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Nov. 14, 2022

Divining Requirements out of the Organization

Divining Requirements out of the Organization

This episode follows the previous one in a very interesting way. We have a guest, Eric Bursley, whose job is to divine business and technical requirements from a vendor perspective at Presidio, an IT solutions provider. He consults with customers and helps them get from "I want" to "I need." This was a fascinating conversation that took a turn into (surprise) ransomware. Eric is a fan of the pod and knows his stuff.

As mentioned in the podcast, here is a link to the music video that is the theme song of the podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPoE7nlgYe4

The episode where we meet the voice behind the song: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/b60b207b-2dfc-4b38-b5ea-1cd4c6231025

Mentioned in this episode:

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Transcript
W. Curtis Preston:

Hi, and welcome to Backup Central's Restore it All podcast.

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm your host, W.

W. Curtis Preston:

Curtis Preston, AKA Mr.

W. Curtis Preston:

Backup.

W. Curtis Preston:

And I have with me my vicarious Thinset removal consultant Prasanna.

W. Curtis Preston:

Malaiyandi, how's it going?

W. Curtis Preston:

Prasanna?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I'm good Curtis, and I think you had a

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

really, really great weekend.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Between,

W. Curtis Preston:

I did.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

between the Padre.

W. Curtis Preston:

Oh yeah, yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Baby Padres.

W. Curtis Preston:

You know, it's funny.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Between the Padres and the thinset removal, uh, it was definitely a big

W. Curtis Preston:

weekend for the Preston household.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, yeah, the Padres by the way, that, that game according to, you know, those

W. Curtis Preston:

guys that talk constantly during the.

W. Curtis Preston:

And they pull out the stats.

W. Curtis Preston:

That game is the second biggest upset in the history of Major League baseball.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, if you look at the number of games that, um, LA has won the season and

W. Curtis Preston:

the number of games the Padres have won the season, and the fact that they beat

W. Curtis Preston:

them, it's the second largest spread.

W. Curtis Preston:

The first one is it's, it's a distant second because the first

W. Curtis Preston:

one, the winning team won 128 games.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, and like that, that's also the highest record of the

W. Curtis Preston:

number of games one in a season.

W. Curtis Preston:

Anyway, that was, and what's funny is I'm, as you know, I'm

W. Curtis Preston:

not even that big of a sports fan.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I, I was actually surprised you were watching

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, but you know, when the hometown team is playing and

W. Curtis Preston:

they're in the playoffs, uh, you know, even when they were in the Wild card,

W. Curtis Preston:

uh, I was watching, and that was great to see them, you know, win that and

W. Curtis Preston:

then to see them beat the Dodgers.

W. Curtis Preston:

To see them beat the Dodgers on the road first and then come home to win twice.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, it, it's, it's a big week to be San Diego.

W. Curtis Preston:

It's, they're apparently, like, they're not even waiting for the World Series.

W. Curtis Preston:

They're painting the town like yellow and brown right now, which are.

W. Curtis Preston:

For the record, the worst colors for any major league team of any kind.

W. Curtis Preston:

I think, um, I don't know, maybe the, maybe the Cleveland

W. Curtis Preston:

Browns, cuz they're just brown.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You know when you said yellow and brown, you know, the first

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

thing I was thinking, like pee and poop,

W. Curtis Preston:

I know that's the first thing that comes to mind

W. Curtis Preston:

when you think of yellow and brown.

W. Curtis Preston:

I mean, the Dodgers, they had this beautiful blue and white, you

W. Curtis Preston:

know, we, we get yellow and brown.

W. Curtis Preston:

What the hell's up with that?

W. Curtis Preston:

Anyway, Um, yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

And

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

and then the thin

W. Curtis Preston:

course, Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

And then the thinset, the removal of, you know, for those of you

W. Curtis Preston:

following at home, how I've been laying down luxury vinyl tile.

W. Curtis Preston:

This was when I removed I am, this is way past the point of no return.

W. Curtis Preston:

I have now removed all of the tile and the, um, the pergo

W. Curtis Preston:

that was in the dining room.

W. Curtis Preston:

And now I had somebody come in and chisel down, um, the, the thin set.

W. Curtis Preston:

And then I, I did, and then I did some scraping after that.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and, uh, so now my, it's just really dirty.

W. Curtis Preston:

It's like dusty and dirty.

W. Curtis Preston:

Other than that, it's ready to, uh, and I got like air cleaners

W. Curtis Preston:

running around the clock.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah, you do not wanna be breathing that stuff in.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, so yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So then it'll be done next week.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, absolutely.

W. Curtis Preston:

Because it only takes like an hour to lay roughly 500 square feet of, of.

W. Curtis Preston:

Vinyl tile, so yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Mm-hmm.

W. Curtis Preston:

, vinyl planking.

W. Curtis Preston:

Sorry.

W. Curtis Preston:

Anyway, anyway, enough of that nonsense.

W. Curtis Preston:

Before we bring our guest on, I'm gonna do the, uh, disclaimer Prasanna.

W. Curtis Preston:

And I work for different companies.

W. Curtis Preston:

He works for Zoom, I work for Druva.

W. Curtis Preston:

This is not, uh, an official podcast of either company.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, uh, the opinions that you hear are all Prasannas and they.

W. Curtis Preston:

If you, if you like what you hear or, or see by the way, uh, check out.

