Veeam Community Podcast

The Veeam Community Podcast is focused on giving the global virtualization community a new resource for connecting with industry experts, bloggers and peers, as well as for staying up to date on the latest industry news, developments and trends. Each 30-minute weekly episode of the Veeam Community Podcast will be available through RSS subscription and the Apple iTunes store. The podcast is hosted by Rick Vanover, a writer, blogger, VMware vExpert, VMware Certified Professional, Microsoft Certified Professional, Microsoft Certified IT Professional and a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator. He currently works as Software Strategy Specialist at Veeam.

In this episode, host Rick Vanover (Twitter @RickVanover) welcomes Noureddine Laoulichki of ETC Distribution in the Netherlands. Rick and Noureddine discuss the Dutch VMUG (VMware User Group), and the challenges of virtualization that both small and large organizations face. Additional conversation points include how Noureddine addresses disaster recovery challenges for his clients.

Noureddine is on the hot seat for the “Three views from you” element of the podcast.

Rick: Hello and welcome to the Veeam Community Podcast. I am your host, Rick Vanover. This is Episode 6, Virtualization in the Netherlands from ETC Distribution. Here we go. Today, our guest is Noureddine Laoulichki. Noureddine, how are you doing?

Noureddine: Good, fine, thank you Rick.

Rick: Thanks. Thanks for being on the show. Noureddine is based in the Netherlands. You are guest number two from the Netherlands. So, Noureddine, tell me a little bit about what you do from ETC Distribution, your role and your responsibility there.

Noureddine: Okay. I'm Senior Solution Consultant at ETC. I am responsible for developing and maintaining the product channel in the Netherlands on the technical part of the business. That's my role.

Rick: Cool. We've talked internally through some emails. ETC Distribution is a Veeam partner in the Netherlands. Your role as Senior Solution Consultant, it sounds like you pretty much do everything under the sun, from a demo to proof of concept to kind of exploring what the customer might want in their virtualization solution. Is that a good way of putting it?

Noureddine: Yes, you put it in the right way. That's exactly what I do in my role. You're completely right, Rick.

Rick: So what kind of challenges do you see with virtualization? Just give the listeners a sense of what's going on with virtualization in the Netherlands. What kind of challenges and opportunities do you see with the technology right now?

Noureddine: Okay. From the start of virtualization, if you look at the Intel virtualization platform when VMware started in 2003. I also started in the Netherlands, so I saw the whole developing business in the Netherlands. Now, what I see is that server virtualization has become a mainstream business. We have a timeframe that is only used by the big companies or only test environments. The Netherlands, what I said before, was from the beginning the early adapters of VMware server virtualization. So, if you compare this to other countries in Europe, I think we are ahead of the technology, and that's the only reason why you see solutions like Veeam are adapting fast now at this moment. Many customers want to use these solutions, because the traditional server vendors cannot fulfill their needs. This is what I see now at this time.

Rick: Really? So the Netherlands was kind of ahead of the curve, and I won't doubt it. There are so many good bloggers and social media talent within the Netherlands. I was talking to someone last week, of course Duncan Epping is out there, Frank Denneman. There's a long list. Eric Sloof. You've probably met these guys from time to time. Is that right?

Noureddine: Yes, yes. They are also part of the Dutch VMware user group community. I think you know them. That community started in 2005. I also saw that start up in 2005 with our user group [inaudible 03:24] held every year in December. They started out with 40 people, and year after year, it's become greater and bigger, and last December they had over 700 visitors. So you see how booming this is in the Netherlands.

Rick: Oh yeah, for sure. The Dutch VMUG was very popular on Twitter. A lot of pictures, definitely a big to do. So you've probably been involved with that. That's more users. There are partners. A lot of the whole channel, if you will, of virtualization is there, so that's pretty cool.

Noureddine: Yes, yes.

