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44:39 Webinar

The Future of Virtualisation: Help Navigating Changes in VMware

If you’re uncertain about the future of your virtualisation strategy, you’re not alone. Join a discussion on what’s happening at VMware and your options to move ahead with success.
This webinar first aired on 19 June 2024
The first 5 minute(s) of our recorded Webinars are open; however, if you are enjoying them, we’ll ask for a little information to finish watching.
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00:00
All right, we're at about 315. Uh Thanks for playing around with us a little bit there. I'm Rob Luman. I lead community and event content strategy here at Pure and I'm really thrilled that we were able to get this session into the agenda. Um We're, we're talking with a lot of people out there and our customers love talking to us and that's
00:20
uh that's upside and we know that there's some murks around the future of virtualization and kind of navigating what's going on at VM Ware. And I'm sure that's why you're, you're all here because you're, you're going through the same thing. So we're here for guidance. I'm really thrilled because these three gentlemen, uh either with the amount of time
00:37
that they've invested in the, in the VM Ware ecosystem, uh evangelized in and around it, or even former employees and know the lay of the land, have a lot of depth and expertise. And the, the game here is not to tell you one way. This is really uh more of a choose your own adventure if you're, if you're old enough like me.
00:56
And uh remember those books from, from the early eighties, sorry if I'm losing some people. But, you know, you read through it and it said, oh, go to page 50. Like this is very much a choose your, uh, sorry books. Yes. Well, we're making it as easy as buying a book,
01:11
right? Um, for, for DX. So, um, from your left to your right. So, Jason Langer, say hello, Jason. He, hello everybody. Jason Langer, one of our tech evangelist Cody Hosterman in the middle, who I can never keep track of your title uh because it's always changing because you're
01:29
doing so many things. Whose line is it anyway? Very good. We can do that. Uh And Mr David Staman on the far right, um Cloud director and now working in our enterprise line of business, so we will dive in. This is my big animal picture slide just that things are kind of murky right now. Stay tuned because it'll connect to something
01:48
at the end that's called clever slide making. Uh But we won't linger on that long. OK. Lay the land. You guys know what the situation is and that's what we're gonna go through today. So the way this is gonna work is gonna be a little bit more panel and hosted. We welcome your questions and comments. If you have them,
02:06
any level of interaction is a good thing as far as we're concerned. Um Look, these are challenges we've been talking around all week and um you know, planning migrations and, and public cloud investment. But what are we gonna do with virtualization? So let's dive into it. Uh Mr Langer, when we speak with customers, what's the lay of the land relative to how we
02:30
see deployments? We see them usually in, in one of four manners on the slide you see here and I'm assuming most folks fall into this, if not, let me know, but obviously you have the traditional on premises and I'll say on premises correctly, you'll have the hybrid cloud or public cloud. So you're doing a little bit on premises and maybe you're using one of the public cloud
02:48
providers. Aws is your, you know, Google. Uh Let's see, or if you're in both, either of those scenarios, you're probably running obviously traditional V MS or you're running containers or you're running both. Do we have anybody running V MS and containers? Ok. Side by side spattering.
03:06
And I didn't remember what the fourth is, sorry and then separate. Yeah, you only built the slide. I know it was weeks ago. Um And then what we commonly see though and Cody's had a lot of conversations about it. I have two is where folks are, maybe they're running V MS vsphere more than likely on one set of hardware and then they've got their container stack on bare metal.
03:24
So they're managing separate silos, right? So you're doing two different environments that you're running for these workloads. It kind of the common ones that we've seen in conversations over the last several months with, with folks. Cool. Anything else Cody or Staman to add? I mean, not really. I mean, that's fundamentally what,
03:41
what there is and what we've seen and it's really just navigating the options for these four pillars, right? Because I don't expect any things, any of these things that necessarily fundamentally change other than maybe the product names, right? But um uh that's uh the question is, where are you investing? Where is your new stack architecture gonna
03:57
focus on and what your applications need? So we're gonna focus a lot of conversation on these four pieces. OK? Cool. Let us go ahead and dive in then. OK. So there's four pathways that we're putting in front of everyone today as options. And again, we're not saying do one versus the other but just exploring the pros and cons and the trade
04:18
offs so that you can make an informed decision. Um Number one, staying with VM Ware, right? Sticking with that investment that you've had and because he hasn't talked yet, I'll start with Mr Staman dive in your perspective. Yeah. So my thoughts on staying with VM Ware is this is in some cases the most obvious choice. One of the biggest reasons why customers are
04:37
looking at alternatives could be due to price. But one of the things we kind of need to think about is the education factor here is what tools are we using within the vsphere stack. Um Are we just using these uh ESX I and V Center? Are you using the entire suite? And I'll still Cody's bundle conversation. We literally talked about this for an hour at
04:54
dinner last night. And if you have cable internet, everything, you're, you're paying a premium for all of that. But if you only needed internet, but you're still having to pay that full price, you would be paying a lot more than what you're traditionally to do. Customers who are only using ESX I are traditionally the customers that are seeing
05:10
that high price increase. Whereas customers who are using the entire bundle actually are seeing a cost savings in some cases. So some of the factors we think about here is look at what you're actually using. What can you optimize in the stack and then look at if you were to switch, how would you switch? What are you using for backup?