W. Curtis Preston:

We've got a video version of this podcast@backupcentral.com.

W. Curtis Preston:

Be sure to check that out.

W. Curtis Preston:

You know, if you're a video person,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And check out Santa's beard

W. Curtis Preston:

Sa Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Santa's, Santa's beard.

W. Curtis Preston:

You, and then we say, you know, if you wanna join the podcast, if you

W. Curtis Preston:

wanna join the conversation, just reach out to me at WC Preston on

W. Curtis Preston:

Twitter or w Curtis Preston at gmail.

W. Curtis Preston:

And someone did that.

W. Curtis Preston:

They were a fan of, We have a, we have a fan, so one of, you know, there's

W. Curtis Preston:

another, there's another podcast.

W. Curtis Preston:

They, the phrase they use is, uh, you know, we have one of our 11 listeners,

W. Curtis Preston:

uh, there's a, there's a podcast that I listen to that does that.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, so we have one of our 11 listeners on today.

W. Curtis Preston:

Our guest today has over 25 years experience in it, A lot

W. Curtis Preston:

of it in the storage space.

W. Curtis Preston:

He's currently the enterprise architect for Presidio an IT

W. Curtis Preston:

reseller and consulting company.

W. Curtis Preston:

You can hear him on their podcast called Digital Decode.

W. Curtis Preston:

Welcome to the podcast, Eric Burley.

Eric Bursley:

All right.

Eric Bursley:

Thank you.

Eric Bursley:

Uh, and thank

W. Curtis Preston:

big buildup there.

Eric Bursley:

Yes, , very big buildup.

W. Curtis Preston:

You know, we don't, we, we, we've only had like, I don't

W. Curtis Preston:

know, three or four people that.

W. Curtis Preston:

In the history, you know, we're coming up on 200 episodes and we've, I think

W. Curtis Preston:

we've had like three or four people out of that that have reached out to us.

W. Curtis Preston:

It's just like randomly, hey, I'm a fan of the pod and um,

W. Curtis Preston:

you know, I'd like to come on.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

we need more people like that.

W. Curtis Preston:

need more like that, you know, So if you're sitting out there,

W. Curtis Preston:

you know, I think the biggest thing, I think people like, Oh, well my story

W. Curtis Preston:

won't be as interesting or whatever.

W. Curtis Preston:

You know, what, if it's got anything to do with backup, we're kind of desperate.

W. Curtis Preston:

You know?

W. Curtis Preston:

I mean, it's, this is a, this is a, a niche, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, if it, if, if we can somehow relate it to backup data protection information

W. Curtis Preston:

security, information security is very closely related to backup these days.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, We should just convert this to a, you know, a ransomware podcast cause

W. Curtis Preston:

that's all anybody wants to hear about.

Eric Bursley:

Exactly.

Eric Bursley:

Actually what drew me to your podcast, the first time I listened

Eric Bursley:

to it, was your theme song.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Ah,

W. Curtis Preston:

Hey,

Eric Bursley:

It it, I thought it was great.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

There you go, Curtis.

W. Curtis Preston:

I, Yeah, so, so an interesting story about that theme song.

W. Curtis Preston:

The theme song predates the podcast.

W. Curtis Preston:

The podcast got its name from the theme song.

W. Curtis Preston:

The singer is my daughter.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, I wrote the lyrics.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, there's actually a video.

W. Curtis Preston:

I dunno if you've seen the video.

W. Curtis Preston:

There's actually a full video in which I play a, a cameo role.

W. Curtis Preston:

I'll put a link to it in the, uh, in the show notes.

W. Curtis Preston:

It's on, it's on YouTube and, you know, you can see me, uh,

W. Curtis Preston:

dancing in the ocean at one point.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It is a dated pod or dated

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, it's, it's dated, um, uh, you know, I'm slightly, I have

W. Curtis Preston:

slightly more hair and slightly less gray.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and, um, Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

It, it was, it was a lot of fun.

W. Curtis Preston:

And yeah, that's, that's my daughter and she has three

W. Curtis Preston:

backup singers that are also her.

W. Curtis Preston:

It, it's kind of funny, we, we had her on the podcast, I should put a link to that.

W. Curtis Preston:

We had her on the podcast to talk about it, and she created three backup

W. Curtis Preston:

singers and she gave each of them in her mind a name and a personality.

W. Curtis Preston:

And then she sang like that personality, She was really all into it.

W. Curtis Preston:

She's a great singer.

W. Curtis Preston:

She actually, um, she right now gets paid.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, as a cantor for a Catholic church, um, you know, she, so she's

W. Curtis Preston:

technically a professional singer.

W. Curtis Preston:

She gets paid a couple hundred bucks a week to, to sing for, uh, for a church

W. Curtis Preston:

in Carlsbad, go San Diego Co Padres.

W. Curtis Preston:

Anyway, so, so, I'm glad, I'm glad that that was, uh, that was

W. Curtis Preston:

actually where we got our name.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

So, uh, so now, we'll, we'll give you a link to the video so you

W. Curtis Preston:

can see the, you can see the.

W. Curtis Preston:

There's actually, like I got, I don't know, what do I have, like seven

W. Curtis Preston:

or eight, um, parodies that I did.

Eric Bursley:

Oh,

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, I did that one.

W. Curtis Preston:

We did a, we did a, um, uh, uh, shoot, help me Prasanna.

