, you want a denser, colder tier. Right? The thing that you can't trade off is sovereignty. Right? If you need to make sure that that something's located in a certain geography, that's something we can control. But the practical answer is this. If... As long as you have one namespace and that names case can namespace can move data between hot flash, warm HDD, cold tape, or cold cloud, it's a policy decision where you put things. It's no longer a big migration project, which used to be a huge headache. [00:07:21] S0: Yeah. 100% with you there. And for business leaders listening, how should their organization desire... Decide which infrastructure decisions can be automated and which still need human approval? Because it's a big topic right now, isn't it?
00:07:21 · Neil C. Hughes, Paul Speciale
[00:07:21] S0: Yeah. 100% with you there. And for business leaders listening, how should their organization desire... Decide which infrastructure decisions can be automated and which still need human approval? Because it's a big topic right now, isn't it? [00:07:36] S1: It's a huge topic and we face it ourselves. Right? Because we agree that as the data grows, as these things get more complex, you're not gonna add much more human head count to manage all this extra stuff. Right? So our sense is you can automate the recommendations, but keep a human on anything that you cannot undo. Okay? So for example, very simple to automate health checks, forecasting, recommendations, I would automate that. But deleting data, changing policies, moving data, you need a person to approve that. Okay? And that's the way we've implemented in the product. [00:08:11] S0: Love it. And vendor neutrality also sounds attractive, maybe even idealist... Idealistic to a certain extent. But where does it become difficult when storage platforms, cloud services, and AI tools all expose different capabilities?
00:08:11 · Neil C. Hughes, Paul Speciale
[00:08:11] S0: Love it. And vendor neutrality also sounds attractive, maybe even idealist... Idealistic to a certain extent. But where does it become difficult when storage platforms, cloud services, and AI tools all expose different capabilities? [00:08:26] S1: Yeah. That's also a tricky one. I think the neutrality argument is... Just means convincing yourself that every platform is not the same. Yeah. You really don't want to let one vendor's differences become your lock in. Right? So don't fall back to the lowest common denominator. S3 is a common API language, but the features underneath it like data retention, locking of objects, they behave different on all platforms. Okay? Our approach is to be open code. Okay? Every change we make, every fix we make gets committed upstream. People can view the code. There is no Scality specific fork. Okay? The other thing we do is we run on standard servers. So we don't sell you our proprietary storage server. You can buy it from HPE, Lenovo, Super Micro, Dell, whoever you like. Okay? So being as open as we can. That's really the best way to get to neutrality. [00:09:19] S0: And another question I'd love to ask you here. What does a a credible immutable recovery plan look like now, especially when we're living in this time where attackers could have been inside an environment long before the incident is discovered. It's a big talking point now with the quantum stuff as well now with GetNow and DecryptLayer, for example. Again, it could be a time bomb. Right?
00:09:19 · Neil C. Hughes, Paul Speciale
[00:09:19] S0: And another question I'd love to ask you here. What does a a credible immutable recovery plan look like now, especially when we're living in this time where attackers could have been inside an environment long before the incident is discovered. It's a big talking point now with the quantum stuff as well now with GetNow and DecryptLayer, for example. Again, it could be a time bomb. Right? [00:09:41] S1: It absolutely could. I think even two years ago, was hearing that most of these intrusions have been going on for months before they're detected. You know, now we're entering an era where AI can actually help power the ransomware. So I think things are going to get more scary. The answer to your question is obvious. You have to assume they're already in. Okay? [00:09:59] S0: Yeah.
00:09:59 · Neil C. Hughes, Paul Speciale
[00:09:59] S0: Yeah. [00:10:00] S1: And then make sure that there's one copy of your data they cannot touch and prove you can restore it fast. Okay? What we found in all the studies, and this isn't just from us, but from big vendors like Veeam, attackers go after the backup first. It's very pernicious. Right? They realize that if they go after the backups, you can't restore, and now you're really stuck, you're gonna have to pay the ransom or whatever they'll extort... Extorting you for. Right? So immutable really has to mean something. It means that even the administrator can't override things because you get social engineering attacks where people are threatened. Right? You have to set these retention periods really longer than an attacker is likely to sit undetected undetected. Right? And then I would say restore speed. You have to get a fast restore speed because if you have something that's safe, you want to get it back as soon as possible. And by the way, we're in an era where you're not restoring one file or an hour's worth of data, you're probably having to restore a whole data center. Right? So performance really matters. In the end, we think that's what's important and we have actually put our money behind it. We have a cyber guarantee. If you get attacked on our system, we pay you $100,000 USD.