Rubrik Reviews

We have it onsite and in the cloud. We also make use of their SaaS offering as well.

Primarily, we back up our VMware estate. We back up Azure VMs and Office 365 as well as some physical boxes.

We used to be on r348, so now we're on r6408.

Rubrik provides us with all our backup services: onsite backups, Office 365 Backups, and Azure Backups (IaaS).

We can now just point the solution at our virtual environment and know that we are protected. No longer do we have to manage backup jobs. The simplicity of the SLA-based policy automation means that we are just protected.

Rubrik sits alongside things, like the VMware SRM product, so we can use it in a PowerShell integration. We can test and verify our backups using the Live Mount functionality. That is saving us probably one or two days a month.

Rubrik is a faster unit from a hardware perspective. Things, like Live Mount, mean we can bring services back straightaway, then have them transition back into the live storage in the background. Because we can use Live Mount to do instant restores, a restore is now a five-minute job. Then, the rest of it is done in the background, rather than doing something for an hour before you actually get the restore back.

I have one man-day a week back across the team to do other more important jobs. So, it's not saving us money from that point of view. However, it allows my team to concentrate on the things that matter, rather than having to worry about the backup.

• Backs up all our platforms. 
• Its ease of use and single pane of glass management.
• Performance. 
• Lowers our overall management costs; we don't have to look after it anymore.

The solution's web interface is clean, simple, and easy to use.

Its archival functionality is great. We have used that from day one for Azure. The cloud backup was one of the key reasons to switch.

We use their predictive search. It is very much like your standard, usual search engine type approach. You can type in simple English and get results back from that. The easier the interface is to use, then the more time is saved in other peripheral tasks.

I would like to see the entire Office 365 product suite backed up by Rubrik. For instance, they do SharePoint and Exchange online, but they don't back up Microsoft Teams. So, I would like to see more of the Office 365 suite added into their backup capabilities.

I have been using it for three years.

The stability is fantastic. We have not had any downtime. We have not had any issues with it at all. It has been good and stable.

We have not had to scale too far. We have six nodes at the moment and are capable of going to 32 nodes, if we need to. We don't really make use of that scalability, but I know other customers who do. I would be quite happy to scale it, if we need to.

There are six people who know how to use Rubrik at Cranfield. This is my systems team: cloud engineers and systems admins. 

We used the support services a couple of times early on, because we were quite early adopters. They were fantastic. When you speak to support, you get an engineer who knows what they are doing straightaway. There is no multi-tiered support, so you get someone very quickly who knows exactly what your issues are. Nine times out of 10, we have had a resolution extremely quickly.

After the first month, we did not really use support because the solution worked fine. So, we used support early on, and they were great. Since then, we have not had to use support, which is even better.

Before we had Veeam, we were with Dell EMC Data Domain storage.

We previously were a Veeam customer. With Rubrik, we could replicate directly into Azure. That released the operational costs of having a third-party hosted solution offsite. We have been able to remove that, managing it directly in Azure.

From Rubrik being delivered to it ingesting backups, it took about an hour. To get it out of the box, racked, configured, and ready to go was simple. To be perfectly honest, we have probably never used a product that was as simple as it to deploy.

We had a two-week window set to migrate our backups from the old system into Rubrik. Instead of it taking two weeks, it ended up taking three days, which saved us time tremendously.

They were two IT systems administrators involved in the initial setup and deployment. I have a general team of cloud engineers who do the storage, cloud, and virtualization.

Managing backups, we have saved about 85 percent of the time from our previous solution.

We removed a software product, then removed the servers. We did not have to support servers nor storage arrays that it runs on, having a single platform to do everything. That led to TCO savings.

With our old service, managing the whole environment was about a day a week per person. Now, we are lucky if it is five minutes a day. From a complete solution and backup relation, we are saving 85 to 90 percent of our management time.

Return on investment primarily goes back to time savings. It allows my guys to spend time doing things that I need them to do rather than babysitting quite a labor-intensive backup service.

Originally, we bought the units on perpetual licenses. Now, we have switched to Rubrik Go. I think the Rubrik Go subscription is a better model, where it is based on your onsite environment and you consume what you use.

Going to subscription makes it more affordable because then the university does not have to find so much capital to spend upfront. Knowing that we are entering a deal for a number of years with fixed yearly payments allows me to manage budgets better.

We looked at Veeam with Data Domain, Cohesity, and NetApp. We looked to do it all with Microsoft Azure Backup services. However, the only one that really fit our environment and had the vision for what we were trying to do was the Rubrik solution.

Cost and complexity are probably the main reasons as well as the flexibility of the service that we can get. So, we are on that public cloud journey where services are moving between on-prem and the cloud. Rubrik offered us those enablement services. It allowed us to do the transition pieces that we needed or still need now. So, it was an all in one feature set. At the time, their vision and direction matched our vision and direction.