W. Curtis Preston:

We did the, of course, the, the one about virtualization.

W. Curtis Preston:

McLemore.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, we did a, we did a, uh, you know, the, I'm gonna pop some tag.

W. Curtis Preston:

Only got 20, so mine was, I'm gonna build VMs, got do 20 guests in my server.

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm, I'm a virtual getting rid of servers.

W. Curtis Preston:

VMs are so awesome.

W. Curtis Preston:

There you go.

W. Curtis Preston:

So we did that one anyway.

W. Curtis Preston:

Nobody wants to hear about this.

W. Curtis Preston:

Let's move on.

W. Curtis Preston:

Let's talk about, let's talk about stuff.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, how's it going over there?

Eric Bursley:

It's going well.

Eric Bursley:

It's going well.

W. Curtis Preston:

How's it going at, at Presidio?

W. Curtis Preston:

Why don't you gimme, gimme an overview of what, what you do as a company and,

W. Curtis Preston:

and then how do you fit into that?

Eric Bursley:

So Presidio is a, uh, solutions, uh,

Eric Bursley:

provider for it, and we have.

Eric Bursley:

Various, uh, capabilities within the industry from, um, hybrid cloud

Eric Bursley:

to public cloud, um, private cloud, uh, communications such as, uh,

Eric Bursley:

unified communications, managed services, um, you know, a lot of,

Eric Bursley:

um, different silos within it.

Eric Bursley:

Um, I like to think of us.

Eric Bursley:

Um, more than a value added reseller because we not only

Eric Bursley:

sell value with the traditional OEM such as Dell, Cisco, and hp.

Eric Bursley:

Um, but we can also provide true consulting and management services

Eric Bursley:

as well across various things.

Eric Bursley:

So, um, lots and lots of capabilities within Presidio itself.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, I would like to think that every VAR

W. Curtis Preston:

should be like that, but clearly every VAR is not like that, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

The i I think they start often.

W. Curtis Preston:

Having dealt with a number of VARs over my years, um, I think they

W. Curtis Preston:

often start with what are the three things we sell , and then how do we

W. Curtis Preston:

shoehorn the three things that we sell into whatever customer comes up.

W. Curtis Preston:

I think the, the biggest challenge, I think, for a var of any kind

W. Curtis Preston:

is, okay, so we have to back up.

W. Curtis Preston:

Have you seen the, um, miracle on 34th?

Eric Bursley:

Uh, a while ago,

W. Curtis Preston:

classic.

W. Curtis Preston:

Okay.

W. Curtis Preston:

Hopefully the original, because the others just stunk.

W. Curtis Preston:

Anyway, The, you know, there's the thing in there where Santa sends somebody, you

W. Curtis Preston:

know, a little girl asks for something and he's like, you know, uh, they actually

W. Curtis Preston:

had, you know, it said at Macy's, and, and, and Santa says, You know, Gimbals

W. Curtis Preston:

actually has a much better ABC than we do.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, you should go to Gimbals.

W. Curtis Preston:

And they were not very happy with that.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, I think that's the biggest challenge is somebody comes in and

W. Curtis Preston:

says, you know, we, they articulate to you their requirements and then

W. Curtis Preston:

your requirements, their requirements don't match well to a product that you.

Eric Bursley:

Right.

Eric Bursley:

E.

Eric Bursley:

Exactly.

Eric Bursley:

And I, I see that a lot in my industry where.

Eric Bursley:

One of our sales leads, um, is tightly coupled, um, with an OEM and wants to sell

Eric Bursley:

that particular solution, whatever it is.

Eric Bursley:

And it, it's like always putting in that square peg into a round hole.

Eric Bursley:

Sometimes it will fit and I've seen it fit.

Eric Bursley:

Um, other times it's not a perfect match because they're not

Eric Bursley:

double checking and triple check.

Eric Bursley:

What the actual business requirements were talking, uh, with the C levels

Eric Bursley:

about what are they trying to achieve in the next year to 18 months to five year

Eric Bursley:

business plan and, and understanding the direction that they wanna go.

Eric Bursley:

Um, you know, one of the primary examples I've heard recently is we wanna move to an

Eric Bursley:

operational expense structure, therefore we need to move to a public cloud.

Eric Bursley:

And that is not always the case.

Eric Bursley:

Um, in terms of the business objective, uh, it, it, it could be, um, that they

Eric Bursley:

want to change the way their, uh, business costs are structured rather than a capital

Eric Bursley:

expense move into an operational expense, but leaving some of their applications on.

Eric Bursley:

Um, and, and Presidio can actually help with that, um, because we can

Eric Bursley:

operationalize what would traditionally be a capital expense, put it into

Eric Bursley:

an operational expense regardless of the, the vendor that's involved.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Okay.

W. Curtis Preston:

Okay.

W. Curtis Preston:

One, one of the challenges with us, as you know, techies is we get

W. Curtis Preston:

interested in a particular technology.

W. Curtis Preston:

We see something, we see a webinar, we see a, you know, whatever.

W. Curtis Preston:

I, I'll give you a perfect example and, and I'll, I'll use, I'll.

W. Curtis Preston:

category that isn't as big as it used to be.

W. Curtis Preston:

If we go back to sort of the turn of the century, , there was an,

W. Curtis Preston:

there was a backup type that was everywhere and that was cdp, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Continuous data protection.

