Home on the Ranch - Mulicloud Data Repatriation
Transcript
(upbeat music) (car engine revs) >> What's the name of your ranch? >> It's Ava's Place. >> Ava's Place. So we're in Ava's Place on the border of Montana and Wyoming. I have with me Joe Onisick. Joe, what's your company? I don't know what your official IT company... Like I've known you as Joe Onisick, the rancher, but you're Joe Onisick, cofounder of... >> Transformation Continuum. I know that because you did a spot on the CTO Advisor Virtual Conference last year.
>> That's right, that's right. >> Very good, and we're looking to get you on the podcast in the next couple of weeks so that we can just continue that conversation about transformation, but talking about transformation while the things that we wanted to talk about was this idea of multicloud and data repatriation. We've talked about workload repatriation a lot. >> Right. >> But how can you have the conversation about workload repatriation without having the conversation about data repatriation? What are you seeing in the market?
>> So, it all revolves around a term Dave McCrory coined, what, 10 years ago of data gravity. So, my workloads are going to trend and my services are going to trend to wherever my data is. >> Right. >> So if I'm using Amazon S3, guess who's, I'm using EC2, I'm using their Kubernetes stack, I'm using all the rest of it. If I'm starting to spread out in a multicloud, now where does my data sit? If my workloads need to get it from the Edge and they need to get it from Azure and they need to get it from some private resources.
So the data repatriation is the idea of where can I put this data that's a neutral or demilitarized zone that has equal access at a cost I can afford to whatever I need to connect it to? >> So, one of the problems with that is this... You know, when I think about that, one of the problems that immediately jumped to mind is egress charges. I can have all of my data in AWS. Well, we just recently did a video with AWS and NetApp on AWS as a NetApp partnership, but that doesn't solve the problem of egress.
When I need to get the data out to the Edge or I need to get the data out to another cloud provider, I have these challenges around egress. How are customers overcoming egress and this kind of data mobility problem in general? >> So I think the big challenge with doing that is going to be the costs, right? Storing in S3 is cost affordable, getting it out of S3 may or may not be, right? So that's a cost, and then latency, speed, performance, right?
Because if I'm in S3, chances of being really fast to EC2 are high. >> Right. >> So what we're seeing a lot of is using colocations or technology vendors like Equinox or Digital Realty that have fast cloud on ramps, direct access to those internet backbones so that I don't take a huge latency hit as I'm moving into these neutral parties. >> So, I still have to do the math around the cost, really, about putting data outside of AWS or Google or Azure, so if I'm doing intensive workloads where I'm generating data in the public cloud and pushing that to the colo, I have to incur those costs, but those costs are lower because there's agreements between the colo and the service providers, and I can get the data out to the edge.
This is the premise of the CTO Advisor hybrid infrastructure. Our data center is in a QTS facility in Chicago. We have a connection via Megaport, a 10 gig connection via Megaport, and we can push data as fast as we want to basically wherever we need to get it, so it's not held hostage in any one of the cloud providers. What are some of the more interesting use cases that you've seen for data repatriation? >> I think on one side you can, I always call it keeping my vendors honest.
So, years ago when I was selling networking hardware, we were selling to one of the large cloud providers and they told us no matter how good your switches get, we're buying half of 'em from your competition, because they knew it would keep us honest and innovating on our switches. So if I own my data and my EC2 costs, or my Azure instance costs start going up, my cloud provider knows I have mobility. I can move to another cloud. But if I'm sitting beholden in S3, they know I'm not going to go through the costs of moving the data, the workloads, the services out, at least not on a whim decision, on a flip decision.
>> You know, it's one thing to get a AWS, no mobile. I think that's the big semi-trailer and pull the data into, petabytes of data into AWS. It's another one to send the snowmobile back and get that data out. They do charge you by the megabit getting data out of AWS. Joe, I really appreciate you taking time to come and talk to us about multicloud. Before we end the conversation, I want to hint to something that you're planning in the inner future.
This wasn't planned, but I'm at the Ava's ranch. This has been extremely relaxing. We talked about IT Burnout, talk to me about the future of the other side of what you do at Ava's ranch. >> So, what we're doing right now is getting this up to a working ranch, and that means I'm having to learn everything, right? Learning how to live with cattle, run livestock, and all that. Once this is a working ranch at a small scale, we want to start bringing people out here for IT burnout.
So I had this crazy dream of let's leave Silicon Valley and buy a ranch, which in my life I can execute on that kind of craziness. A lot of people have that dream. They'll never be able to do it or not in the near term, so I want to give 'em a taste of it where they can come out, have people that understand their world, but out in something that's completely different from that. >> So kind of a try before you buy.
(both laugh) >> Absolutely, it's the proof of value on your ranch or farm life. >> So I've only been here for less than 24 hours and it's been completely a different world. 120 acres of just rolling hills, beauty. Again, on the border of Montana and Wyoming. com. Joe, link for your gig, your daytime gig? What's the link to the website? com, all one word. >> If you want to find either me or Joe, we're on Twitter. We tweet a lot.
I'm @CTOAdvisor, Joe is @JoeOnisick. Talk to you next CTO, Joe. Dos.