Rick: So, you mentioned that in the Netherlands, it is a country that's really kind of been on the forward curve of virtualization. Do you see a lot of virtualization only in the big organization, or do you work in the small company, the medium size installation? Give me a sense of a random or a typical customer that you might work with.

Noureddine: Yes. In the beginning, mostly the big companies were where virtualization was adopted. But nowadays, the last three or four years, you see all kinds of companies. It's not anymore only for big companies. Also, companies who have three, four servers are interested in virtualization, because it takes IT to the next level. They want to benefit also from the advantages of virtualization. That's what I now see. We also see that back in the business. It's a company of only two servers starting with virtualization. It's not only for big companies anymore. That's what we nowadays see.

Rick: Oh yeah, for sure. I'll kind of supplement that with my own personal experience, because the large company, and I had changed jobs at the time where I worked with a smaller and then a larger company, but the larger company already had that investment in enterprise storage, some sort of SAN. So virtualization came easy for them. Is that what you would say?

Noureddine: Yes. I think that's right. Because in my point of view, if I look at this technology when it started in 2003, I think nowadays it's still has three reasons why you virtualized, in my opinion, is you can make cost savings on hardware, NGS software. You can cut off administration costs and tasks. I think the most important thing why nowadays small companies also virtualize is because you can easily create a DR, business continuity solution for your company. That's why today, nowadays, why also small companies choose virtualization, because it makes it easier than traditional physical environments.

Rick: What's the typical DR solution that you work with? Do you do something as complicated as VMware Site Recovery Manager, or do you do Veeam Replications or storage only solutions? What kind of solutions do you come up with for your typical customer?

Noureddine: Nowadays, the typical solutions, because the most customers here in the Netherlands are small to medium customers, and if you look like solutions like SRM, they are too big for those companies and too expensive. So what they are searching for is mostly solutions under that kind of solution, and then you mostly come at solutions like software based, Veeam, and that kind of solution, or small solutions that are coming with some cheaper storage appliances. That's what we today see. What you also see, with virtualization, you almost create a DR solution. With some little changes, with some other complementary service solutions, you can make a completely automated disaster recovery solution that doesn't have to cost a lot.

Rick: Yeah, the cost can get very expensive once you tighten the recovery time, not so much the recovery point time, but the recovery time. If you have distance and a lot of data, it can get really complicated for sure. What do you mean by small to medium? A medium, would that be like 20 VMware hosts? Just give me some size . . .

Noureddine: Okay. Size. Small is three hosts, up to what you talk about medium is 20 to 30 hosts. That's medium here in the Netherlands.

Rick: That six socket or three host small environment, it sounds like it's really small, but it's so capable of doing so much. It's a good unit of work, if you will, from a cluster standpoint. Do you guys use a lot of VMware Essentials Plus?

Noureddine: Yes, we use it a lot. If you're looking at the business nowadays, what we do, that kind of solution, we sell a lot of clients small solutions. Every day, we sell a lot of that, yes.

Rick: The only issue I see with that, because I think it's a great framework, Essentials Plus, because you have vCenter first of all, so that really opens up a lot of features. So things like Veeam Backup come into play. Veeam Replication are available, vCenter features like cloning, alerts. All the real basic enterprise framework components you need are then available on the host, so that's cool. The only thing I really don't like about Essentials Plus, what I'm trying to say, is that you're only limited to 4 VSMP per virtual machine with that level of licensing. So you can't do your five, six, seven, or eight virtual symmetric multi-process or virtual machines. Have you ever found that as a stopping point with the small environment that has that one workload that's really big that wouldn't quite fit in four virtual machines?