05:27
What are you using for monitoring? What are you using for security? What are you using for your network stack and look at the actual total cost of ownership to actually move. In some cases, it may not actually be there. And so again, a conversation we had this week was someone who is running on free ESX I and a lot of Robo sites.
05:44
And when they were actually looking to move, they either could purchase now Vsphere licenses or move to alternative hypervisors. It was about $600 difference between the two. And so, in that case, the cost of doing business was actually doing the safe choice with all of those enterprise features. So it's really looking at that entire stack. All I can say is I'm reconsidering your invite to go to dinner with you tonight because I
06:07
talked about arrest development last night with, with, with uh my coworkers. So I, you know, an hour is a little rough on that. But uh I mean, I, I think um um from a VM Ware perspective, right? Uh from pure and VM ware perspective and some VM Ware employees in here. I see.
06:24
U um but our, our, our partnership is strong, right? We actually, I, I met with VM Ware product just earlier this week about talking about our next 23 years of road map commitments and what we're working through and what we're working on. So from a technology investment and innovation perspective, there's a lot happening, right? So from a technical partnership, the one
06:42
message I wanna make sure that I leave our, our customers and our partners with is that the the technical relationship around innovation and cog engineering is strong. We've got a lot coming out just this year uh in the upcoming releases alongside the VM Ware that I'm pretty excited about one particularly very long standing feature gap that we're closing that I'm I'm really pumped about and the, the meeting that we had this week is
07:06
really about. All right, what's, what's happening over the next three years? What are the commitments on the VM Ware side is pure into it? And the answer was of course, yes. Right. So there's absolutely a lot coming with that product set. And so I wanna let you know from a innovation
07:17
perspective, sticking with VM Ware and pure is a safe choice because you're going to get that. We have a lot coming and we're not taking our foot off the gas on the integration there because it said a huge percentage of our customers are on VM Ware and will remain on VM Ware and we don't want to leave them stranded just because some folks are looking at some other changes are gonna make some changes, right?
07:35
Optionality is a really important part of an external storage platform. It supports multiple operating environments as you saw in the previous slide, um different hypervisors, different physical servers, different OS S uh and that's something we want to maintain. And um a key piece I don't, I promise I won't monologue this entire time around, but you're here to monologue.
07:57
I in you a key piece around pure has been, I've been with pure for 10 years, a little bit over that and a key message that entire time has always been simplicity. But if it is not simple in the stack that you choose to use with us, it is not simple, right? So that integration that solution and that coen engineering is super important to us. And so driving feedback on your choices and
08:17
your and your uh um operating infrastructure, please let us know because we want to make sure that we're supporting you regardless of the path you're going. But on VM Ware, uh I can, I can just say there's a lot happening, Mr Langer. I feel like I agree with the previous two. You agree with the smart guys? I agree with the smart guys.
08:35
Actually, one thing I will say is this came up to me yesterday during one of the sessions is back to David's copy of Cody's bundling conversation. Uh There are options from VM Ware besides VCF. Uh They do have VVF, which is basically a re bundle of what they used to call vs O. So basically a Vsphere es six or vcenter, Vsphere and um Vrops or whatever re
08:59
operations. So I had V CV Cops, whatever it's called. Um because I had several folks coming to me after the session. They didn't realize that. So if you, if you're getting your renewal and it's like it's always the Cadillac meaning they're putting VCF and you're not going to buy or need NSX for what your workloads and whatever.
09:17
There are some lower tier options. So I'm just saying that as your VM Ware reps might not be putting that in front of you, but there are some other options in their catalog. So and, and one thing on that was I know Jason hates when I cover this one is we actually had a customer um who was looking at VM Ware optimization and they were currently using Vsan um with a bunch of enterprise features.
09:38
And in their case, they needed to reduce their costs from their licensing and to offset the cost of the licensing as well as the up bundle from Vsan. They actually bought a Flasher and their partner built services into the solution. So the customer actually downgraded from VVF to VSPHERE standard and their partner built kind of a migration tool set for them to be able to move.
09:58
And so for the money they saved, they actually were able to buy a flash ray and still save money off their renewal. So there's a lot of flexibility you have um especially working with your partners and even within your own organization to figure out what can you optimize in that stack. Let's pause here. What other questions on number one?
10:20
Yeah, the question was what if VM ware refuses to sell you? Unfortunately, that one, I don't have an answer for or even a guess on what would the answer would be? I would be surprised I wouldn't sell you something, but I unfortunately don't work at VM. Yeah, II, I think in some cases there is some flexibility you kind of have to pay hardball.
10:47
But I've also heard in some cases the the more hardball, you play the, the less you'll do it. I think in some cases, what also will happen is um depending on large organizations, if there's multiple subsidiaries or tiers and it's considered, you can't split it. So if someone within that organization is using that higher tier,
11:04
nobody else can use that lower tier. And so that is one of those big challenges in that one that for example, if you have production where you need VCF, but for test E, you might need VDF. And for, I don't know Q A, you might need standard, you still have to standardize on that higher tier. So those are some of those challenges with that subscription model.
