Cloud Field Day 3 Preview: Veritas

This post is one of a series of previews of companies presenting at Cloud Field Day 3, an invitation-only event in Silicon Valley, taking place 4-6 April 2018. For more information, see the dedicated CFD3 events page https://blog.architecting.it/events/cloud-field-day-3/.

The name Veritas is synonymous with storage, both in the area of file systems and data protection. Anyone responsible for Unix system administration in the 1990s/2000s will be more than familiar with the Veritas File System and Veritas Volume Manager. When used well, these two tools were incredibly powerful for managing seamless data migrations and optimising performance.

Netbackup

In data protection, of course, Veritas is well-known for the enterprise-level Netbackup and the more SMB-friendly Backup Exec. I’ve also had the enjoyment of working on these systems too, with very large Netbackup environments that pushed the boundaries, to clients with hundreds of separate Backup Exec platforms.

I’d say both platforms are “old school” data protection compared to modern offerings like Veeam and HYCU. However, longevity in data protection can be a benefit, as platforms are more likely to support a wider range of operating systems and applications.

CloudX

Now this is Cloud Field Day, not Storage Field Day, so it’s unlikely we’re going to be sitting through a presentation on the latest release of VxFS. Instead, I expect Veritas will talk about the “Cloud” range of products such as CloudMobility and CloudPoint. That’s not to say other products won’t appear in the discussion. The whole 360 Data Management suite looks like a strategy to incorporate on-premises with the cloud as a single management plane.

Single Pain of Glass

We’ve seen it all before of course. When Veritas was still part of Symantec (from 2004-2016), we had presentations at Tech Field Day 8 showing consolidated management tools. Claimed SPOG (Single Pane of Glass) wasn’t entirely true. There were always some functions that had to be done externally to the common interface.

At the time, I’m not sure anyone believed the solution was fully baked, so let’s hope 360 Data Management is better. Remember that Veritas is much more data-focused these days, so perhaps we’ll see a renewed vigour after the split.

The Architect’s View™

If you look at some of the points I made with respect to Morpheus Data, we can see similarities here. Committing to a single tool to manage data mobility, compliance, protection and visibility is a big ask for any organisation. Achieving an all-encompassing platform isn’t easy. NetApp has approached the problem in a more piecemeal fashion, but with the strategy of involving partners to deliver some components of the infrastructure. I wonder if Veritas is doing the same, or whether they intend to control each piece of the puzzle.

This ultimately will be my key point of interest – how operationally, will the Veritas solution compare to other vendors and what do I have to give up to get the benefits?