W. Curtis Preston:

If you went to storage networking world, shout out to SNW.

W. Curtis Preston:

Haven't seen you in a long time.

W. Curtis Preston:

Storage networking world.

W. Curtis Preston:

There'd be like 10 CDP booths.

W. Curtis Preston:

. Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and, and CDP as a technology sounds amazing.

W. Curtis Preston:

There are CDP companies that are out that are here now, and

W. Curtis Preston:

I, I hope they're doing great.

W. Curtis Preston:

The problem was that there were like three companies, , that, that had business

W. Curtis Preston:

requirements that map to cdp, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

And so you had like a dozen companies that were selling CDP solutions.

W. Curtis Preston:

And you had, it was the classic thing of a problem waiting for,

W. Curtis Preston:

or product waiting for a problem.

W. Curtis Preston:

And the problem is, as techies we're like, That sounds amazing.

W. Curtis Preston:

I can get a zero, an RTO, and an R and an RPO of zero.

W. Curtis Preston:

That sounds amazing.

W. Curtis Preston:

Where do I sign?

W. Curtis Preston:

But if we don't have a business requirement that goes with that,

W. Curtis Preston:

It seems it might seem wrong.

W. Curtis Preston:

Oh, but that would be the best, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

That would we want the best backup system for the company.

W. Curtis Preston:

No, you want the best backup system that meets your requirements and spending

W. Curtis Preston:

beyond that is, is a waste of money.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right?

W. Curtis Preston:

It's a bit like, um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Do you want a Bugatti to drive on the

W. Curtis Preston:

That's exactly where I was going.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

You know, my only job is to drive my granddaughter to school,

W. Curtis Preston:

and so I'm gonna buy a Bugatti.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, it would be cool, but, um, you know, I'd be the coolest, you know, grandpa

W. Curtis Preston:

pulling up the, with my Bugatti, uh, I was gonna go Lamborghini by the way,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Nah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Speaker:

whatever for the record.

W. Curtis Preston:

Speaker:

One of us on this podcast has actually driven a Lamborghini once,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Okay.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You win.

W. Curtis Preston:

and by the way, it was only from the showroom

W. Curtis Preston:

floor back to the dealership.

W. Curtis Preston:

And it was like, keep it under 45, Curtis.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, anyway, I digress.

W. Curtis Preston:

But yeah, that's, I think as technologists we get, we get

W. Curtis Preston:

excited in a particular technology.

W. Curtis Preston:

Another thing that happens as technologists and in the backup

W. Curtis Preston:

space, we get angry at our current backup product, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

We, we have challenges with our current backup product, and we think

W. Curtis Preston:

our, what's our immediate idea?

W. Curtis Preston:

Our immediate idea is to replace the backup product, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

I, I did 20 plus years of it consulting.

W. Curtis Preston:

and the, the answer to the problem was almost never

W. Curtis Preston:

replaced a backup product, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

It was, you are using it wrong.

W. Curtis Preston:

, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

The problem was not software.

W. Curtis Preston:

The problem was not hardware, the problem was wetware, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, and.

W. Curtis Preston:

You know, it was the whole, like the tape, uh, the, the streaming problem

W. Curtis Preston:

to get the tape strip that, that was the problem 90% of the time.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, anyway, I'm sorry, I digress.

W. Curtis Preston:

But that, but that, that's the problem is we get, we're techy people.

W. Curtis Preston:

We see a technical problem, we wanna solve it with a technical solution, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Or we see a cool technical thing and we want to just bring it into

W. Curtis Preston:

the environment, but we have to go back if we're gonna spend money.

W. Curtis Preston:

have to go back to the business.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, I'm sorry for that really long rant, but it just, I, I, I felt,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I

W. Curtis Preston:

felt, I dunno, it wasn't even a question,

W. Curtis Preston:

Eric, so good luck answering.

Eric Bursley:

actually one of the struggles, um, that I have, um, almost

Eric Bursley:

on a weekly basis is, you know, the account manager coming in saying, We're

Eric Bursley:

going to put vendor X into this customer,

W. Curtis Preston:

Hmm.

Eric Bursley:

Without alligning those business objectives, they could be

Eric Bursley:

perfectly fine with it, but like in the backup products, they're.

Eric Bursley:

The new HTML five interface, they gotta have that new HTML five interface, or

Eric Bursley:

they need to have ransomware protection built in, not realizing that there's

Eric Bursley:

more to ransomware protection than just what's in the backup product.

Eric Bursley:

Um, that's like I have in my ransomware workshop that I,

Eric Bursley:

I provide to our customers.

Eric Bursley:

Ransomware protection is kinda like an.

Eric Bursley:

It's multilayered approach.

Eric Bursley:

Um, and much like an ogre, it gets ugly and green it's, um, so yeah, it,

W. Curtis Preston:

yeah, and it's like an onion that the more you

W. Curtis Preston:

look at, you know, the more you dig into it, the more you cry.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um,

Eric Bursley:

exactly, and it, it surprises me the number of times

Eric Bursley:

they come in and the customer could be a very happy customer of Veeam.

Eric Bursley:

But they wanna put in the new hyper-converged backup solution because

Eric Bursley:

it has an HTML five interface, and that's what they're selling it on.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah,

Eric Bursley:

So,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Speaker:

which doesn't quite align.

