Transcript
Yan Ness: Yeah. So? So sort of in any in any platform, you got to have hardware. You're never going to get rid of it. And and so we think there's a couple of things that are really important about identifying the hardware you're going to use for this post VMware world. Um, there's a couple of things I think you want to look out for. Um, look, hardware lasts a long time now. I know some hosting companies because they have really good failover mechanisms, they run servers until they die - seven, eight, nine years just running until they die. The failover happen because what else are you going to do? Are you going to put them in, you know, landfills or, you know...And so the ability to reuse hardware and mix hardware and sort of obfuscate the specific hardware and not have an HCL list of everything you've got to do is really freeing. And in fact, one thing we've seen happen, which I think is really cool and very clever, Um, there's a company called Solidfire. I don't know if you remember them, Mike. Mike Matchett: Oh, sure. I think we've covered them in the past here. Yan Ness: Yeah. So apparently, I guess, was it NetApp that bought them? I think so. Right. And I think they've discontinued Solidfire. Well, that Solidfire device is an x86 box with some special firmware or Bios upgrade and I'm not sure which. And so we've had some customers and we've seen some other people reflash that thing and then install our software on it or install some other software on it. And so the the notion that you can sort of use other branded hardware and mix AMD with Intel and sort of not have to have to be married to a certain, you know, forced upgrades and so forth, I think is a really important trait for what you're looking for because you're going to live, you're going to live with this decision forever. Every three years it's going to bite you and you can't get out of it once once you pick this stuff. And so we think when you're identifying hardware, start by asking, what do I have? You know, what can I run this on? Can I run this on a couple little, uh, the old Intel nooks or micro servers in a shoe box underneath the counter? Can I run this on maybe 200 servers when I scale up? Do they all have to be the same? Can I mix and match them? I think those are really important things to to contemplate when you're identifying sort of your hardware platform. Mike Matchett: All right. Just so just to be clear, step one isn't to go out and spec a whole new set of brand new top end unproven appliances with special build, special purpose-built hardware. Uh, instead, we should go back and be looking and saying, what do I really have? What can I repurpose, what can I take advantage of and have a broader lens to that, I think is what you're saying than what VMware might have supported. So we can say here, here, here's actually a lot of things that might have different different kinds of hardware, I understand too. Yan Ness: Yeah. And so, so I know the geeks. They, you know, they love to geek out on hardware. So I apologize, guys that that it's not about going out making a list of of fancy new stuff to buy but you know, make use of what you have there's a bunch of carbon good green points for that, probably save some CapEx. And remember today CapEx is a lot more expensive than it was three years ago. At least seven, eight, nine, 10%. It's all of a sudden, you know, hey, can we use this thing if they last seven years, it's only three years old, it's can can we use it for another three years? But not just not just now, but, you know, certain certain platforms require a pretty significant refresh every three years or enforce hey, if you want to go to the next generation, you're going to have to buy all this new kind of stuff. And so certainly in the first step here, you want to get off VMware in 45 days, look for some hardware you already got, and that will pay just not now, but in three years when you don't have to do a hardware refresh.