Make sure you know your environment, so you know what you are putting in it before you start. It really does do what they say it does. The real takeaway is just make sure that you are aware of their products and capabilities, and that you can match them appropriately to your environment.

We haven't had any events of ransomware that required us to do that restore. However, we also have Polaris Radar in place to help us detect ransomware anomalies as well as Polaris Sonar that we use for compliance and malware detection. We have used Polaris for reporting on metadata, but not to extract it anywhere else.

Polaris hasn't necessarily changed our approach, but it has given us extra reassurances around key factors, like governance, compliance, ransomware activity, and cloud mobility. Whilst we have our internal policies and procedures in place, it is a tool that effectively is scanning our entire environment, helping to alert and bring issues to the fore if we have any of those problems.

We use the API to automate some of our processes, but we don't have it integrated into any of our other products.

I would rate this solution as a nine (out of 10).

We use the solution for backups. We transitioned from Veeam to Rubrik, and we currently have on-premises backups for production and disaster recovery purposes. These backups are clustered between both sites, with 60 appliances used for backup operations.

Rubrik simplifies our data backup and recovery processes significantly. It's very straightforward to use. We start by tagging through VMware, and everything tagged for Rubrik is backed up automatically. Backups are much better and faster because Rubrik takes a full snapshot of the virtual machine. We recently conducted a verification by performing a restore, and even during the restore process, we could bring up the server in less than 10-15 minutes. Additionally, we have set up alerts for sensitive data, which helps us track data. 

We have set up all the alerts for sensitive data. It's not exactly data governance fully, but it does help us to identify those data. The tool helps us to avoid vulnerabilities and any cyber protection issues. For example, if any antivirus or other security measures are on the system, Rubrik flags it immediately, indicating that a backup and an air gap are required. This ensures that no other backups would be impacted if there's an issue with one backup. Additionally, Rubrik comes with live monitoring capabilities, allowing its support team to identify and address any issues immediately. 

The tool's most valuable features are the management of sensitive data, the air gap backup functionality, and the real-time monitoring capabilities. Additionally, the speed and reliability of the platform are also highly beneficial.

Instant recovery with Rubrik has significantly improved our RTOs. The process is much quicker than traditional backups, allowing us to restore backups with minimal downtime.

I hope to see enhancements in areas like data governance and the incorporation of new features in future updates.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the stability of Rubrik as a ten. It meets our requirements and has become our primary backup solution.

The solution is scalable. 

We faced no significant challenges while integrating Rubrik with our IT infrastructure. Their support team was excellent and assisted in the deployment process. Even after deployment, their responsiveness to tickets was impressive, addressing any issues promptly.

Positive

I rate the product's deployment an eight out of ten. 

I rate the tool's pricing a six out of ten. 

We found that Rubrik offered a comprehensive solution with a single appliance that met all our needs without requiring additional services or infrastructure. Other solutions often involved purchasing separate storage, servers, and proxy servers, which could be costly. In terms of cost, while Rubrik initially seemed more expensive, the overall cost was more favorable compared to the multiple components required by other solutions. 

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten. 

We're using it for the backup of our virtual machines or VMs for the cloud. It is also for the standalone. We have a connector with vCenter, and we are using it for the virtual machine backup.

It is on-premise. We have two Rubrik. We are using one as a standalone, and we are also using one Rubrik in our private cloud. It is an on-premise VMware cloud.

We haven't upgraded the software in the last one year. We do the security patch updates and hardware firmware upgrades, but at the software level, we haven't done any major updates. We are using the same version.

It provides cost savings. Cost-wise, it is beneficial for us. We are protecting more than 3 petabytes of data daily, and we have more than 3,000 plus servers. 

Rubrik is cheap, and you get good performance. 

Its implementation is easy and doesn't take much time. Scalability and high availability are also there.

NAS backup can be improved. We have a NAS share, and we were not able to configure that with Rubrik. We found a solution from Dell EMC called Avamar that has an accelerator for NAS backup. The NAS backup is quicker in Avamar with the accelerator hardware, but in Rubrik, it is time-consuming.

Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I need to create reports to know whether something is available or not, how much frontend data is being protected, etc. Rubrik gives a lot of things in the report, which can be confusing. It isn't very easy to get reports. It shows all the backup, index, replication, and everything else in one report. So, I have to export, filter, and then do the calculations. If they can improve these things, it would be good. We are managing services for our customers, and every month, I have to provide reports for different types of KPIs and SLAs. We need to provide KPIs to the customers in terms of:

• How many clients are we protecting?
• How much frontend data are we protecting?
• How much recovery are we doing?
• How many recovery jobs and backup jobs have we performed?
• How many ad-hoc jobs have we performed?
• How many new backup clients are we adding every month?

This is the information that I have to give to the customer to show the effort that we are putting in, but currently, we have to do a lot of manual tasks and customizations. If there is a way to generate such reports, it would be helpful. 

