Rubrik: An introduction

• Are you already a Veritas Netbackup Customer or Enterprise backup software customer?
• Are your annual support fees large?
• Are you considering the Netbackup Appliances or another Enterprise Backup Vendors Appliance?
• Are you now 100% Virtualised?
• Are you frustrated with the level of complexity of your current product?
• If you answered yes to any of those, then you might want to consider looking at an alternative solution.

With Rubrik, backup is made straight-forward and intuitive. Being built from the ground up it provides key features that the old guard – those big legacy enterprise providers – struggle to implement.

Rubrik provides an appliance with three nodes within a single 2U Form factor, offering varying amounts of backup storage depending on the model chosen. Each three-node unit provides an RF3 (Redundancy Factor of 3) meaning that every block of data backed up is also on a further two nodes so the system has a high level of built-in protection.

Because Rubrik is software converged, capacity expansion is straight forward and infinite. By adding an additional 2U three-node appliance, capacity is gained along with an enhanced overall performance.

Because of this approach, there is a linear increase in backup performance as each node is a server in its own right. More processing power is provided with each node. This helps when managing long retention time frames as the indexing is split across the nodes.

Currently, Rubrik has an API-driven architecture utilising the current protection APIs found in VMware and many storage vendors. Using those APIs allow Rubrik to request the backup, and the relevant APIs spring into action. As the Rubrik nodes are all 10GbE connected and utilise SSD and HDD to tier the backups, they can happen very speedily.

It is also important to note that Rubrik does not rely on the hypervisor doing all the work. A SQL Agent, which provides protection for those servers using always-on availability, has been released.

The Rubrik dashboard has been designed for a quick and easy overview, showing health and activity and swiftly providing the ability to drill down into anything looking untoward.

As an IT Manager, Backup Admin or someone with backup responsibility, you would be derelict of your duty not to keep an eye on other vendors such as Veeam, Acronis, Veritas Backup Exec etc, especially when budgets are getting tighter.

When compared with other enterprise backup providers such as Veritas Netbackup Appliances the Rubrik solution is competitively priced, especially when taking into account the running cost over some years as the solution is far easier to manage and the upgrades are a breeze.

Also, the Rubrik Appliance includes all licences. The only factor you need to know is how much storage you require. It doesn’t matter how many virtual machines or applications are installed, or how many virtualisation hosts you have, or even how many sockets each host has. There is one price.

Firstly, if you are a few months away from an annual renewal, then Rubrik might be worth considering – even more so if you are also looking at either replacing current backup hardware with new servers or appliances from your existing backup vendor.

Moving a NetBackup master and media server(s), or Commvault Commserver can take a considerable amount of time and money to perform, and there are always risks involved.

If you want an agentless solution, Rubrik, like most other virtualisation-specific backup vendors, allows granular file recovery from an image backup so why not have a look?

As Rubrik only came to market in the UK in July 2016, getting access to a Proof of Concept (POC) appliance can be a simple task, although there may be a little wait for hardware availability.

With a solution that can be deployed quickly, even adding a second system to enable replication between sites couldn’t be easier. Removing older legacy systems can help reduce time and effort for already stretched IT teams, freeing resource to concentrate on the more pressing topics.

If you can say that you are nearly 100% virtualized and are already considering Veaam, then Rubrik should also be on the hit list. With redundant hardware built in, other solutions may look cheap in comparison but still require hardware and additional licenses to make them operational.