W. Curtis Preston:

pretty interface,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Well, I think one of the challenges there too is if

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

you, like you said, if you don't go to the back to the business and have

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

those conversations, then even if you do push out this new hyper-converged

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

solution, right, the business may not be happy with it, and that's gonna

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

look bad to you who had recommended picking a certain technology, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They're like, Oh, we just gave you a bunch of money, and

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

what did it really do for us?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Not much, and it caused all these problems, or it had

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

all these gaps, et cetera.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right?

Eric Bursley:

or they complain about the performance of their backup

Eric Bursley:

solution when they bought a brand new production array, production servers,

Eric Bursley:

and reestablish those older servers as their backup servers because they

Eric Bursley:

want more longevity out of it, and then complain about the performance.

W. Curtis Preston:

Does performance matter in a

Eric Bursley:

Only on restores,

W. Curtis Preston:

That is very, very true.

W. Curtis Preston:

You know, and, and, and to, to go back, you know, and that really is

W. Curtis Preston:

the only thing that matters, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

I often say on the podcast, right, no one cares if you can back up.

W. Curtis Preston:

They only care if you can restore and.

W. Curtis Preston:

The challenge we had back in the day was the only solution to the

W. Curtis Preston:

tape problem that any of the backup vendors had, uh, for the most part was

W. Curtis Preston:

multiplexing right to, to interleave multiple backup jobs together into

W. Curtis Preston:

one faster backup job that would.

W. Curtis Preston:

Hopefully make the tape drive happy and, and, and allow it to stream and

W. Curtis Preston:

not be shoe shining all the time.

W. Curtis Preston:

And the problem with that is that it totally screwed over restores, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

You had to read the 20 different backup jobs and throw away 19 of them for the

W. Curtis Preston:

one that you needed, which meant your restore performance was crap, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

That's the one thing I do not miss, um, from the, the backup days.

W. Curtis Preston:

But let, let's talk.

W. Curtis Preston:

. Um, how, how do we get, what, what's it like?

W. Curtis Preston:

You, you, I'm sure you've had some conversations where, in your head,

W. Curtis Preston:

what you're trying to get to as an RTO and an rpo, you know, but as you said

W. Curtis Preston:

that, that's too, too deep for many of the conversations that you're having.

W. Curtis Preston:

What questions are you asking, uh, to get to that question?

Eric Bursley:

So I, I ask, uh, more open-ended questions, and the

Eric Bursley:

more the business leader talks, the, the more information I get.

Eric Bursley:

Um, so I will ask a question like, you know, what would

Eric Bursley:

happen if Cerner disappeared?

Eric Bursley:

You know, what, what, what would you do?

Eric Bursley:

Um, and that gets into their business continuity.

W. Curtis Preston:

What

Eric Bursley:

do they do?

Eric Bursley:

Um, doctors and nurses that use the Cerner application, they

Eric Bursley:

could go back to pen and paper.

Eric Bursley:

That is a legitimate, you know, uh, business continuity plan.

Eric Bursley:

It's not a long term plan.

Eric Bursley:

So what's the next phase on the recovery process?

Eric Bursley:

And that gets into the disaster recovery portion of the business continuity plan.

Eric Bursley:

Um, How long can they function on pen and paper?

Eric Bursley:

Okay.

Eric Bursley:

If they can continue to function for another hour or two, that helps

Eric Bursley:

me to develop those service level objectives around do we need to create

Eric Bursley:

the application more highly available with no single points of failures.

Eric Bursley:

Um, with a potential zero RTO rpo, um, which I have created and can create,

Eric Bursley:

but you still have to have multiple recovery points because in, in a

Eric Bursley:

ransomware attack, for example, both copies of your data set are now corrupted.

Eric Bursley:

So you still have to be able to recover back in.

Eric Bursley:

Um, so I, I get into those discussions at a, a higher level as well.

Eric Bursley:

What exactly does that mean?

Eric Bursley:

Um, what would happen if they lost five minutes of patient records?

Eric Bursley:

Well, many times it's like, well, five minutes.

Eric Bursley:

That could be life or death, depending on the situation.

Eric Bursley:

It may not be cuz they could roll back to the pen and paper.

Eric Bursley:

Um, or the, the doctor will remember what he.

W. Curtis Preston:

that's interesting.

W. Curtis Preston:

I, I, I immediately started thinking about, so currently

W. Curtis Preston:

I, so I'm a poll worker, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, for the upcoming election, I have been for like, the last four elections.

W. Curtis Preston:

And in San Diego.

W. Curtis Preston:

San Diego, based on, you know, some pushes from.

W. Curtis Preston:

California basically has updated to, you know, an electronic system

W. Curtis Preston:

from beginning to end your check.

W. Curtis Preston:

You know, we have an electronic poll book.

W. Curtis Preston:

We have an electronic, um, you know, system.

W. Curtis Preston:

The, the, the ballot marking devices, electronic.

W. Curtis Preston:

It produces a paper ballot, but it is an electronic system that you're,

W. Curtis Preston:

that you're voting on, um, the.

W. Curtis Preston:

That it's an electronic system that produces a paper ballot, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, and then all of that communicates through a single point of failure.

W. Curtis Preston:

which is a cradle point router, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

That, that, um, that provides an encrypted communication channel back

W. Curtis Preston:

to the, the registrar of voters.

W. Curtis Preston:

And.

W. Curtis Preston:

Being the type of person I started asking, you know, it's not really a business,

W. Curtis Preston:

but business continuity questions, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Because.