By default, it shows only weekly reports. There should also be monthly and quarterly reports.

We have been using Rubrik for the last one year.

Its performance and stability are fine. We haven't faced any issues in the past year.

It is scalable. We can add a node and scale it. 

In terms of its usage, it is used every day. Currently, we have only five users because we also have other solutions. We also have Dell EMC Avamar and Networker. 

We have been using EMC for the past seven or eight years, and we have recently started moving to Rubrik. When I calculate the ROI for both, there is a lot of difference, and that's why we started using Rubrik.

We are using Rubrik only for the VMware backup. VMware works fine with Dell EMC Avamar and Rubrik. Our environment also has SAP HANA, Oracle, SQL, but we are not using Rubrik for these. We use Dell EMC NetWorker for these.

It was not complex. It was very fast, which is also a good thing about Rubrik. It just takes one day for hardware mounting and connectivity. In three days, we completed everything, including the integration between vCenters.

It was implemented in-house. 

Its maintenance is minimal. Usually, for patching, we take support, and our staff works with the support. Currently, I have three to four people working for the data protection part. They work with Rubrik, and they also work with Avamar.

There is just one cost, and it includes software and hardware. So, everything is included. 

It is better than other solutions in terms of cost. We also have Dell EMC Avamar in our environment, and we have to pay for the hardware and data domain. We also have to pay for the software license for the data protection suite. So, based on my calculations, I find Rubrik cheaper, and we are also getting good performance.

I would rate it an eight out of 10. Technically and operationally, everything is fine. In terms of implementation and cost also, it is fine, but its reporting needs to be improved.

The use case is for backups of virtual environments, so it covers all IT areas. Whether it's infrastructure, virtualization or database platforms, our organization uses it for backups and storage.

The solution is deployed on-premise. The version I'm running is 5.3.1.

The most valuable feature is the archive to cloud location and the automation around the PowerShell script. There are also reports and dashboards. There is simplicity in going through the interface and servers and setting SLAs. Overall, the product is good. It's just a single pane of glass.

Rubrik has ransomware and encryption, so there is nothing I can fault on the technology.

The only thing that can be improved is catering for open source databases because at the moment it doesn't cater for Mongo, MySQL, and Postgres. It has a good database agnostic.

I have been using Rubrik for three years.

Rubrik has come a long way. Initially, it was a bit unstable in giving incorrect information, but I think that has been rectified. The performance of the devices was an issue. When you added devices, it was a problem. Rubrik actually leverages off your Microsoft VSS, so Rubrik is basically just a front-end.

It is scalable, but you're just locked in because you have to buy a Rubrik device unless you go with the cloud.

There's another team that does maintenance. There are other products, so the team isn't just dedicated to Rubrik. We have about five individuals using Rubrik.

We are planning to increase usage. There are between a few hundred workloads to a thousand in IT. We're basically looking at cloud technology, so we're not actually using Rubrik.

The technical support is excellent.

I played with various technologies. I played with Veeam, Data Domain, Commvault, and Tivoli.

We switched to Rubrik because of the user interface. The other products use the same VSS Microsoft. The only difference between all these backup products is just the user interface, the PowerShell modules, and the reporting that it presents. 

The underlying technology is all the same, whether it is Veeam, Data Domain, whatever it is. The only thing is the compression and the deduplication. 

The initial setup was straightforward. Deployment took a day or two.

We worked with Rubrik for deployment.

I would rate this solution 7 out of 10. 

In terms of the compression, there are other products out there that are better in terms of deduplication and recovery time. Another thing is that you have to buy a Rubrik device if you don't go cloud. You can't go buy another piece of software, so you're actually locked in.

My advice is if you want to go through Rubrik, then you must forward something that can protect the data and the backups from ransomware for end-to-end protection.

We are using Rubrik for our server backups.

The Live Mount feature is one of the main features we use. It is saving us time in restoring the VMs, allowing us to give them quickly to the developers for testing. There is a faster turnaround time.

The most valuable feature has been the Live Mount feature.

There are some features Rubrik planning to give in next version. For instance, a tool where we can integrate with our SAP HANA native tool directly from the HANA studio/HANA Cockpit, to trigger backup and restore. We understand it is available in the new version, looking forward to it.

I have been using Rubrik for approximately three years.

Rubrik is stable.

Rubrik is scalable. We can manage multiple Rubrik appliances from a single console.

All of our IT infrastructure team are using Rubrik. We are using it in at our data centers in  India, and we have another  in the middle east. We have recently increased our usage of the solution.

The technical support is good. We have good contact, all the issues are resolved on time.

Positive

We have previously used a backup tool only for virtual infrastructure, as we were migrating to SAP HANA from a virtual environment. We wanted to have a single solution for virtual and physical  environments , Rubrik is helping us in a great way here.