11:22
I would say that Prue ever asked that question, maybe the next two options might be something. Is that my segue to click the slide liner? No, no, no, I don't want to make sure we cover, you know, any other questions there. So we got that one in the back. Yes, sir. I don't know how many other people I've seen,
11:40
I've known several other people, you know, we just upped our, well, they sent out that uh letter a month or so ago saying that if they weren't good the supporting. So how is that going to affect? And he's already run that being the case where we are ended up. So, you know, because you pay the m ware that support, you want somebody there like blood is
12:11
the now you're getting party that that's on their life, they don't specialize in marketing. So how is that really integrated or how is that? Yeah, I mean, I think um in general um I recommend making sure you always open up a case with us, right? So we can review it if you're not getting the
12:43
support that you need from whoever else is involved in support stack, escalate it within pure, right? So we can reach out like we can, they'll get, they'll get back to me is basically what's going to happen or someone on my team and we can use our relationship with VM Ware to help, push on, push down on that right, to reach out to the engineering to the product team to help
13:01
support that. Now, obviously, that's not infinitely scalable, but really our goal, like our goal around support across the board is always to lean in as hard as we possibly can, right? With the we're doing in the public cloud too, like there's, you know, there's, you know, like open a ticket with Microsoft support or AWS support and they're able to look at a certain amount of things,
13:18
but it's our product that the customers are using. And so we're leaning much more into the Aws and Azure infrastructure, our support. And so we try to do that as much as possible. So please push on us escalate it. Um And uh you know, work with the Pure account team to get some additional pressure on it so
13:32
we can force that through. We have so we have direct connection with them through TS A net to have our TSES talk directly on certain accounts and uh or certain, um, tickets and so forth once the customer authorizes it. Uh, but please leverage pure support to help you as much as you can. Uh And certainly if there are other concerns around that,
13:50
just generally, like, let us know so we can bring this up with our, our qbrs and our QTR with VM Ware about we're doing all this stuff with you, we're building with you and there's some concerns from our customers around support. How can we improve that? So if there are struggles or problems that you're seeing that are impacted by these changes, let us know because that's good
14:08
information for me to talk to take back to my counterparts at VM Ware of saying, hey, we're building this together, what we can't adequately support it together. We have a problem. Uh And so please just like when you run in those situations, if it does happen, let us know. Right. That's useful. Yeah, that's good.
14:27
All right, others. All right. Langer. You alluded to some of these other things. So let's click, click the slide. All right. There is a scenario where you can consider switching virtualization providers. That is the reality and there's some options.
14:44
Uh which one of the 100 hypervisors would you switch to anger Langer. Take this one first. Well, I mean, that's a trick. I mean, you're, you're making jokes of it but like we all know there's obviously hyper V was probably, is the second leader in market share, but there's so many iterations of KVM.
15:04
Right. You've got prox mock, you've got Zen server, you've got all these other ones. Right? So I'm sure folks and you are looking at a wide swath of alternatives. Um What I will say and then Cody will have to come in over the top of me is from our perspective, we have support for Hyper V. We have great relationships with Microsoft
15:23
Cody's team. So the same integrations that Cody was talking about with VM Ware, like future road maps, making sure we're sticky with them to like help develop deliver features and value from flash array with hyper V. We do those same things with VM Ware. It's just or with uh Microsoft. It's just obviously that VM Ware has been the market leader for so long which everybody in
15:42
here probably knows that while we've always done it, it's just been kind of lower on the radar. So we have those features there. So Hyper V is definitely in play, we look at like Proc Moss and stuff like that. We are validating those to make sure they're certified for support, right? Obviously, we don't want to say, hey,
15:59
move to this KVM based hypervisor and we don't know how well, it's going to work with us or we can support it or to your, your points or if you call us up that our support can be like, yeah, give you the, you know, the class of service that you're used to getting. Um, so obviously hyper V for me would probably be the next one because it's the most prominent
16:19
after VM Ware. I mean, yeah, I mean, um, a couple of things. right. I, uh, what's today? Thursday, Monday, Monday, some day this week II, I had, I met with a bunch of customers. We did a bit of a round table. I'm trying to look if he's in here,
16:33
but if you are, I won't point you out. But I'm just curious and I, you know, I asked everyone in the room, give me the 20 th 20 32nd pitch about what you're doing in your VM Ware environment about changes and so forth and about 70% of them are just, we're sticking with it, right. It's the technology stack is what we know. It's not worth the multiple years of re architecting or shifting and we don't want to
16:51
lose that time as our business, right? So the majority was sticking what they got and figuring out how to optimize et cetera. Uh One person is like we went all in on the open stack right now. They went all in an open stack starting in 2015, right. So they, they went through it.
17:05
Um uh And they're like, they're super, they said really successful right now. We, we scaled it out, running our entire infrastructure on that. We leverage the Cinder driver that pure has around provisioning volumes. And I was like, cool. So do you have any recommendations for anyone else in the room that would wanna go that path?