Noureddine: Yes, yes. You're completely right. If we look at that, what we have see that inner point of view, it also has to do with investing that kind of companies have to do. But what you mainly see is that customers who . . . also what I find in that kind of situation is okay, you're going to buy this Essentials, but keep in mind that this has these limitations. If it's now, and you think, in one year, you will need more capacity and you have to reinvest again, maybe look at the enterprise editions of virtualization and not this solution, because mainly you throw away your money, because this is one buy you cannot upgrade. So I try to tell customers that. Absolutely, you're completely right. But for some companies, it's maybe enough for these five years, and at that point, they can maybe make the next step, and they can get familiar with virtualization. So it's a low entry also for that kind of customers.

Rick: Sure, sure. For that entry point, if you will, do you also try to bundle in disaster recovery and the same design? Because a lot of times the enterprise went ahead and just tackled server consolidation with virtualization, but then it's like, well, what about DR? It was almost an afterthought. Today, in the new stuff, do you kind of go with both strategies at once?

Noureddine: Yes, yes. Also, what I said, because sometimes customers come up with it. They say, "Okay, how can I arrange my backup and disaster recovery?" Mainly, what we nowadays see is that Veeam is called in one case with these kinds of solutions. Also, what we nowadays see, most companies who buy VMware Essentials also buy the Veeam suite that perfectly fits on these kinds of solutions. Because what I earlier mentioned, the traditional storage management products are developed from the point of view to backup and replicate physical environments and not virtualized environments.

It's more difficult to make those products useful for that kind of environment, and I think that's also the problem that vendors nowadays have, because it's not easy to change the base deck or the storage management product. In my point of view, it's like trying to turn around a Navy aircraft carrier. If you look at Veeam, they developed their products from the point of view to backup and replicate a virtualized environment. Also, with all the features that Veeam has in it, customers are very excited about it. So I think that's what I nowadays see, and that's why vendors like Veeam are doing a good job now.

Rick: Yeah. If you've ever seen a presentation by Doug Hazelman from Veeam, one slide that's always in there pretty much from him is the "Right Tool for the Job" slide. So it's a picture . . . yeah, try describing a picture on a podcast. Here we go! It's a picture of an excavator or some sort of mud moving truck that got stuck in the mud or stuck in a lake or something like that, because it was really not the right piece of heavy machinery, equipment, whatever to move this mud or move this water, so it got stuck. So if you go in with the wrong tool for the platform, it's going to be almost a reverse optimized fit. So I agree with you 100%. If you have the right platform, virtualized workloads, and then you come in with the right tool, for something like data protection, of course we're going to say Veeam. You can really deliver the right solution is kind of the best way of putting it. Cool.

Noureddine: Yes.

Rick: One of the things about storage . . . I have a little bit of a background with storage, a couple different flavors of it. But the one thing I know is that it's probably the one area you need to plan a lot in your virtual environment. Do you also provide storage design for your clients as well?

Noureddine: Yes, because we have two or three main products that we focus on, we're also distributing Linux, HP, IBM, and NetTech. I think those kind of solutions fit for most customers here. We also have some cheaper line. I don't know if you've heard from it before, NetGear. It's also a solution that we provide here in the Netherlands. You can position it under these products I mentioned before.

Rick: Is that the RN series? It's like an iSCSI storage target.

Noureddine: Yeah. An iSCSI solution, yes.

Rick: Let me just go to Google, because the Internet knows everything.

Noureddine: Yes, yes.

Rick: I've seen those products. In fact, at one point, I used one in a lab capacity, one of their iSCSI storage pods. But storage is storage. I think it's important. What do you advise your clients? Is it important, or is it just kind of a commodity decision, or is it part of the whole platform when you go virtual? Is it a key component of that?

Noureddine: Yes, yes. I think it's a key component. The customers have to choose, but I explain to them what are the differences between the platforms, what the advantages and disadvantages of each platform is. It also has to do with the price, what the customers have for a budget to do the project. I advise them, because it's a very important part of the whole design. Also, if you start with virtualization, then I think the storage is one of the most important key components. If you advise the wrong storage, then you can get stuck up at the end with an environment that you didn't want to have.

