Falconstor is Still in Business - Who knew?
Transcript
(upbeat music) (car engine starting) >> Hey, it's Keith Townsend, principal of the CTO Advisor, and we are in beautiful Palo Alto. I've never been (Chris laughing) in this part of Palo Alto, I guess it's the new Palo Alto and the cool part of Palo Alto. >> This is actually one of, this is the original Palo Alto and the other part of Palo Alto was named Mayfield. And Palo Alto decided to bring it all together. So this is just the, this is the original half just down the street from Stanford.
>> So, that voice and person that you're seeing is Chris Cummings from FalconStor. And Chris, thanks for sponsoring this CTO Advisor road trip video. We're going to hit it right off. >> Glad to be here, Keith. >> FalconStor. >> Yeah. >> I cut my storage area, networking teeth on IP store. >> Uh huh. >> Years ago. And when Georgiana reached out to me and suggested that we talk to you folks, I'm like, oh, the storage array people.
>> Yeah. >> That's the old FalconStor. >> That's right. >> What's the new FalconStor? >> So the new FalconStor is really a continuation of the old, although not focused on primary storage, but focused on secondary. >> Mhmm. >> And the specialty for the company really has been in the continuous data protection and backup space. And I had the same reaction by the way, as you, because my original team at NetApp 20 years ago managed FalconStor. >> Hm.
>> And I thought, when I got this phone call, FalconStor is still around? (Keith laughing) >> So let's one, give a head nod to the old FalconStor and talk about continued data protection. >> Yeah. >> That was actually one of the reasons we chose FalconStor back then was we were doing when replication, >> Right. >> Site to site. IP store at one location, IP store at the second location, and continuing data protection between the two. We then found out that I could've switched out the storage array with any other storage array and pretty much did the same thing.
You guys haven't changed that model other than you're out of the primary storage business and focusing on that secondary storage business? >> Right, that's right. And there's two products and you're pointing out the first core product, which is heterogeneous data protection, continuous replication from any point to any target. And that continues whether that target is in the cloud or that's a secondary data center or a secondary array. It's something that we know the primary storage vendors all have their homogeneous tools, right?
>> Right. >> That's part of the equation, but we're still talking to many that are looking for something that is heterogeneous. >> Well let me throw some technical stuff at you, because I think I get it, but I'm challenged. If I'm going from, let's say EMC array to EMC array, I know I have tools that EMC provides. >> Right. >> That allows me to do that and networks fine. However, if I'm in my, the market that I'm in today, it's unlikely that I'll do that anymore, because the public cloud has made it so cost effective to have warm failover, that I can go from EMC array to public cloud, but EMC arrays replicate via LUNs and all these other concepts.
How was FalconStor injecting itself in that data path, >> Mhmm. >> Versus what EMC does legally? >> Right, well, we're still just taking a LUN and moving it to another LUN. You carve that LUN out. The nice thing about this, this product, which is now Stor-Guard. It's every product goes through a thousand names, but here's the next name is, you can migrate that original copy to a secondary copy and you don't have to take anything offline in order to be able to do that.
So it is used for that initial migration and then continuous replication from there. >> So let's talk about like, who would, well, how I would use this in a primary data center. Let's say that I have the traditional VMware environment. Am I doing, again, long base replication from one site to another? VMs F file system base? Like what's the requirement on the, on the primary side? >> Yeah. We can deal with Fibre Channel. We can deal with iSCSI.
We can deal with NAS. You name it, you choose. That's the only requirement we have. The way that typically we're seeing people use that is that will be replication from one system to another. But when you enter the backup world, the first thing is how do I lay that down on my initial backup target? And that's where our second product store site, StorSafe, excuse me, comes into play. StorSafe is that disk space backup target, but unlike what we see and was adopted back when I was part of the team that tried to buy data domain at NetApp, many years ago.
That market has shifted. Purpose-built backup appliances are the old generation. And the new generation is software only. And that's what StorSafe does. >> So you actually just kind of threw me for a curve. >> Okay. Cause I was thinking about asynchronous replication before. >> Sure. Primarily, hey, you know what, LUN to LUN based replication. >> Yep. >> I'm going from EMC to NetApp, NetApp to EMC, or Hitachi, IBM, you throw your solution in there. >> Right.
>> And this is the shim that makes it work. But StorSafe sounds like a, is that a backup solution? Or is it a disk target? What exactly is it? >> So, it's a good, it's a good question. So the positioning is that it's a disk target. It is open to whatever software you have and use on the front end. And you know, in the types of organizations that you talk to all day long, you know, they don't just have one of everything.
>> Right. >> They got five of this and five of that. So you got ConVault here, you've got IBM BRMs here. You've got Tivoli, you've got NetBackup. You've got, so rather than start a fight between those teams that chose those products, you can drop us in. And we are that heterogeneous target for all of those. And then from there we have pretty good Dedoop technology, that we started patenting 20 years ago, and we get some pretty fabulous rates and high throughput, to about 160 terabytes an hour.
We can get and lay down this backup. And then from there you choose where you want it to go. We still will write to tape, if that's what you want. Tape's not dead for many companies. >> Right. As you know, 20 years ago at NetApp, I thought tape was dead, but I'm still here 20 years ago. And I might've almost died a couple of times, but tape is still here. >> There's cloud solutions based off a tape. >> Exactly, well we know that.
>> Yeah, yeah. >> That's exactly right. Or you replicated to a secondary disk target. It can be on-prem. It could be at an offsite location. Or as you point out, you can replicate it to say an S3 target in the cloud. And you and I both know that that's where the tape library, the new tape libraries are being sold is to serve that. So, you have those three options and you choose the SLA that you want and you go from there.
>> Keith: If you're a managed service provider, and you want to learn how you can build your business on FalconStor's solutions, watch that video link below. If you want to find out more about FalconStor, you can follow the link below and we'll make sure someone gets ahold of you. >> Chris: That's right. >> Keith: You want to learn more about the CTO Advisor. You can follow me on the web. com is the website. /road-trip to find out where else we've visited.
S. My DMS are open. If you think there's a question I should've asked the FalconStor folks, DM me and we'll get to it. If there's a solution that you think is better, you know what DM me, And I'll send that information over to Chris >> Chris: Yeah. >> Keith: And you guys can have that debate. Until then, talk to you next CTO does.