17:21
And he's like, yeah, don't do it. Um But, but like jokes aside is basically we like some of our largest customers are running open stack at scale, right? It's just, there's quite an investment to get there. It's totally possible the ecosystem is mature, but there's a process to get there, you can be successful, but there is a level of effort that
17:42
needs to be considered in that change. And that was essentially what he was getting at when I, when I pushed on it a little bit further. Hyper V. Like in my mind, there's a lot of um equivalency in a sense of like there's a lot of VM ware environments are windows driven. So from a management perspective, in many ways, there's a lot of powershell out there,
17:59
a lot of the integration around Hyper V and the Windows platform is based on that. Just from a technology perspective, there's a lot of similarities, there's similar pieces like, you know, there's VA I for VMF SS and there's ODX support for NTFS. So a lot of these offloads exist. So there's a lot of parity and maturity in that, you know,
18:15
once again. But it's like one of these things where, um, there's still a shift, there's still a move. You have to ask the business, you have to like, you know, internally or whatever that means is, is making this move and the time to make that move worth the differences, potentially you might be getting in prices or so forth.
18:31
Fourth and the amount of time you're putting into it, what you could, what is the opportunity cost of that change? Right. That's really the main thing. It might be there for you. Like we've had some customers make that shift and we've had a lot that have not, right? You gotta think about the opportunity that cost
18:43
for your business and your time and your expertise. And am I learning something that's pushing my career, my business forward or am I not? Right. These are just things to think about. I would just add real quick. How can you operationalize that? The gentleman that asked about, you know, maybe I can't buy VVF.
18:57
So we're going to move off VM Ware. You know, you have to look at like if you have ABC Dr plan, does your B CD R plan work with the new hypervisor? Well, regardless if it's hyper V or prox box or one of the KVM solutions, what about your backup software if you use Veen COMT rubric? I mean, I know a lot of them have support for different ones,
19:13
you have to kind of go back in operation like, OK, how much of our environment are we actually having to switch? I'm not saying you shouldn't, but just think about all those things because we all know change is hard sometimes. And I've done a lot of data center migrations to different platforms and there's things that take a long time. Right. And so it's not a change that probably should
19:29
be viewed lightly, but just to think about your entire operations and your org on how you're gonna operationalize that. Yeah. And I think um I'll kind of touch base on that. So I think the idea of here switching virtualization providers is also searching virtualization platforms. And in this case, this is those customers who said we still need to stay on premises,
19:48
but we know we don't want to do it with VM Ware and like I joked with Langer because there's really 100 options. Like if you, I have a slide that Tristan made that it's like Xepng Citrix, Zen server, VM Square, it's all of these. And do you really want to use a hypervisor that came out yesterday or do you wanna, if you are using pure today, do you want to use a hypervisor that we have 1011 years of
20:09
integrations and support if you're using Prox box? My favorite example. Um If you wanna be supported 7 to 5 out of Austria um with no escalation support. That's gonna be a huge issue. So you have to think about what you're really doing. It's a lot of trends of what I'm seeing is way back when I think this was in like 2015 when I
20:26
was a customer. Um We were in health care and we use VM Ware for the entire environment. Everything else was Citrix and we use Zen server. Zen server was surprisingly at that time, sometimes more stable um than Vsphere back in the four dot X days. And it's so it's a viable alternative Citrix hypervisor just now came out with their free
20:42
edition as well. So there's a lot of really good enterprise options that sit here. So like when we kind of think about this, this is really part of what we're calling our modern virtualization play. We've done a bunch of um webinars on this as well. But we kind of think about our virtualization
20:56
stack falls into three main categories. The first one is what I would consider a value at things that we have an integration with our tight partnership where you're gonna see the most value. Those are these two up here open stack and hyper V and we have about again, another 7, 10 years of integrations there with that. The second one is the supported solutions. Those are the things that Jason mentioned,
21:15
all those KVM hypervisors. It just works, we validated it, but there's no secret sauce. That's part of that. And then you have the third option, which is those unsupported solutions and it's unsupportive as a vendor may not support it, right? You can do in guest I cuz it's supported from windows.
21:31
Um but the themselves may not be. So when you're looking at those alternative stacks, say like Azure stack, HC I or other HC I vendors, you wanna make sure that one, your applications are running and are supported on them, your backup vendors, like you said, because they may not work and you might be putting yourself in a hole. And then again, the key point if you do need to
21:49
move from VM Ware to this, it's a conversion. Um It's a complete PLTFORM. So you're gonna expect to take down time and have a little bit of a painful approach unless you're somehow having someone else handle those services. And if you're already gonna do that work, the third option we'll talk about is a really viable alternative.
22:05
In a lot of those cases, I know you're making a joke, but a hypervisor did just get announced yesterday. I don't know, I don't know if you do that or not. I didn't. So before you flip on to the, the third one, I just want to close off on this, at least from my side. But um is uh what I the message I wanna get
22:23
about this pillar, right to our customers and partners and prospects as the case may be here. Right? And there's a few analysts and thing there too. I see. But um is uh we have a sophisticated support of integration around a lot of these, right? Like these two are two good examples. If you do make this choice, if you are looking into it,
22:39
you see some gaps and needs, please once again, drive that back to us to the product team. So we know what we need to build what we need to integrate with. Are there languages that are, are not like spoken but you know, written scripting languages that we need to invest in more? Because it's more applicable to that platform. We are,
22:53
should we be doing more and or Python, we need more terra form support in different ways, right? So drive these things back as well so we can support your needs if you make that choice. Once again, I will say that one of the changes here is that as far as I can see VM Ware is still leading in a lot of these investments, right?