The initial setup was straightforward. However, since Rubrik was new to use and different than the previous our solution, there were some new things we need to understand, such as SLA based orchestrating. We were used to scheduling it manually before, Once SLA is done the automation in place.

The full implementation process took us two and a half weeks.

The implementation was directly from the OEM.

We have received a return on investment.

We pay annually for the license for Rubrik. There are no additional costs. Initially, we needed to set it up, negotiate and finalize the offer.

I would advise people who are wanting to implement this solution to evaluate their business case and the business requirement prior to making their decision because every enterprise has a different requirements and environments, they should do the thorough assessments, POC's  then decide on what backup fits their needs.

I rate Rubrik a nine out of ten

Our primary use case is to back everything up. Rubrik backs up all of our servers on a schedule that takes the bulk of every bit of the mundane tasks out of our hands. It automates everything and frees us up to be able to look at issues where something may not have backed up correctly. We can then investigate those servers to see if they need to be updated or if there's a problem. 

A lot of times, admin will drop new servers out without telling anybody. We have SLA domains set up in order to catch those so that we're not completely caught off guard by them. We can put them in the proper SLA for the correct backup schedule and proper retention if it needs to be replicated automatically right away and from one site to the other. From there, if it needs to be kept longer, it'll go up to the cloud for cold storage.

When it comes to saving time managing our backups, Rubrik has saved us a lot of time compared to what we were using. It feels like it has saved us lifetimes of time because the process used to be difficult. It's not just the day to time savings. When something goes wrong, that's where the real time savings comes into play. We are able to get back to where we need to be more confidently and with much fewer steps.

As far as the day-to-day stuff goes, I don't know if there is a way to put an actual value on that other than things are not nearly as hectic on the day-to-day, stressing over whether or not the backups ran because, with Rubrik, we already know they ran.

In terms of reducing our recovery time, it has saved us hours. For a recovery event, it used to take hours into days and now it's less than an hour, it takes minutes. It's really impressive. Rubrik makes the job much easier. It's very intuitive, where everything used to be very complicated. You can almost have better job security because of how complicated it was. Whereas now, the setup of the whole system takes no time. There's a lot of day-to-day time savings that allows us to get freed up to do other things, but also to make sure that what we do have is working optimally. Before, there was a lot of stuff that would fall through the cracks that we wouldn't really know about until something went wrong.

Rubrik affects my team's productivity. I'm not even the main backup specialist on our team, but it freed up enough time for our backup specialists to show me how to do everything. It's ridiculously easy. It's simple enough for me to be able to do it where it's not my top priority task throughout the day. When something happens and someone needs a recovery, I'm able to go in and do it, even though I haven't done it in a week or so. Before, there wouldn't have been the time to show anyone else or take the time to actually learn to be able to instruct someone else on how to do it effectively and correctly.

It provides a lot of time for education and deep-diving into figuring out why certain things didn't work and then correcting those issues.

We protect virtual environments. It's all VMware, SQL database, and a few Oracle. There are some physical machines as well that require backup agents.

The recovery is the most valuable feature. The interface is very clean, streamlined, and simple to actually perform a recovery. It's four clicks away from being done, depending on what you want to do. That's on something that is already automated on top of that. All of the backups are already automated, so when something comes up and someone's requesting a backup or recovery of a server for whatever reason, it takes very little time to get in, find what you're looking for, and get it done. It's not a drawn-out process. 

The web interface is very intuitive. I compare it to an iPhone. Everything is where you expect it to be. The main tabs are very well laid out. The drop-downs inside of those tabs make sense. It's very easy to use and it makes sense. It's not the traumatic experience of older products.

The learning curve is incredibly short. The beautiful part about it is that it makes sense so that you don't have to use it every single day to be able to go back in and do what you want to do. There's a lot to be said for that.

I use Rubrik daily to ensure that everything backed up as expected. I look to see what may or may not have backed up and why. I do that aspect now a lot more. I do backups periodically when the main contact is not available. 

We use SLA-based policy automation. It solidified our data protection operations. That alone gave us the ability to simplify and streamline the process. We were able to come down with independent SLAs that met the specific needs for whatever department or server was being protected. Whether it's production, DevTest, utility servers, whatever the case is, there are individual SLAs that we're able to make simple changes at the wholesale level, if we need to. Once they're set up, they're good to go. It makes things very easy and we can set up a bunch of them which makes life tremendously easier.

In terms of the archival functionality, we pushed things off to S3 and it works. At that point, when you're bringing things back from archival, that can be a little slow, but that's a matter of things outside of Rubrik's control. It depends on what it is, where it's at, how old it is, and what it is you're paying for.

