Rewind & Resume Data Protection w. Zerto
How to Rewind & Resume Data Protection for Resilient IT
View the Full Video Here: Zerto for Rewind & Resume Data Resiliency
Mike Matchett: Hi. I'm Mike Matchett with Small World Big Data. And today we're going to talk about an important facet of data, particularly a passive digital transformation and that's how do you protect data. One of the theories we have is that when you make your company into a digital company, when you take this journey to the cloud, you become a digital native, you transform your company to be based on data. Data protection becomes part and parcel of everything you have to do. It becomes a hundred percent of your data that needs to be protected, not just the little bit that we used to protect in years gone by. Today, I have Caroline Seymour who is the Director of Product Management from Zerto who is going to explain to us a little bit about where Zerto's going from replication into the cloud and backups base and has a new platform that they've been rolling out everywhere. Welcome, Caroline.
Caroline Seymour: Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me.
Convergence in Data Protection
Mike Matchett: So let's start with just this idea of convergence in the backup data protection space where, you know, in the past we had backup solutions. We had replication solutions. We had some cloud migration solutions. And, of course, today, those things are starting to come together because the use cases start to overlap. Tell us a little bit about Zerto's journey there and why you think that puts you in a really good spot going forward.
Caroline Seymour: Yes, of course. And so public people think we're small as disaster recovery because that's been our heritage. That's where we started with hypervisor-based replication. And so folks know us for disaster recovery but we've evolved. And earlier this year, we did announce our I.T. resilience platform. And when you think about I.T. resilience platform and I.T. resilience overall, it's really about the evolution of business continuity and disaster recovery.
Caroline Seymour: And you're right. When you talk about the convergence in the marketplace around different technologies, what you see is disaster recovery and backup are converging with traditional sort of backup use cases like ransomware or file level recovery. Those are traditional backup use cases. But we're seeing a lot of our customers using Zerto today for exactly those type of use cases because what we offer is our continuous availability and continuous data protection. Because you really need to move away from maybe some, you know, recovery and restore but more rewind and to resume and you can do that with continuous data protection.
Caroline Seymour: So the disaster recovery in the backup is one element of convergence. And to your point, people are moving backup to the cloud. They're moving disaster recovery to the cloud. They are migrating their workloads to the cloud. And, of course, therefore you need to protect your workloads to the cloud. And I think in the fact that when you actually look at it, a lot of this evolution too is being driven by digital transformation which you just said is building a digital business. And so that need for continuous availability to deliver an uninterrupted experience is critical.
The Role of Cloud in Continuous Data Protection
Mike Matchett: So Zerto that started with a replication engine, this idea of continuous data protection, continuous data replication for DR and HA kind of perspective on maybe a narrow set of critical apps, you know, eight years ago. You really find yourself saying, "Hey, you got to do this for all your data, especially when you go to the cloud."
Mike Matchett: And when you're doing that, now your RPO slides towards zero on all that stuff because we have this continuous data protection. And that really means we can sort of take over the backup functionality, what you do backups for because there's no reason to go do an incremental backup somewhere else if I've got continuous. But it still says okay, I don't just want to restore to a given point recently. I might just only backups -- to go backup many years. All right. So I still need those backups to go back five, six, seven years, right?
Caroline Seymour: Oh, absolutely because you have the need to store data whether it's, I don't know, 5 years, 7 years, 99 years for compliance. You know, you have to have it. And so you've got two requirements. One, it's around short-term retention of data.
Mike Matchett: Right.
Caroline Seymour: And then long-term retention of data. We here at Zerto have always had short-term retention capabilities through our 30-day journal so that you can actually specify what check points, you know, what point in time you want to actually sort of rewind and resume to. Now, we're adding NIM with Zerto 7 that's coming out in March next year is the ability to be able to merge your short-term repository so that what we have today with long-term repositories.
Caroline Seymour: So now you can really go from -- we like to call it seven seconds to seven years with Zerto 7 but obviously you can go further than just, you know, seven years. And so we are introducing a new concept into Zerto 7 called the "Elastic Journal" and that's really about that merging of the short-term repository with -- sorry, the short-term journal with the long-term repositories.
The Elastic Journal
Mike Matchett: So it becomes one thing. And I know you showed a slide. So this is your idea, not mine but there's a DVR like capability on data now where I can pick a slider button and go, you know, just a little bit back and then go back and it gets a little bit nonlinear. And as I go back so many back years on something whereas most people think of replication in high availability type solutions as, you know, like you said 30 days which is actually a lot. I think of it as, you know, if I can go back three hours, that's great. So now that becomes seamless in version 7. What else are you guys working towards between what you're on version 6 now and what else are you bringing out to get to version 7?
Caroline Seymour: Well, actually, we announced 6 early this year in February which was really to build out our cloud story with multi-cloud architecture. We then -- we just announced our 6.5 at Microsoft Ignite in September and that was really to add in additional elements and still continue that cloud journey so that, you know, cloud service providers and enterprises can also incorporate cloud into their data protection strategies.