23:08
NVMR fabrics and things like that. So that stuff will probably come a little bit slower on these stacks. At least that's what I'm seeing out there. Um But you know, they eventually do get there too but said if there are needs, drive them back to us, have we exhausted that one? Yeah. Yeah. Yes, sir.
23:29
Thank you. Was it about migration? Was that? Yeah, so um we have a much longer slide that really covers that. But there's a couple options. So a lot of the basis of what you do with VM Ware by utilizing V balls or RD MS really give you a portable data format.
23:49
So if you are looking to move off of VM Ware, moving towards that technology allows you to then migrate that machine to bare metal KVM here. And from an open stack perspective, once you have that volume, you have the ability um through QA or through um qu tool, I'm probably gonna say it completely wrong or through the U I where you can actually import
24:06
those volumes directly from a flash array with that sender. So in some cases, there's actually pretty easy migration paths. Um For those in that tool set just will say that I am not the first person to save evolves in this session. So EBP, thank you, win it. Um We had to wait 24 minutes for
24:33
that, but we got it. I could have done it sooner. That is a record for Google Images hypervisors. No, we could do that. So yeah, reach out to us afterwards. I noticed you don't have a red hat that chip virtualization on there.
25:01
Surprised by that. I live and all of a sudden we've got two more slides for you, sir. We have two more slides. Yeah, kind of like I said it fits in that there's a couple of kind of fit in a couple of pillars. So we've just got to put that in a specific one.
25:19
But uh yeah, so stay tuned. Let's call this the legacy virtualization stack. OK. We'll start there, tradition, tradition, tradition. It's a nicer word. All right, let's hit the cloud piece then. All right, let's go there. We'll get there.
25:34
It might be the fourth one. You never know. OK. Who wants to Cody? You get to lead because I've let the other two gentlemen lead first. So hitting the hitting the cloud piece. Yeah, so and you know, another option here, of course is uh you know, there's been moves to the cloud um around moving things to native infrastructure as a
25:50
service, moving to the VM Ware services in the cloud. And the reason we there's a couple of reasons we specifically highlight Azure VM Ware solution. Uh Some of them are like personal reasons and the fact that that's where our product is, right? And so we like it, but more so right. It is, it is a heavily invested in VM Ware in
26:08
the cloud offering, right? Microsoft now offers five year elas around buying A VS nodes with some some pretty um good discounting, especially if you purchase this year, I think there's some 20% off or something like that. So they're putting a lot of investment into that sack. So it is a very se secure option for VM Ware in the cloud where there's some lack of clarity,
26:29
maybe in some of the other VM ware offerings in the public cloud as those get figured out. The A VS one is a very solid one. We're working really closely with them and we know the road map, we know their investment, we know what they're doing later this year or next year and it is, it's a safe bet. Right. So this is something that, you know, just generically, like, forget about purity, certain extent,
26:47
like I think it's a good, a great option. But two, we do have our, you know, we support our cloud block store product, which is the software version of flash array that runs in Azure with that, right? And it comes with all the good stuff, right? You know, vmfs and the Valls and all that stuff
27:01
that's all built into purity, which is what's in CBS, right? So um it's it's another option there too. And that also gives you a path over time, start looking at moving some V MS potentially over into native Azure V MS, right? So to follow that path, what what makes the most sense to consolidate on top of A vs because I think there actually
27:19
are long term costs and operational advantages to keeping those V MS on A vs in the long term. But there's also some advantages of moving some of the native native Azure V MS too. So you can make some choices as a Microsoft off some pretty en enticing options around long term, walking around pricing uh that I think makes it an interesting option. Uh I said like this is a part of, part of what you can do here with Pure,
27:41
is that our Evergreen One licensing? Uh If you buy your FA S through Evergreen one, that license can follow the capacity to CBS. And so if you were to empty your data center for instance and move everything to CBS, that license falls with it, so you don't have to rebuy it. But we also allow you to buy it through the Azure marketplace,
27:57
just like we allow you to buy the AWS one through the A US marketplace drawing against your commit. So there's a variety of options there. So I think there's a lot of flexibility around this potential solution and you get to keep that VM Ware ecosystem. So it's depending on the the direction of your business and your data center choices. This is something to take a look at too.
28:14
Yeah. And since you poked me about the bundle, you called it software flash array. It's not, it's purity in the cloud. So is anybody you, you were gonna ask a question? Yeah. So I think the idea here, right is a vs is a safe choice.