W. Curtis Preston:

You know, a business, the big problem is if you're down, the customer

W. Curtis Preston:

might go somewhere else, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

That's not really a choice in an election, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

The, the, if, if the business is down, you get disenfranchisement of voters, which

W. Curtis Preston:

is the number one thing you don't want.

W. Curtis Preston:

So I was very, I was very pleased to see that they had included that, uh,

W. Curtis Preston:

both for the, the easy answer for.

W. Curtis Preston:

If a, if a site is down, is the nearest site is two miles that way, Right?

W. Curtis Preston:

You know, we are dead.

W. Curtis Preston:

We have a, if they don't wanna do that, we have a backup plan for that.

W. Curtis Preston:

But the, the nearest site is two miles that way.

W. Curtis Preston:

And that's not a big deal.

W. Curtis Preston:

And that's something that I don't think an average business might, it

W. Curtis Preston:

might not have that in its tool chest.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, but we do.

W. Curtis Preston:

Emergency ballots.

W. Curtis Preston:

We have a big stack of emergency ballots, and this is in the case

W. Curtis Preston:

of, um, catastrophic system-wide.

W. Curtis Preston:

The registrar of voters goes down, We get attacked by a ransomware attack

W. Curtis Preston:

on, on one of the election days.

W. Curtis Preston:

We actually have up to 11 days of, of in person voting.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, uh, we have paper ballots.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, so just like those doctors, we can go back to pen and paper.

W. Curtis Preston:

It is a giant pain in the ass because you actually have to write, they're not

W. Curtis Preston:

pre-printed ballots like the old days with, with the names of the candidates.

W. Curtis Preston:

You actually have to write the name of the candidate you want and then, and

W. Curtis Preston:

then check, you know, and then check the

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But there's a mechanism for

W. Curtis Preston:

But there is a mechanism, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

And what matters for us, what matters for those businesses is it fits in, This is

W. Curtis Preston:

why I brought it up, is that it fits into the purpose of that, that organization.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, and, and what, Like if the system, if the systems go down in

W. Curtis Preston:

a hospital, for the most part, most patients are not going to immediate.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, die.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Some, some patients might, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

The, there are, there are systems that must be highly

W. Curtis Preston:

available in a hospital, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, and those systems, I'm guessing have redundancy after redundancy

W. Curtis Preston:

after redundancy, because you can't, like the, the, a ventilator or a,

W. Curtis Preston:

um, what, what do they call it?

W. Curtis Preston:

The, when they put you on a, when they talk about pulling

W. Curtis Preston:

the plug, whatever that,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's a ventilator.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

not not just a ventilator, but well, whatever.

W. Curtis Preston:

It doesn't matter.

W. Curtis Preston:

Clearly, I am not a doctor and please don't take any medical advice from me.

W. Curtis Preston:

, you, you.

W. Curtis Preston:

That's another, that's another thing is also that you can have multiple

W. Curtis Preston:

SLAs within your business, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

For different applications.

W. Curtis Preston:

You wanna talk about that a little bit?

Eric Bursley:

right.

Eric Bursley:

So, um, yeah, I, when I describe, um, what a service level objective is to

Eric Bursley:

the business leaders, I describe various cases of business continuity and, you

Eric Bursley:

know, if it's just a simple I need to file restored, for example, that would have.

Eric Bursley:

Potentially a five minute sla if I need to restore an entire virtual

Eric Bursley:

machine, that could be a 30 minute sla.

Eric Bursley:

Um, and you know, if I have to restore an entire data center,

Eric Bursley:

we're looking at multiple day sla.

Eric Bursley:

If that is not sufficient for the business leader, it's like, well, in

Eric Bursley:

order to achieve this, we're gonna have to create a new system that can get there.

Eric Bursley:

And that's when I started designing.

Eric Bursley:

Uh, the IT infrastructure to meet their objectives.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And typically that probably comes with a cost though, right?

Eric Bursley:

Exactly.

Eric Bursley:

But if they desire it, I'm giving them the cost to achieve it and

Eric Bursley:

then they can back off on it.

Eric Bursley:

Um, if I tell, if I just point blank, ask them the question, So what's your RTO?

Eric Bursley:

And rpo, if they understand what that acronym is, immediately they're

Eric Bursley:

gonna come back and say, Zero.

W. Curtis Preston:

Zero.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

then

Eric Bursley:

Exactly.

W. Curtis Preston:

Speaker:

Yeah, we say that a lot.

W. Curtis Preston:

Speaker:

Yep.

Eric Bursley:

and it's like, well, in order to achieve that, I'm going

Eric Bursley:

to need to sell you and construct this new highly available solution.

Eric Bursley:

It's, you know, one point x billion dollars and my sales

Eric Bursley:

person's gonna be extremely happy and they're gonna come back.

Eric Bursley:

I don't have a billion dollars to spend.

Eric Bursley:

It's like, Okay, well let's talk about what you can do.

Eric Bursley:

And as Curtis was mentioning earlier, different, um, applications within the

Eric Bursley:

infrastructure will have a different sla, therefore tiered approach on recovery.

Eric Bursley:

And you could create a highly available solution for 1% of your applications.

Eric Bursley:

much less than, you know, a zero RTR PO for a hundred

Eric Bursley:

percent of your applications.

