Scaling Kubernetes data protection: backup, security, and VM support

Bart: Who are you, what's your role, and who do you work for?

Gaurav: All right, thanks. Good to be here. My name is Gaurav Rishi. I'm the VP of Product, and I also look after cloud-native partnerships here at Veeam Software. The product I oversee is Kasten by Veeam, which is the number one Kubernetes data protection leader.

Bart: And what news do you want to share with us today?

Gaurav: Here we are at Salt Lake City at KubeFM, and we're really excited to talk about our latest and greatest release of Kasten by Veeam, which is Kasten version 7.5.

Bart: And what problem does Kasten by Veeam solve.

Gaurav: Again, "scaling new heights" is our tagline, and it's particularly relevant to what we're trying to achieve with Kasten by Veeam version 7.5. We've introduced three key capabilities that solve critical issues for our customers. Firstly, we've seen increasingly larger deployments of Kubernetes, which means protecting data is crucial, as many applications are now critical. To address this, we've enhanced our ability to handle large scales. Secondly, we support modern virtualization, a key trend in the industry, where not only cloud-native workloads but also virtual machines can run on Kubernetes. This is particularly important for protecting workloads with technologies like OpenShift virtualization and partnerships like Infinidat. Thirdly, we've taken security to the next level, as Kubernetes and Veeam Kasten are often the last line of defense. I'd be happy to elaborate further.

Bart: Can you share a little more about the before and after of this product announcement?

Gaurav: If you were to discuss how scale worked, people often have lots of small files, for example. There might be millions, tens of millions of files. We have customers who want to ensure that those are seamlessly protected. So it's really important that when you protect them, the time it takes to backup and restore them is as small as possible. This is crucial for maintaining business continuity. With version 7.5, the process could take a long time. Now we've seen speeds that are more than 3x faster, even in diverse environments like that.

In the context of security, we've continued to expand our ecosystem. Previously, customers could not support immutable storage on Google Cloud Storage. Now you can ensure that your backups are completely safe and resilient to any kind of tampering in environments like that. We also have governments using Kasten by Veeam, and we support multi-cluster FIPS, a standard that ensures your cryptographic algorithms are super secure. We make that a reality too.

Finally, in the context of modern virtualization, where virtual machines can now run on Kubernetes, we've also announced support for SUSE virtualization. In addition to OpenShift virtualization, we now have another option for our customers.

Bart: Is Kasten by Veeam open source and part of the CNCF landscape?

Gaurav: So Kasten by Veeam is not an open source project. We are definitely part of the CNCF landscape, ensuring that all your databases and storage systems are secure. The way Kasten is architected is that we have contributed Kanister as a sandbox project to CNCF. Kanister is a way to write blueprints that define how to back up complex applications or databases at a logical level. We have integrations with storage vendors through CSI interfaces, as well as direct integrations with file or block storage. Additionally, we support the granularity for blueprints that you can author using Kanister, using tools like PostgreSQL databases or MongoDB, or any other databases running in your Kubernetes clusters or as a service, such as Amazon RDS.

Bart: What is Veeam Software's business model?

Gaurav: Veeam is the number one market leader in Kubernetes and other workloads when it comes to data protection. Data resilience is our core business. Our business model is simple and aligned with our customers' goals. As data doubles every year, our model ensures that we grow with our customers. In the context of Kasten by Veeam, we charge on a per-node basis. We don't tax customers on data growth, but instead, ensure that their applications are continuously protected as they become more widely adopted. Our pricing is dollars per node on an annual basis. Customers can purchase through our marketplaces or thousands of distributors that Veeam Software has as partners.

Bart: Who are your main competitors?

Gaurav: To be honest, the biggest competitor we have is people who have the misnomer that, because they're in the cloud, they're somehow protected. They sometimes confuse application availability with data protection. They think that just having their data in the cloud means it's safe from mistakes or ransomware attacks, which are frequently in the headlines. This lack of awareness is the first problem we need to address, and events like this are crucial for educating people.

The second challenge is people who might have started small and thought of Kubernetes as a stateless system, which was true about 10 years ago but is no longer the case. In fact, the most popular workload on Kubernetes is databases, which are stateful by definition and need to be protected. Some might have written small scripts to do backups, but backups are only as good as the recovery. To recover seamlessly while minimizing downtime is where we come in. Customers who have encountered these problems turn to Kasten by Veeam for help, and that's the second class of challenges we address.

Bart: What differentiates Kasten by Veeam and Veeam Software from the competition more broadly in the cloud-native ecosystem?

Gaurav: You know, that's a great question. So, we are laser-focused on making sure data resilience is at the heart of whatever we do. First, day in and day out, we ensure that it doesn't matter what the workload is - whether it's virtual machines, Microsoft 365, or Kubernetes - we've got you protected as an enterprise, regardless of the workload. The second thing that's really important is reducing the time it takes to recover with confidence when working at enterprise scale. For us, that's really important. The third aspect is that security is top of mind, having reached the board level. We've got your back when it comes to ransomware protection, and we also provide early indicators to prevent such situations from arising whenever possible. We are very complementary to many security products on the Kubernetes side, which makes us the number one market leader in this space, especially with our product Kasten by Veeam.

Bart: What can we expect next from Kasten by Veeam and Veeam Software?

Gaurav: Lots of exciting things are happening. I mentioned some of the trends earlier. As more and more virtual machines come into Kubernetes, we have a lot of people who love the way Kubernetes is not just a technology, but also a way of working in terms of [DevSecOps](DevSecOps is not in the provided links, please provide a link for it). We will continue to innovate in this area. We will also see more people consuming Kasten by Veeam in different ways, whether it's through our partners, such as [CNCF](CNCF is not in the provided links, please provide a link for it), running it as a service. We will definitely see more capabilities emerge in that area. Additionally, we will continue to grow our partnerships across the ecosystem, including security, storage companies, and databases using some of the open-source frameworks I mentioned.