Predictive Search to find servers makes life so much easier. We're able to drill down and put it in a simple part of whatever server name it is. A lot of times people need the server restored. We check the server name and they give us some name that's not exactly the technical server name. We're able to fish down and find what we're looking for much quicker than trying to rely on them to give us the proper name. The Predictive Search definitely helps everywhere.

Our main Rubrik guy has used the API. I continually hear that it needs better documentation. I can't even get the API to work right but that's mainly on me. 

If there was something that we could get Rubrik to fix, it would be when our DBS takes snapshots of a server or the database, the replication doesn't kick off fast enough. They can't remote it to the peer site and manipulate it back up in order to move it over, take a copy of production, slap it over, and test it out. As I understand, they are working on it. Replication works. We also get spoiled by how good things are now. We get to a point where it is so easy but when something isn't instant gratification, it seems that everything else is so amazing, why isn't this right?

They're doing everything I need it to do. When everything works so well, and it's so fast, and then you stumble upon something that's not the speed of light, it's confusing. 

I've been using Rubrik for five years. 

We use both SaaS and physical appliances because we have Edge devices that are considered physical, but for the most part, the majority of everything we do is SaaS.

It's always on. It is available all the time.

Scalability is not an issue. 

Technical support is pretty good. You can reach out to a support agent and have someone talking to you that you can actually work with after 15 minutes. Opening tickets online is decent. 

If you give them a sad face on a review, someone will reach out and ask what happened and what they can do better. They're definitely all about customer service and customer support.

The installation was pretty simple.

The deployment strategy was four nodes on each side of each location and we have two locations. We did a POC and it was set up in no time. It was ridiculously fast and simple. Now, we're up to 16 nodes in each location.

There's not much to it. It's not a 28 step process. There's a little bit to it but it's plug-and-play, as much as a solution could be. 

My advice would be to do a proof of concept. You won't be sorry. Play with it. We came from other products that were nowhere near as capable or user-friendly as Rubrik, so when we got in, it was a night and day difference that Rubrik was so easy. 

Rubrik is so much better. We're always looking at other avenues and options because other companies will always ask us to show us their product but there's nothing out there that has made us even consider switching. There's a lot to be said for competence.

I would rate Rubrik a ten out of ten. 

Our primary use case is on-premises backup and cloud DR. We're using the Rubrik appliance with their CDM technology for our on-premises solution. We are also using their CloudOut technology to leverage their cloud DR as part of their offering.

We're backing up Windows infrastructure and on-premises applications such as SQL and Exchange file servers, and we're storing that locally on their appliance. Then, we replicate our environment to the cloud so that in the event of a true disaster, where we lost our physical infrastructure, we'd be able to spin up in the cloud, using their CloudOut technology. This would allow us to be up and running in the cloud until we were able to get infrastructure back online.

The environments that we are backing up are physical and virtual. We don't have any cloud-native environments, so we're not doing any cloud backups right now. We use the cloud, although it is a DR target. Our main task is VM backup, which is between 75% and 80%. We have a few physical boxes that we're backing up, as well. For example, I have the actual hypervisors to back up, and then a few miscellaneous other servers that haven't been virtualized.

The applications and servers that we protect include Microsoft Hyper-V for our virtualized infrastructure, Microsoft SQL server for the SQL side, and all of the other infrastructure, in terms of applications, that is Windows-based. We are very invested in the Microsoft platform and using Rubrik to back all aspects of that up. We do have a couple of Linux-based services running, but I would say that we're 95% Windows-based, whether that's Hyper-V VMs or Microsoft SQL, or Microsoft file servers or IAS app servers. 

One of the ways that Rubrik has improved the way our organization functions is time savings. Coming off of the backup solution we had before, we were spending several hours a week, every day sometimes, dealing with backups that fail. Other issues include trying to make space or deal with an archive target that was offline. We were just spending a lot of time on it.

Being a smaller team, when we spend time just dealing with the backups, that takes away from us being able to work on other projects that support the business growth and support other functions within the organization. With Rubrik, there'll be weeks sometimes that I never log into it. Maybe two, three weeks at a time, I never log into Rubrik because we get email alerts and they have great error handling. If there's an error or something happens, we get an email.

A lot of times, the appliance will take care of itself and then deal with that missed backup, or whatever happened. But that's very rare. It'll go for several months without having an error. A lot of times, the errors are not a Rubrik issue. It's always that Windows did something that caused the backup to fail and Rubrik reruns it, then it works.

Not having to spend any time in the console because we can rely on the alerting and automated reporting has allowed us to focus on other areas of the business and not deal with backups. Essentially, it gives us peace of mind that Rubrik works. It was definitely a change to get used to, not logging in to it. We buy this really cool piece of technology and turns out that we're not in it a whole lot, but that just goes to show Rubrik has a robust solution that we can depend on.

This product has definitely increased productivity because we're not dealing with backups. They work on their own and it does its thing. We made the investment into Rubrik to not have to deal with backups and it delivers on that. This leaves us time to focus on other things because we're not dealing with a backup that failed.