Eric Bursley:

So

W. Curtis Preston:

can, Yeah, we can get you that RPO and RTO of Zero for just

W. Curtis Preston:

that one application for $200,000 instead of $1 billion, and they're like sold.

Eric Bursley:

e.

Eric Bursley:

E, exactly.

Eric Bursley:

Um, and you know, along with that one application, it's dependencies

Eric Bursley:

that come along with it and understanding what they are so that

Eric Bursley:

they get recovered in the same.

Eric Bursley:

Point.

Eric Bursley:

Um, I actually had one customer that was leveraging, uh, a, uh, particular

Eric Bursley:

backup set and they were recovering into, um, a recovery data center.

Eric Bursley:

I don't wanna get into specifics about the vendors to be

Eric Bursley:

disparaging of any of the of them.

Eric Bursley:

The customer had valid backup sets.

Eric Bursley:

Okay.

Eric Bursley:

They were a hundred percent valid backups their.

Eric Bursley:

test with is we're gonna sever communications from production

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Or.

Eric Bursley:

and we are going to recover just from that backup set

Eric Bursley:

into the bare metal servers that this provider was providing up.

Eric Bursley:

They couldn't authenticate to their backup set because the

Eric Bursley:

active directory was not there.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, that's the same problem that we had with

W. Curtis Preston:

the, with this, this guy that, that recovered after a hurricane.

W. Curtis Preston:

He, he, they had to, they had to authenticate back to the mainland, uh, cuz

W. Curtis Preston:

they were on an island and they had, and they couldn't, they couldn't get there.

W. Curtis Preston:

But, Well, but let me ask you a question.

W. Curtis Preston:

So what.

W. Curtis Preston:

The failure there to me would be in the system, the initial system design, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

A backup system needs to be a DR.

W. Curtis Preston:

System, needs to be kind of self-sustaining, right?

Eric Bursley:

It should.

Eric Bursley:

And as I, um, talk through the scenario with my customers about how to test it,

Eric Bursley:

developing a test plan, um, I go through, Well, how's it gonna authenticate?

Eric Bursley:

Well, active directory is how we authenticate.

Eric Bursley:

Okay, great.

Eric Bursley:

So do you have a synchronous copy of your active directory at the DR site and it's

Eric Bursley:

like, it, it, it's, Oh yeah, we need that.

Eric Bursley:

Right?

Eric Bursley:

Yeah, we need that.

Eric Bursley:

Um, and you know, one of the things that comes up frequently

Eric Bursley:

is certificate authorities.

Eric Bursley:

You know, how, how do we make sure that our certificate authorities

Eric Bursley:

are valid, um, at the DR.

Eric Bursley:

Site.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Hmm.

Eric Bursley:

How do we recover that if it, it's uh, you know, we lose our

Eric Bursley:

certificate chain, Um, because now you get invalid SSL certificates as an example

Eric Bursley:

when you're trying to authenticate.

Eric Bursley:

So, um, I go through how that functions and how to protect

Eric Bursley:

that and how to restore that.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Because, But here's a question is.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Who are the right folks to talk to in this case?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Because if you talk, like going back to the Cerner example, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

If you talk to the Cerner developer, right, they would know, okay, for

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Cerner, the application, here are the components that are required.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

If you talk to the IT admin, they may not know everything for Cerner,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

but they may know, Okay, here's the things I need for SSL certificate

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

authorities and for active directory.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

do you just basically get both those folks in a room and be like, Hey, let's walk

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

through what this looks like end to end, and what are all the app dependencies?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Or do you basically try to connect the pieces together?

Eric Bursley:

Uh, many times, uh, Presidio as a whole, um,

Eric Bursley:

will have multiple conversations.

Eric Bursley:

Um, and sometimes where we're getting conflicting information, we will

Eric Bursley:

bring both teams into the room.

Eric Bursley:

Um, that happens quite a bit with my ransomware workshop where security

Eric Bursley:

is saying one thing, the, the.

Eric Bursley:

Network engineers are saying another thing.

Eric Bursley:

Um, and the backup data center engineers are saying a completely different

Eric Bursley:

thing and they're not in alignment.

Eric Bursley:

So with my ransomware workshop that Presidio has free to

Eric Bursley:

our customers, by the way.

Eric Bursley:

Um, sit in the room typically with a C level who's just there

Eric Bursley:

to listen and provide input where he or she needs that input.

Eric Bursley:

Um, but it's like, so how are you detecting ransomware?

Eric Bursley:

How are you able to recover from ransomware?

Eric Bursley:

And it really brings more of a camaraderie because many times these IT organizations

Eric Bursley:

are siloed and they're not talking.

Eric Bursley:

We help to develop that conversation.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, that, that siloed business, you know, the, the departmental

W. Curtis Preston:

silos is definitely a huge problem.

W. Curtis Preston:

I, um, now I'm gonna, I'm gonna preface my following statement with, uh, to a hammer.

W. Curtis Preston:

Everything looks like a nail.

W. Curtis Preston:

When I was hearing, when I was hearing your, all of the problems that you have

W. Curtis Preston:

with authenticating all of that and bringing things up in a, in a, um, you

W. Curtis Preston:

know, in a DR environment, my immediately thought, We wouldn't have that problem.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, you know, having a cloud service, I think this is one of those things I think

W. Curtis Preston:

that makes a strong argument for a cloud service and against an on-prem system.