Rick: Yeah, definitely not a happy customer if the storage isn't there. So, do you find yourself . . . some of those products that you had mentioned support VAAI now. Do you find yourself really latching onto VAAI support? Because a lot of Veeam technologies are based on snapshots. So, we're kind of excited about VAAI in the sense that any VAAI, and I hate that acronym by the way. The VAAI supported storage controllers are able to provide hardware assisted locking, which will help out on snapshot performance. Have you run across that in any live installations yet, or customer design at this point?

Noureddine: No. At this moment, I saw it also with the knowledge of vSphere 4.1 with VMware. I didn't, at this point in time, had to do with it at this moment. So, no.

Rick: Yeah, me neither, just so you know. I keep asking people, and maybe I'm just . . . I don't know. I know EMC is talking about it a lot, and VMware is talking about it a lot. That's one of those things, it's kind of an orchestrated flow from a release to a solution for the customer. There's vSphere 4.1. Is everybody there? Then there's not just the right storage product, but then usually you have to have an incremental update of the storage controller software to support it. So it's a sequenced journey to get there, but especially stuff starting new today, you've got an opportunity to make sure VAAI supported arrays and versions of vSphere are in use, because I think that's going to help out a lot of stuff in my opinion.

Noureddine: You're completely right. I think in the next versions of vSphere and also other products, it will develop and then it will become mainstream. Because if I look at that point of view of talking about storage, because we look at VDI nowadays, the great bottleneck of that solution, why it's still in the early, not developing so fast, because the bottleneck is mostly the storage I/O. That's the reason why it's still a product to develop large VDI RAMs without lack on disk I/O. I think this probably is going to help to solve that issue.

Rick: Yeah. I think that would be the bulk copy storage command. They have said that would really help out in operations like virtual machine clone. You're taking that I/O to the storage processor instead of having ESXi coordinate that whole copy, which is a lot of work. There are a lot of demos, especially from the frontrunners of VAAI, of the amount of reduced I/O on the ESXi controller or ESXi server. So, Noureddine, do you primarily focus on advising customers of ESXi now with the current position from VMware?

Noureddine: Yes, yes. I have to, because what we've heard, the next release, the normal ESX with service console will be stuck. This was the last release of the ESX with service console, so a lot of customers are already changing from the regular ESX to ESXi, because VMware has made that step. So a lot of customers are already transferring to ESXi or start with it, but also existing customers are doing this.

Rick: Yeah. In my personal experience, my recommendation was the right time to go to ESXi was from 3.5 to 4.0, because it was a big change anyway, and at the time, I thought that was a good idea. Once I went ESXi, I've been happy. I've never had to go back. I've never had a problem I couldn't solve. There are plenty of ESXi haters out there, I know.

Noureddine: I'm not part of the ESXi haters. I agree with you, because there are a lot of advantages. You don't have to update the service console. Nowadays, the kernel is small, so if you are going to patch, it's also easy to do. There are a lot of workarounds if you want to do something in the kernel. There is the [inaudible 21:47], the app that's available from the VMware Store you can download. So, a lot of solutions. You also can do a lot in the vCenter console.

Rick: Yeah. I have a home lab, and I have an ESXi host that I do most of my stuff. Updating it was the hardest change, not from 3.5 to 4.0, but from 4.0 to 4.1, because the Windows tool was removed. But honestly, the VI Host Update Perl script I've been using, it's actually, knock on wood, a little bit easier to do than I would have ever thought. I script a little bit, but virtualization is all about adapting to change, right? From ESX to ESXi is a change. From Host Update Utility to VI Host Update is a change. So we can handle it. There's never a huge obstacle unless there is a core piece of functionality that's not there. I think VMware has made the migration path pretty clear for ESX to ESXi, so I don't think anybody should really have too many issues with it.