It is difficult to put an exact number on the amount of time that we're saving by using Rubrik, although, with our previous solution, there were weeks where we had to spend several hours dealing with failed backups. On a bad week, it may have been between six and eight hours. On average, by not dealing with backups at all, we are saving several hours a week.

Using the SLA-based policy automation has simplified our data protection operations. We are no longer scheduling backups or trying to figure out availability, or time slots, where we can back up our systems. For example, we don't have to consider things like we've got backups running at 1:00 AM, 2:00 AM, or 3:00 AM, and we're trying to find a slot. Instead, the SLA engine that they have is super easy to use and does that job for us.

It was really good for us to move to the SLA-based approach from a traditional backup because we were able to, for business use, cover tasks such as retaining email for one year. In their SLA engine, it's very easy to find that. Another example might be backing up a set of test-SQL servers where we only need 14 days. Through the policy engine, you set what you want the retention to be and it takes care of scheduling and managing those backups.

Once we have them set, they are stable and continue to work because we don't change SLAs often. We define the retention that we need for each app and each service, and then it just works. Overall, the SLA-based approach makes it very easy to achieve your backups.

Luckily, we have not used their ransomware recovery. We've not had any incidents or ransomware where we needed to, but we have tested recovering assets in the event that happens and we've always been able to recover in our test scenarios, in our tabletop exercises. This is the type of feature that you never want to rely on outside of testing because it means that you're having a bad day, so hopefully, we never have to use it. That said, if we do have to, we're confident that it would deliver.

Similar to the case with ransomware, we have been lucky in that we haven't had any major disasters where we had to fully recover anything. In the usual case, where files are lost because something is overwritten, or something gets deleted, it has definitely saved a lot of time with the instant recovery.

Using the predictive file search, we're able to put those files or directories back or roll back a database in a few minutes. It's very quick and has definitely reduced our recovery time. We've not had to do a lot of restores, but when we do have to restore the occasional file or put a database version back, it's very quick and has saved us quite a bit of time from what the old Unitrends system would have looked like.

This product has also saved us time with respect to managing backups. Prior to Rubrik, every day of the week, we were spending an hour or two hours or sometimes longer dealing with backups, and that's now completely gone. There are some times that we go for weeks and don't even log into the appliance because we get the reports and they tell us everything we need. We trust Rubrik because we've had it long enough now that we know that when it says it completed the backup, the backup's there, and if we need it, we can get it back.

The most valuable feature is the Instant Recovery, where we can restore a VM or SQL database or any server or application, and have it up and running on their appliance within a few seconds. The recovery time of the instant restore is instantaneous and there is no complexity to it. What we're recovering doesn't matter to them, and we don't have to wait for it to mount a recovery image or do anything like that. When they say instant, they mean instant.

The ease of use is important to us, as well. It's super easy to get set up. Within a few hours of them deploying the on-premises appliance, we were backing up data locally into the cloud and able to test restores.

Rubrik is really good about releasing updates and we have had no issues with the process. They make it very easy, working with their support when they do put out an update, and they assist with doing the health checks beforehand to ensure that there are no issues. They do a pre-flight check on those updates to ensure that they're compatible with the appliance. Then, we schedule a time off-hours to apply it. They are normally pretty quick and we've never had issues where we had to roll back. They've always been flawless updates.

The CloudOut technology allows us to replicate data in our environment to the cloud, and then it can be spun up and used in the cloud if our physical environment is not available.

The VM backup and the SQL backup are blazingly fast for both backup and recovery.

The web interface is really good. and it's only gotten better with every update. It was good, to begin with, but they've improved the speed and added features in each update. It is a modern interface that works in any browser, and we can get to it from a tablet or computer. The type of device you access it from doesn't matter because it fits all screens, and it's intuitive and easy to use.

The archival functionality is very good. It is very easy to archive data to the cloud, and this is something that we were looking for. You can do it all from their web interface, which is a plus. You don't have to jump into the command-line interface or run scripts or anything to make it work. It is all configurable in the UI and very easy to dump data off to the cloud and pull backups back from the cloud archives.

We have used the predictive search functionality and hands down, it's the easiest way that I've ever recovered files. It's just like searching Google, but it searches your own files for recovery. It's easier than if you told somebody you could use a Google-like search to recover files, I don't think they would believe you until they've used Rubrik, because it does work that well. It's quick to search, no matter if you're searching a VM or even a physical box, it works across them.

With their new global file search in the latest version of their CDM, you don't even have to know what host that file was on. You can just type in a file name or a part of the file name and it'll find it. When a user comes and says, "We lost the file and it was called something like this," with any other solution, I don't know how you would find it. I think it would take a lot of work. With Rubrik, within a few seconds, you have file results. It's a pretty great feature.