W. Curtis Preston:

It's not that you can't do it, right, It's not that an on-prem system can't do it.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, it's that you will have challenges that you wouldn't have otherwise.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I would, I would challenge you on that though, Curtis.

W. Curtis Preston:

What's that?

W. Curtis Preston:

Go ahead.

W. Curtis Preston:

Challenge

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

uh, that just given how the technology works at

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

the company you work at, Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Um, if you are using some components like the on-Premises active directory

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

component used for authentication, you as a company would have to be aware of

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

that and make sure that gets replicated.

W. Curtis Preston:

you could have, you could, you could create problems.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You could create problems.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yes, that

W. Curtis Preston:

could create problems.

W. Curtis Preston:

Well, but again, I'm, I'm back to the same thing as well.

W. Curtis Preston:

First off, don't do that.

W. Curtis Preston:

Don't authenticate your backup system to active directory.

W. Curtis Preston:

Done.

W. Curtis Preston:

Don't do it.

W. Curtis Preston:

Okay.

W. Curtis Preston:

So, so, yes.

W. Curtis Preston:

If, if, if you do that, in my opinion, really dumb thing.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yes.

W. Curtis Preston:

You could bring an on-prem problem into the cloud,

Eric Bursley:

Right.

Eric Bursley:

I, I

W. Curtis Preston:

if I, Yeah.

Eric Bursley:

on that.

Eric Bursley:

Um, and not only the backup infrastructure should be in its own authentication

Eric Bursley:

domain, but the entire IT infrastructure should be in a separate authentication

Eric Bursley:

domain from the user domain.

Eric Bursley:

One way trusted, but not in the same

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

I, I wanna do like the football guys goal

Eric Bursley:

Yeah, I, I, I've had conversations where it's like, we just

Eric Bursley:

finished consolidating all of our active directories down into one forest, and

Eric Bursley:

I'm telling them to break it up again.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right, right.

W. Curtis Preston:

I mean, it, it sounds great until you start to think about cybersecurity, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

And when you think about, especially, and again, you know, I hope it

W. Curtis Preston:

doesn't sound like I'm picking on, but especially if you are running a

W. Curtis Preston:

Windows based backup system, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

You know, your active directory gets hacked, this gets compromised, and

W. Curtis Preston:

then boom, they just slide right on over into the backup server and

W. Curtis Preston:

then do bad, bad things, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

So I, so you're right, you're right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Persona.

W. Curtis Preston:

We could bring on-prem problems into the cloud.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

yeah, but that's why it's, You should be aware of what you're

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

bringing because if you had just gone and replaced your backup product, right,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

you might still have had the same issue.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So it's, I think it's like what Eric said.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Think about the entire application, the dependencies, everything else, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Because you might fix one problem, but you might still have exposure in another.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

So, so talk to someone.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, and the thing is for, for those of you listening at home, we actually have

W. Curtis Preston:

no idea how long we're running today because we've had technical problems

W. Curtis Preston:

with our recording system that has broken this up into three separate recordings.

W. Curtis Preston:

It's been a lot of fun.

W. Curtis Preston:

But I'm gonna, I'm gonna sort of round us out here because I think

W. Curtis Preston:

we're somewhere in the neighborhood of our usual recording time.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and dammit, I had a, I had, I was going some.

W. Curtis Preston:

, What were we talking about?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I was just saying like, don't look at everything

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

holistically, like don't just look at one component and replace

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

it because you might still have exposure and gaps in the other parts.

W. Curtis Preston:

Got it.

W. Curtis Preston:

And I'm gonna say find the Eric at your vendor.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, you know, we could, we could pick on sales guys all day long, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

But.

W. Curtis Preston:

The reality is their goal is to sell product.

W. Curtis Preston:

And the, the Eric at your company, the, the vendor that you're working,

W. Curtis Preston:

makes sure, you know, you can't, you can't dismiss either side.

W. Curtis Preston:

You need the techie side and you need the business side.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, and, and Eric is, you're, you're not unique Eric, but

W. Curtis Preston:

you're definitely a, you're.

W. Curtis Preston:

You're an endangered species.

W. Curtis Preston:

People that can talk both the, the business side and the technical side.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I was gonna say hot commodity, but

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, hot That's, that's uh, what do you call it?

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, better than endangered species.

W. Curtis Preston:

yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

So talk to the Eric at your company.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, do you have any, do you have any final thoughts for us, Eric?

Eric Bursley:

Um, so I, if you're interested in my company,

Eric Bursley:

um, you know, you can find out more about us@presidio.com.

Eric Bursley:

However, we've got a great website that tells you everything about us.

Eric Bursley:

Um, we also have a podcast, uh, that you can listen to called The

Eric Bursley:

Digital Decode that gets into more about what Presidio can offer, um, in

Eric Bursley:

terms of our products and solutions.

W. Curtis Preston:

right, sounds good.

W. Curtis Preston:

And persona, have you had a good time today with all our, all

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I

W. Curtis Preston:

fun?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It has been interesting and I'm really

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

curious why it's been behaving the way it's been behaving.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

But yes, other than that, it's been fun.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Thanks, Eric.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

Eric Bursley:

All right,

W. Curtis Preston:

And, um, we hope that you enjoyed this episode.

W. Curtis Preston:

I just want you to know this one was really hard.

W. Curtis Preston:

. If that matters to you, be sure to subscribe so that you can restore it all.