Noureddine: No, no. I don't think they will have issues, because as you mentioned here , those Host Update Utilities make it a lot easier. I ran into one thing, because also in my lab, I also have a VMware environment with some old 3.5 with service console service. If I had to update them, I wanted to update them through the Host Update Utility or the VI Utility through vCenter, but I couldn't find the right image to do that. So I had to get it on CD and also had to make some steps before I could use the VI Host Update Utility. But still, easy to do.

Rick: Yeah, absolutely. We can adapt to it. It's a quick moving technology, so you've just got to put the time into it. So, Noureddine, I've got a gimmick. Every podcast has a gimmick. I'm going to ask you three questions. So you as a technologist, a different view from you, we call it "Three Views from You." So the first question I have is, as a technologist generally speaking, what's the most interesting technical role or IT related story that you have in your past that you'd like to share with us?

Noureddine: Okay. I think of the last seven years what I've seen is I have come back to virtualization. Because I have seen VMware virtualization at the start, when we started, when I first saw the technology, the first things I thought is, okay, this is the technology of this decennium. There's nothing else that's going to change. It's going to change a lot of how we're doing IT nowadays. When I saw VMware, the demo first there from those guys when we started in 2002/2003, when I saw that, I think this is going to change. This is also what we saw with the start of Internet, this also changing IT world. If I look several years later, I got it right.

Rick: Cool. So then today, what are you working on today that's most interesting in your current experience?

Noureddine: What I nowadays see is that the technology of virtualization is taking with technologies like cloud computing and like software, not more as a product, but more as a service, and that is merging in together. That's also for me a next step that we're going to make in the evolution of IT. I'm happy that I can be part of this, and I find it very exciting and I'm enjoying it every day. Also, with solutions what you see, because we talked a lot today about backup replication. But also, what you see through virtualization, you also see change solutions like security. Security from the physical point of view is also changing, because everything is getting virtualized and getting into the cloud. Also, those kind of products, the basic vendors of security also have to change their platforms to make it aware for cloud computing and virtualization.

Rick: Yeah, definitely. I agree with you 100%. It's not your grandfather's IT world, right?

Noureddine: No, certainly not.

Rick: So, Noureddine, what do you see in the future most interesting? You've definitely latched onto virtualization. How about in the future, five years from now, what do you see is very interesting looking forward?

Noureddine: What I am very curious about is what's going to change for how we're going to do business, because we now mainly sell products. We sell products, we sell hardware, we sell software and that kind of solution. I think we're going to make a change, because everybody's adapting cloud computing, and I think we'll go to more a services model. So IT is changing from products to service. Nowadays, we use a lot of products that are in the cloud. You talk about Facebook, other kinds of . . . Twitter. What you also see is that the products we nowadays sell are going to transfer to the data center, and I'm curious on what role we're going to play as distributors and resellers and partners to the end users. So I'm pretty curious about that. That's what I think is going to happen, and I think we are going to be making big steps for the next five years on that.

Rick: Yeah, I agree with you. You bring up a real good point, because every business is changing. Nobody wants to just say they're box pushers. There's value in services, and then to your Facebook example, there's value in data. So every traditional IT company has changed to include services in their revenue stream. Yeah, you bring up a very good point.

That's cool stuff. Well hey, Noureddine, let's wrap up the podcast real quick. Thanks for being on. I appreciated having you on the podcast.

Noureddine: Thank you, Rick. Also, thank you for giving me some time to give my opinion of you.

Rick: No problem. So, Noureddine works for ETC Distribution in the Netherlands, and they're on the Web at ETCdistribution.nl. I gave Noureddine some flack earlier. Maybe next time he'll be on Twitter.

Noureddine: Okay, yes, definitely.

Rick: For the podcast, if any listener has any comments, send an email to podcast@veeam.com. And myself, I'm Rick Vanover. I'm on Twitter @RickVanover, and I also contribute to the Veeam Twitter feed @Veeam. Noureddine, thanks for being on the show.

Noureddine: Thank you, Rick. Thank you.