We would like to see more support for Hyper-V. They support Hyper-V and it works with our CloudOut, the cloud DR, but they seem to add features for VMware first and Hyper-V gets added second or sometimes several releases after the VMware feature comes out. Seeing more support for Hyper-V would be a plus.

We have been using Rubrik for about a year and a half.

This solution is very stable, dependable, and reliable. We've had it for a year and a half and nothing has ever happened with the appliance, or come up where we'd think differently.

Their updates have been really good and we've never had an issue after applying an update where something didn't work.

Knowing that Rubrik has built a robust platform, which is what we're dependent on, gives us peace of mind.

This solution is highly scalable. You can add nodes as needed and expand the environment. There are no limitations to it in terms of hardware or Rubrik's support.

In order to expand, you would have to purchase licensing. Depending on the company's budget, that could be a limiting factor. As long as you can afford the licensing, if you grow then Rubrik can grow with you.

There are three of us in the company who use the product from a management standpoint. I am the system administrator, the CIO has access, and then the support tech has access to the system. I am responsible for maintaining it.

It is integrated 100% within our organization. We have no plans to do anything more with it because it's being used in every aspect of the business for backup and protection. We're fully invested and committed to it.

The vendor has world-class support, and some of the best support we have for our solutions. Rubrik support has been great to work with when we do have to work with them, which isn't often.

Prior to Rubrik, we were using the Unitrends solution for our backup. We switched because we couldn't depend on the Unitrends product. It was missing backups, for example. There were some times where every day, every week, five days a week, we'd spend a couple of hours a day, or maybe an hour a day, in Unitrends trying to get backups to run because they would miss a whole set of SQL servers or miss VMs.

We also couldn't do cloud archiving with it. It just wasn't capable of that.

I think we had outgrown the Unitrends solution. I think Unitrends is great for a small company, but anything small to medium and larger, Unitrends just isn't a good solution.

It seems like a very traditional backup solution. It's not forward-thinking and innovative and new like Rubrik is. So, we just knew that we needed something that we could depend on because, with Unitrends, we knew that if there was a disaster, we couldn't recover and so that's why we started looking at something else. We were very happy when we found Rubrik. It restored the peace of mind that we didn't have with Unitrends.

The initial setup is straightforward. Rubrik sends out a technical engineer when you get the appliance to help you get it online. Within a couple of hours of them being on-site, we were backing up data locally, as well as to the cloud. By the time they left, we had tested restores and our environment was backing up locally and into the cloud.

We did not have an implementation strategy and just followed Rubrik's guidance on how to implement it. They had a plan that was based on information that we provided them about our environment. That way, when they were on-site, we maximized our time with them to get it deployed. We really just trusted Rubrik with it.

There were two people from our company and one person from Rubrik involved with the deployment. I was on the technical implementation side, and our CIO was involved in the purchasing, decision-making, and ultimate sign-off on the solution.

The deployment was handled by Rubrik's technical support engineer, who is assigned to you during the sales process. They are somebody local, in fact. They are based in Iowa where we are.

You work with them through the whole sales process and then they help you get the appliance set up and then they're even your contact even after it gets set up. This means that if you ever have questions or you need assistance, they're the person to help and they're very knowledgeable. Our engineer was able to answer any questions we had.

In the sense that we're not spending IT resources on managing the solution, that's really been the return on investment.

Rubrik is definitely a premium solution, but if you can afford it and put it in your budget, they're definitely the way to go. They're not the cheapest solution on the block and I don't think they would tell you that they are. You pay a premium for Rubrik, but you're getting a premium service that comes with immutable backups, instant recovery, and world-class support. It's well worth the investment into Rubrik.

In the subscription, they have an appliance renewal program, and the maintenance is set up so that you know, upfront, what the potential increase is. They give you a range.

Before choosing Rubrik, we evaluated other solutions including Dell Avamar, which is their data protection solution. We also looked at Cohesity and with respect to Unitrends, we knew that they were out, so we didn't re-evaluate the product.

The results of our evaluation showed that Rubrik really outperformed the others, with just their support of Hyper-V. They all seem to support Hyper-V to some extent, but Rubrik seemed to have the best support for it at the time.

The speed of Rubrik and the ease of use also stood out, compared to the others.

The Dell solution was very much a traditional backup system and we wanted to get away from that. We wanted to go to something that was cloud-ready for archive and DR. We also wanted a product with great support for virtual machines because that's where our infrastructure was going. We just didn't get that feeling with the Dell solution. I'm sure that it is a great product and they probably sell a lot of it, but it wasn't the new solution we were looking for.

Then with Cohesity, we just didn't see it as a good fit. Overall, Rubrik just looked better and fit our needs better. We had to consider the infrastructure and the workloads we were protecting, as well as the features that we were looking for in terms of the easy backup and the immutable backup protection for ransomware, the CloudOut, and cloud DR technology. It all just was a little bit better in Rubrik and just beat out Cohesity.