Caroline Seymour: And then what 6.5 has also done is to build a foundation and the foundational elements ready for Zerto 7. So it's that stepping stone. And our customers today can expand their usage of the journal and the backup use cases in 6.5 ready for being able to do that longer term retention in 7 and beyond.
Mike Matchett: In 7.0. And there's a couple other cool things coming with 7.0 which we will have time to talk about in a minute. But first, you start talking about cloud. So I want to just focus a little bit on cloud. What part does clouds play in the story now? People backup to the cloud as a backup target. People obviously replicate from cloud to cloud. But cloud is really key for a lot of people as they want to globalize, as they want to do multi-cloud things, as they kind of view themselves as tenants everywhere. What is Zerto's kind of thinking on cloud how that's going to evolve?
Cloud-to-Cloud Replication
Caroline Seymour: As you know, we're software only and we're completely vendor agnostic so cloud agnostic. So if a company decides that they want to actually go to AWS storage or IBM cloud or any one of our 350 cloud service providers, they can. And I think what we're seeing our customers need is to build up a multi-cloud strategy, the ability not only just have one cloud but to be able to ensure that they can move from cloud to cloud. They don't want to be locked into a specific cloud vendor. So we offer them today that flexibility.
Caroline Seymour: You can go to the cloud, from the cloud, in between clouds. So really from on-premise or even back to on-premise. So we have that flexibility today and, of course, backup to cloud. You know, people do want to use and looking at the cloud not only for their short-term needs around moving their data center to the cloud maybe, but being able to store data into the cloud. Microsoft Data Box -- Microsoft Azure Data Box Edge was an announcement made at Ignite and that offers on-premises backup storage in the cloud. So we've, in 6.5, support that and then we'll continue to expand on that journey too.
Mike Matchett: I mean that's hybrid. That's really almost a definition of hybrid, right? So I've got data here and there. So one of the question, let's get back to what's coming. So if I've got data everywhere and I've got backups everywhere and I've got the elastic journal, I've got journal data everywhere, I don't even know what's the right term here. This continuous elastic journal. I want to just know where my file is and what the versions are for that thing or my file system. You've got some cool stuff coming in 7.0 also to help with that, right?
Caroline Seymour: Yes, exactly. We have new indexing and search. We call it the "Intelligent Indexing and Search Capability" that you'll be able to search across not only in your on-premises but also your cloud and it will search across your short-term journal, as well as also your long-term repositories. And then what we're doing too is wrapping around data protection workflows to be able to automate that process as well. So those are things that are coming out in Zerto 7.
Mike Matchett: Yeah. And just the final thing. There's a cool part about this virtual consistency group, application consistency groups too, right? So it's not --
Caroline Seymour: Yes.
Mike Matchett: As I get into this world where I've got multiple VMs and virtual LANS and they're going to start popping around the universe of clouds and hybrid clouds, they're going to be more and more defined by policy templates and sort of file defined applications but those applications become mobile. And now I need to send the data protection policies with them and define my protection by the same kind of description, right. So you've got to -- I'd say -- I'm trying to get the words of application consistency group now that has --
Caroline Seymour: Yes.
Application Consistency Groups
Mike Matchett: -- that description in it of an application, its dependencies, and what needs to be protected, right?
Caroline Seymour: Yes, within the platform itself. So not only through the continuous replication in journal. We have what we call the application consistency groups that will allow you to define all the application and its dependencies so that, you know, if you do need to be able to recover the application, it's ensuring that all of the right order fidelity and everything around the application is completely protected.
Mike Matchett: Yeah, not just that one file folder, that one --
Caroline Seymour: Exactly.
Mike Matchett: -- one thing, right?
Caroline Seymour: Yes.
Mike Matchett: So that's great. Just as a final message here. If someone is interested in Zerto today, I know you do a lot of channel business, they can find you on all sorts of clouds and things but if they just want more blow direct research, your website has information, is there any specific you'd steer people to?
Caroline Seymour: Well, I think in the fact that -- well, certainly Zerto.com. It's very easy on our website. You can go to the platform and see exactly the elements of the platform and how that platform can help you. And also a very interesting point is we have on there is the future backup. So I think in the fact that that would be a key element. But Zerto.com is your starting point and it will easily navigate you through to where your interests lie.
Mike Matchett: All right. Well, we look forward to having you back here and tell us about 7.0 when it comes out because there's a lot of cool stuff there. I'm going to want a demo, I'm sure.
Caroline Seymour: Absolutely.
Mike Matchett: I probably want some free licensing as well for all my stuff but we'll start with the demo. So thank you for being here today.
Caroline Seymour: I appreciate it. And thank you for having me, Mike. It's nice to talk to you.
Mike Matchett: All right. Thanks. And thanks guys for watching. And stay tuned. We're sure going to have Zerto back soon. Thanks.
Caroline Seymour: Thank you.