28:26
So these are customers who say, well, we wanna get off on prem because of potentially the license increase, but we're not ready to get off VM Ware right now. And like Cody said, you can lock in five years um, of that reserve so you can lock in your pricing for that and understand what you're gonna do and still take your peer investment. So we do VM Ware really good on premises. We also do pure,
28:46
really good on premises. We're now taking that to the cloud and we do Azure does VM Ware really good in the cloud and we do pure, really good in the cloud. And so you have that ability to take everything you're doing on Prem and take that investment to that. The idea here is once you land your storage in Azure VM Ware solution,
29:02
it now becomes pretty easy to then take that and now move that to Azure or Aws native virtual machines. And so it really helps you not just relat but also potentially maybe refactor your applications to be more cloud native and give you that exit strategy. If that is something that you're looking at David, what are the common questions you get?
29:21
Because you talked to a lot of folks on this and what are common questions you get where people are considering this that they're not clear about. Yeah, so I think a lot of it is just really understanding what storage options available are there and what does it actually mean? And so one of the things to consider with Azure VM Ware solution is like a lot of things are V San and HC I driven,
29:41
which means you need to know what the minimums are, what the maximums are and some of the limitations of what you have to do. And in those cases, customers might be saying, well, I'm gonna use my Dr and move it to the cloud. Um The example I love to use is you have 100 terabytes of storage you want to put up there, you need roughly about 11 nodes of A vs whereas
29:59
the minimum node count is three, the maximum node count is 16. And so in this case, you can use that bare metal or there the bare minimum of three nodes and put the rest on external storage from pure. And that gives you the ability to have low RP OS low RT OS and also do some things that you wouldn't be able to do. Say you have a 12 terabyte VM which wouldn't fit on a Vsan node.
30:19
You now can put that on our external storage and it really provides a lot of flexibility there at a huge cost savings. Has anybody looked at a BS? Right? OK. See some head nodding. OK. Is the challenges of scaling computing storage a cha a problem for y'all or have you seen that?
30:37
Not the case? See a no, you shake you any issues there. Not really. OK. So I mean that is one thing is if you're looking to, you know, I try to say get out of the data center business, you know, if you're somebody's using this for the catalyst to move to the cloud.
30:52
You know, David kind of danced around a little bit really the co when you start looking at any actually into the v more public clouds, it's how you scale compute and storage and you scale them together, right? So if you need more compute, you're always going to get more storage along for the right and vice versa. If you just need more storage, you have to buy more compute with what we're delivering here is
31:13
you get a separate that out, you get the true freedom, what you're doing on Prem, it's like I just need compute, just add the nodes, spare me the storage, I just need more storage. I spin up some more of cloud block store and I don't have to worry about my nodes, right? So while the HC I stuff works and it's great. It does lock you into kind of a model of like you're increasing all three of your,
31:31
your core resources together as opposed to giving you the flexibility of doing one at a time. And just uh just like, of course, like, you know, A vs is not the only VM Ware cloud offering right? There is G CV E Google cloud VM Ware engine, there's O Cio CV E oracle cloud VM Ware or something um that that exists too. Um And you know,
31:49
I think there's like one in Alibaba and one or two others. But um the VM Ware cloud native US one, there seems to be a little bit of lack of clarity on where that's going. Um And I, I think really that my take away from that, like regardless of what actually happens with that particular service, my my read of the situation like is that, you know, the the positioning around Broadcom is
32:06
they want to sell you the software stack to build your own cloud, right? Um And so they wanna enable their partners and the customers to do that, they operate VM or cloud and AWS. And I think that's business, they want to look to get out of. And so some having another partner take that over or something.
32:19
And so the model that they seem to be chasing is the, the, the A VS model, the G CV E model and so forth, right? So I think those options are structurally safe. Uh Broadcom has a really tight relationship with GCP two, right? So like that, I, I don't suspect those to be risk items either.
32:34
Uh just like what we Microsoft's offering seems to be the largest one right now outside of E MC on AWS. And so I think it's a good option and I said, just like, you know, um for my own purposes, right? That's where my product is. And so I like it and we're doing a lot of cool stuff with them. Um But like I, that's where my head's at,
32:50
at least on the VM Ware cloud models and where the risk is and where isn't yeah, decent into power. Yeah. So the question was, is there a like a diskless version of Azure VM Ware solution? Meaning that no Vsan. So um VM Ware cloud and AWS uh introduced it introduced disc list support um end of last
33:26
year, right? So there's a model for, for VM Ware cloud and actually what was driving that requirement, believe it or not was not the demand for external storage with V MC. It was actually the demand for more flexible compute instance sizes within VM Ware cloud and Aws, right? And so, um because of VSAN requirements, they were kind of stuck to certain compute sizes
33:46
because this is the only type that could support Vsan. And so they were limited to like two or three types. So by removing the VA requirement, they had a lot more flexibility. Now, obviously that's V MC and Aws and there's just some questions around it. A vs right now, there is a minimum vs A footprint in all their compute the most recent
34:02
nodes A V 60 fords, which is where they're looking to standardize on moving forward, um has a very small amount. So they're moving in that direction of more compute and less storage. And I, I suspect that's a path they're going to go down down the road as well uh around the diskless option, but it's not there yet, but they're getting, they seem to be getting more compute dense and
34:21
less storage dense, I think just from a supply chain perspective, that's what we see. Uh Because if you look at a lot of the, the bare metal nodes they use in the fleet architecture for like Azure V MS and things like that, like the com the storage services and the compute server are separate. It's not the same thing. It makes the compute cheaper.