We are heavily virtualized and have lots of SQL as well, which is why we picked Rubrik. These are two things that they are very good at.

They're definitely a forward-thinking and future-thinking company in terms of offering their VM backup and their SQL backup, so they really shine over the competitors we looked at.

Although the updates are really good, we are a little bit behind for some compliance reasons. However, we have access to all their features and we try to stay as current as possible. We're on almost the latest version.

My advice for anybody who is considering this product is that it's a world-class solution. If you want peace of mind at night, immutable backups, cloud-native support, cloud DR support, all within a single solution with world-class technical support, Rubrik is the way to go. If you can afford it, you're getting the best. You're getting a premium solution and everything that they say they can do, they can do. They can prove it to you or customers can prove it. They've never oversold on what they can offer.

My biggest takeaway is that it's a good investment in your backups. It's not the cheapest solution, but the investment you're making protects your business and ensures that if you ever need your backups, they're going to work. You can trust Rubrik.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Rubrik has been our main backup and disaster recovery solution for two campuses.

We are using the hardware appliance, rather than the virtual solution. The environments that we are protecting are 99% virtual and just a couple of physical systems.

The specific systems that we protect are SQL, Oracle, ERP, and our wireless controllers.

We used to have to dedicate a full-time employee just to look at and manage the backups. After implementing Rubrik, we no longer need a dedicated person. It's user-friendly to the point where anybody can just look at it and figure what's going on.

The time we spend on recovery testing has been improved by up to 50%. Similarly, we have saved time in managing our backups. The savings in time for managing our backups is up to 50%.

Using Rubrik has helped to reduce our downtime by up to 50%.

The simplicity of the SLA design is the most useful feature. You just set it and you don't need to come back to it again or worry about it.

The SLA-based policy administration has helped us to adjust the workflow, saving us time. This is because what we have right now is that we set up an SLA based on what the appliance does; for example, it might be an SQL server or an application server.

The web interface is user-friendly, clean, and it provides a good summary of what you're protecting at a glance. It also shows you whether there are jobs running, or not. It is my daily task to look at the web interface to monitor our status.

We use the archival functionality and it seems to work fine. We don't see a conflict with it.

The integration with EMC Isilon works well and it's a really great idea to have Rubrik take the snapshot not just on its end, but on the appliance end, and be able to retrieve it.

We used the predictive search functionality and find that it makes things easier to do. We save a lot of time in trying to figure out whether we need to download a file first, or whether we need to unarchive it.

The reporting, in particular the customization of reports, needs to be improved. It should be more user-friendly and a little bit easier to do. The reports should be less dull, as they are a little bit too technical for management.

When upgrading the software, the data on the node being upgraded should still be accessible from the other nodes.

We have been a Rubrik customer since 2017.

This product is very stable. Each time that we asked to do a backup job or a restore, it simply performs the command. We have not seen any compatibility issues.

There is no maintenance, except for security advisories that Rubrik recommends once in a while.

We have not seen any limitation in the amount of data that we are backing up. Between two locations, we are backing up approximately 40 terabytes.

The support from Rubrik is excellent. They do support tunnels on the back end, and you can simply email support and they will get an answer to you within that hour. Or, if you call, then someone will address your issue right away. 

Previously, we used to have Dell EMC Avamar and we were running into a problem where the backup jobs would conflict with each other. Now, Rubrik does that for us and fixes it. Not only that, but we're uploading to Azure as well. This means that we didn't have to worry about that part and how to configure it. It can be a complicated process, but the Rubrik software made it simpler to do and easy to manage.

This is one of the reasons that we switched to Rubrik.

We also have EMC Isilon, and the backup jobs were taking far too long to complete. It would take days and with Rubrik, there was a significant improvement. I would estimate a 40% cut in the time required to complete a backup.

I find the deployment process very straightforward. It was set up in just a few hours.

The process is basically to rack and stack, then assignment management and data VLAN to the Rubrik appliance.

Three of us were involved in the initial setup. There was me, a colleague of mine, and a Rubrik engineer. The engineer from Rubrik was very professional, insightful, and answered all of the questions that we had about the product.

As a technical person, I don't have the details, but from what I have heard, it can be expensive.

I did not personally evaluate other products but my colleague, who was handling the project, evaluated Veeam and Cohesity.

Rubrik is fully-equipped in the sense that it is a full-service backup appliance. You can search, restore, perform backups, and you can live-mount.

My advice for anybody who is considering this product is to look at what type of appliance you have and check the compatibility. Review case studies or testimonials from customers who have that appliance to get their feedback on it, and then do a demo.

What I have learned from using this product is that when the appliance does throw an error, it's not typically Rubrik's fault because they do the API calls. It's on the appliance end, so you have to keep it up to date. This is from both a firmware and software perspective.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.