Episode Summary

iland Director of Cloud Market Intelligence Brian Knudtson is joined by guests Phoummala Schmitt, Jason Shiplett, and Matt Lieb for a conversation on the concerns customers have about availability in the cloud. They discuss why the cloud is not a set-it-and-forget-it scenario, how to plan for eventual failures, how and when to keep cloud service providers honest, and who is ultimately responsible for keeping data secure and available. Afterall, it is your data.

Panel

Cloud Conversations

Topic 1

[04:19] Different clouds address availability differently. In your experience, what do customers need to know about what it takes to maintain availability in native hyperscaler clouds versus a more traditional VMware-based environment?

Topic 2

[11:04] By not managing the lower levels of the stack, customers are limited in their ability to address or determine the number of 9s of availability for a single workload. How should they evaluate the availability of different cloud platforms and how concerned should they be with losing a 9 or two?

Topic 3

[16:57] Cloud availability isn’t always about the uptime of the platform. How can customers use the cloud to assist with protecting on-premises data?

Cloud Bites

[01:37] “There’s always been this myth that when you put it in the cloud, everything’s taken care of for you. And that myth is usually bursted pretty quick.” — Phoummala Schmitt

[03:24] “No matter if your infrastructure is on-prem, in the cloud, wherever. Failures happen. It’s something that everyone has to plan for.” — Jason Shiplett

[06:38] “It’s important to know that you do need to back that data up.” — Matt Lieb 

[07:22] “We’re still responsible for those zeros and ones. So how do we use the tools and the services available to us to ensure that we can still protect that data.” — Phoummala Schmitt 

[10:03] “As a customer, you have to be your own biggest proponent, your own biggest advocate.” — Jason Shiplett 

[12:27] “Being able to take what information the cloud providers give you around availability and the capabilities that they offer, whether that’s multi region, multi AZ and designing the way that you lay your data and your applications out across those different constructs in such a way that you meet your requirements for uptime.” — Jason Shiplett 

[13:22] “If you don’t ask the right questions of your consultancy or that consultancy doesn’t offer the full complement of concerns, then the research isn’t being done. And the mistake that’s made is not by the cloud provider who hasn’t necessarily done what you hope they do, but by you, who hasn’t done their due diligence.” — Matt Lieb

[20:41] “If you don’t test, then you are the one who has failed to complete your due diligence.” — Matt Lieb 

[24:25] “The ability to observe, to ingest data, and make decisions about the availability of a system based on those metrics is something that is becoming more and more prevalent.” — Jason Shiplett 

[27:16] “This is your data. You’ve gotta protect it.” — Phoummala Schmitt