34:38
So like that's, that's where I would expect it to go. But at least today, there's a minimal va footprint in A vs. Uh and so the, the CBS or whatever external storage option would be somewhat supplemental in that sense. But the, the main thing we like to note is that to, to David's point, right is about if you need like one more extra node for,
34:56
for um for your compu your uh storage and you don't need that compute, the TCO starts leaning in our favor. And I think the key point there is in some cases, it's actually maybe nice to have that storage that's included because we have customers who have their production workload sitting on our cloud block store solution because they need our safe motor snapshots our
35:15
replication and they're using that for all of their production data and they're landing their test de or their non critical systems that sit on that V and so in some cases, it's still there but you're using it for different purposes of where you are. So, in some cases, it might actually be better to have it than to not have it at all just in case of an emergency or some other use case.
35:37
All right, we're doing well on time, gentlemen. So good job on the responses I got all night. I'm done after this. We have to do this all out again at six over beer talk too. Yeah, we do, we can do more. Right. Right. In the, in the apps in the beer clock too.
35:52
Uh OK. Let's hit four. And who has not kicked off in a little bit langer. You want footnote standing these two are better for better at four. I will defer to these two on that one. We'll defer to four on the on the modernization part. So the fourth path is I, I don't really see
36:06
this as like, I mean, it's, it's another pillar. I don't really necessarily as an alternative, right? Like to the to the very first slide, it's a companion, right? It's like I think we've gotten over the adoption or maturity curve of gubernatis like it's a thing, containers are a thing. This is an application architecture for many
36:22
new applications um and even some boarding some old ones. So like regardless to like what you're doing with these first three, like this is something that you need to be working through, right? Um And do I think that you can just containerize your entire VM environment and call it a day like that's probably not
36:38
realistic, right? Um But a certain portion of it, sure net new applications, whether off the shelf or developed. Absolutely. And so this practice needs to be built across the board. There's some interesting options around openshift virtualization and cert, right? QT allows you to run V MS but orchestrated by
36:53
certis like there's some technologies going into that investment. So I think if you have a sophisticated kubernetes practice today and control and understanding around it, like this is something you can lean into more, right? Would I just like? All right, I got, you know, 40,000 V MS and no containers and just,
37:08
all right, let's start moving everything over. It's probably not, right, the immediate shift you wanna, you wanna go after, but this is something that you certainly start looking at and there are options for running V MS, right? So if you have V MS that are not like like a big part of the value of the VM where product set is also the ecosystem,
37:23
the backup and recovery and disaster recovery and analytics and all kind of stuff. And so like V MS that are heavily tied into that maybe not the ones to start with. But if you have some V MS just sitting around like you related options like that is a good one, right? And so we kind of put the Openshift virtualization in this bucket a little bit too because they're very re related from a vendor
37:42
in a technology perspective. And so there's some burgeon options around that. I I my personal feeling gut is I think like openshift is really and its ecosystem is probably one of the air parents out there, but it's gonna take a couple of years, I think for it to really get to any level of what we see around the ecosystem with VM Ware, but it's definitely growing fast. It's probably the one that's mentioned to me
38:04
the most, whether it's containers or V MS across the board. So uh and I, I think, you know, it's kind of weird to say this, but I think IBM did actually a pretty good job of like taking in Red Hat and, and really building into what it is today. So that would, that went pretty well. Yeah. And I think four really is like this whole
38:19
modernization play. It's ideally in this case, is you still might use 12 or three, but you're now starting this containerization journey and you're either gonna go all in or you're gonna do parts of it. You're not gonna move your tier one core applications, right? Obviously, SAP is huge. You're not gonna run SAP and containers and
38:35
that's still gonna need to stay on these other platforms. But I think four really fits on all three. So you can run containers and Openshift on VM. Ware, you can run it on open stack, you can run it in the cloud on all that. And one of the benefits of port works is it allows you to deliver that platform on any hypervisor, any storage, any Kubernetes distribution and for any service and really
38:55
have the flexibility to move it. Um You're not my dad. You can't tell me what to do. I'll run SAP and containers if I want to I can. Um But yeah, so that's really that, that big one that we've seen a lot on. Um And I think the one key area where you might say, well,
39:10
which pathway works for me. It's not supposed to be, you go from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4. Um It's 123 and, or four because you might do all of that. Some of the guidance that I also provide to customers is what we really want to be your trusted advisor and say you should pick that one because that's the one we like the most. Ultimately within your organization,
39:29
you're gonna have specialists, they might know containers, they might know VM Ware, they might know hyper V, they may know certain things and that's gonna do it. But also if say, for example, you're using flash array um and VM Ware and you're using NSX in your environment, you're saying, OK, we are done with this. Uh We want an alternative pure is not really gonna help you move from NSX to some other
39:50
networking and security solution. Your partner is that trusted advisor. And so some partners actually have the ability to provide full services. Some of them um are really, really good at containers. Some of them are really, really good at Microsoft. Some of them are still really, really good at VM Ware and some will kind of be in that open
40:07
stack. So they'll be able to understand your guidance, understand what services they have the ability to deliver and really help recommend what is the best solution because they've probably known you for a lot longer. Um and really understand your environment inside and out and just not your storage, but your entire fleet nicely known.
