UPDATED 17:22 EDT / SEPTEMBER 04 2017

CLOUD

Dell EMC, VMware rejuvenate and unify multicloud data protection

A large majority of enterprises have rejected the dichotomy of an either/or, on-premises data center versus public cloud. Today, 85 percent embrace a hybrid or multicloud strategy, according to RightScale’s “2017 State of the Cloud Survey.” They are employing both public clouds and private clouds, including virtualized on-prem environments.

This shift to multiple clouds is presenting new data protection and disaster recovery problems that many information technology professionals are ill-equipped to solve. Some wish they could simply transfer their tried-and-true on-prem methods over to cloud. VMware Inc. and parent company Dell Technologies Inc. are stepping in with virtualized data protection that aims to provide such hybrid compatibility.

“Because the industry is changing so dramatically, it’s requiring data protection to change just as dramatically,” according to Beth Phalen (pictured, left), senior vice president and general manager of data protection and availability solutions at Dell EMC.

Phalen joined Yanbing Li (pictured, right), senior vice president and general manager of storage and availability at VMware, for a live interview at VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas. They spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, about how Dell EMC and VMware are collaborating to develop new data protection and DR solutions suited to hybrid environments. (* Disclosure below.)

This week, theCUBE spotlights Yanbing Li and Beth Phalen in our Women in Tech feature.

During VMworld, Dell EMC announced data protection for VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services Inc. “Since we’ve got all of our data protection running in a cloud environment now, we could then use that to build the connections with VMC [VMware Cloud]. So people can use the same technology they used on-prem, but now in AWS in conjunction with VMC,” Phalen said.

“We are rejuvenating our DR effort,” Li said. “We have successful on-prem products like SRM.” VMware’s DR software, SRM (Site Recovery Manager), software stretches application availability and mobility across different private cloud sites. “We’re seeing tremendous new opportunity to look at that in the context of cloud, truly leveraging the economy and scale of what cloud has to offer,” Li said.

Data protection reigns in hybrid

Widespread uncertainty about what data protection in the cloud means has been an issue at enterprises making the shift, according to Phalen. Customers have actually told her they believed that cloud providers would take care of data protection and backup for them. This is unfortunately not the case, she stated.

“People are realizing, ‘Wow, there’s just as much of a need or more of a need than there was before,'” Phalen said.

Indeed, Druva Inc., a startup focused on hybrid data protection as a service, just secured $80 million in funding. Enterprises are realizing that while multiple environments may be beneficial, they don’t want to juggle a different DR strategy for each of them. “The more data gets decentralized or fragmented, the more centralized the data management has to be,” according to Jaspreet Singh, Druva’s founder and chief executive officer.

“We’re seeing two fundamental shifts around data protection,” Li said. One is the blurring line between backup and DR; customers increasingly expect that these come together in one unified package, she added. Also, many customers have grown fond of hyperconverged infrastructure’s combined compute and storage with a common management pane. “And they’re looking for the same for data protection,” Li said. “We’re really seeing customers want to see data protection as a feature of hyperconverged, as a capability that’s part of that rather than yet another silo they have to manage separately.”

VMware is working to improve DR capabilities in its vSAN storage solution for hyperconverged infrastructure, according to Li. “VSAN is gaining [a lot of] footprint in mission-critical workloads. And a critical requirement is data protection,” she said.

VMware is working closely with Dell EMC toward this end. “The next step is that joint engineering effort, leveraging the best of both worlds to build next-generation products […] optimized for hyperconverged, that’s optimized for the cloud,” Li said.

Dell EMC and VMware’s engineering deep dive

Dell EMC is restructuring its EMC lab to enable more co-engineering and collaboration with VMware, according to Phalen. Peer programming, test-driven development and advancements in software development will be increasingly emphasized.

Dell EMC now has everything needed to build a fully integrated stack, Phalen stated. Dell EMC’s Integrated Data Protection Appliance, for one, offers a pre-configured solution that combines data protection storage and software, plus search and analytics. The company is also leveraging Data Domain Virtual Edition storage, which can scale in fairly small increments and traverse environments.

“As customers change how they consume data protection to more like a converged consumption model or a hyperconverged consumption model, we have all of the pieces that we need to make that a reality,” Phalen said. “When you combine that with that relationship [to] VMware and the ability that we have to drive innovation jointly, I have no doubt that we’re going to be really moving ahead into modern data protection.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE was a paid media partner for VMworld 2017. Neither VMware Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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