40:25
I just feel bad that the gentleman that asked the question had to leave. I know he, he was like, oh, I'm surprised I didn't. Yeah, it's all right. You know, we answered his question, we answer the question and you did answer it is we can send it to him. That's right. Um So it's always dangerous to do polling in a
40:40
big audience. So we're gonna do that anyway. Um So if you are comfortable, we're just curious. Um Have you, are you seeing an increase in your renewal costs? You can kind of raise your hand like part way two hands gentlemen over there, just, just out of curiosity, what's what's like? Um I,
41:00
I've seen a couple of different things around this like the the, the change in the increase, is it because you were not using like the full stack and now you're buying it or is it, or you're using the full stack and now you're buying it as a bundle and it's gone up too. Is anyone in that second piece or is it mostly the first where I'm using a part of it? And it's gone up because they,
41:15
um, they're selling me the whole thing or I'm using all of it and it's all going up because they're selling me the whole thing still too. We do it as two parts. So who, who? Yeah, I shouldn't ask two questions and ask for a poll. Uh So that increase, is it because you were using like vsphere and vcenter and nothing else?
41:31
And now you have to buy all of it. Ok? And then uh I am using all of it but it's still more because I'm buying and they're selling all of it. Ok? The, the socket changes and things like that. It's a big, yeah. And I, I think one trend that I've been seeing
41:49
with customers too, um, is that a lot of the cost increases are thinking about? And I'll, I'll use a pure analogy. Um Hopefully, if you guys are familiar with our evergreen one, it'll make sense. Um The analogy I like to use is that customers who have been buying VM Ware for the past 1011 years, bought it early on and they've been paying support and subscription all the time.
42:08
So their prices never really went up and it was there and over time VM Ware like to throw in a bunch of stuff for free. Um And so over time that was affordable. Now with the shift to subscription, you're now paying from day one, everything all up front again. Um For example, I was using Camtasia, I was paying $200 a month and in that case,
42:28
it was awesome. Now I'm paying $200 a year and I get every single version. But the version of how that kind of translates to purity is that it's a customer who bought say Capex arrays and then we're getting three controllers there and then they now converted to our evergreen one, which is our subscription model and we didn't give them a trade in credit.
42:44
We just said just take that array that you've had for the past 10 years and throw it away and we're not gonna do it, think about it. And I think it's that they didn't really provide a trade in kind of process or give you some sort of credit is where some of the increases are becoming a little bit more um shocking in some cases. That's kind of some of the conversations I've had at least completely lost me when you said
43:01
you're paying $200 a month for Camtasia. That's crazy. You need to get a better bar. Or something like that. OK. We got two minutes. Yeah, any final questions and I will say uh keynote 415 to 5. But we are running if you caught the beer clocks, a kind of a new way of saying birds of
43:22
a feather sessions. Um We're doing in Jasmine a right next door will be cloud containers and virtualization. We'll have some of the same people here as well as some other of our Kubernetes experts that are there. So trying to get more organic conversation, bringing questions, but also maybe talking yourselves about your experience.
43:39
So we learn things uh and then in, in Jasmine B right in here will be applications A I and analytics. So whatever you're interested in um you can do any closing, closing thoughts guys, Cody. Yeah, I um 11 remaining thought for me, right? I'm just gonna reinforce something I said, is it like pure as a luxury of hedging our bets, right?
43:59
And so we're going to be supporting all of these stacks, right? So certainly if you make choices, let us know if there's something we can help you with, but we will be supporting it across the board. But the folks that say in the VM ware, which I imagine most of you probably will. That's marching forward fast. There's a lot of cool stuff coming.
44:14
So I just want, I wanna reassure the customers that we're not gonna leave them stranded. And if you do feel stranded for some reason because of a choice that you made. Let me know. All right. Thank you. Cool. Thanks everybody. Time.
44:28
It's gonna be a hand for our panel here. Thank them and thank you for your time. Enjoy the rest of the evening, everybody.
  • VMware Solutions
  • Pure//Accelerate

Rob Ludeman

Sr. Director, Solutions Marketing and Competitive Intelligence, Pure Storage

Cody Hosterman

Sr. Director, Cloud Product Management & Virtualisation, Pure Storage

Jason Langer

Technical Evangelist, Product Marketing - Pure Storage

David Stamen

Enterprise Technology Strategy Director, Pure Storage

If you’re uncertain about the future of your virtualisation strategy, you’re not alone. Changes at VMware have IT leaders everywhere reevaluating their current application architecture. Join us for a discussion on what’s happening at VMware and what it means for you and your organisation. In this session, we’ll cover: (1) How to navigate the changes at VMware, (2) Various pathways to optimise your VMware, virtualisation, and architecture deployments, and (3) The future of virtualisation and how you can modernise on your terms.

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07/2024
Pure Storage FlashArray//X | Data Sheet
FlashArray//X provides unified block and file storage with enterprise performance, reliability, and availability to power your critical business services.
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