Rubrik Reviews

We primarily use it for data backup for VMware as well as AIX, which is an IBM platform. We also use it for the value-adds that Rubrik brings, including Live Mount.

We are on version 5.2 right now. We upgrade every little while. The version of the appliance is the r500 series.

Our environments are virtual and physical. We don't protect anything in the cloud currently.

Rubrik protects AIX versions 6 and 7, then primarily Windows and Linux hosted on VMware vSphere. We also do some standalone Linux and Windows boxes. As a subset of the Windows, we protect a lot of SQL Server databases. We do some IBM databases as well, but primarily SQL Server on Windows.

We like that Rubrik is SLA-based. Instead of us defining specific policies to specific servers, we create the SLAs which are kind of the foundation of your backup strategy. We then assign objects, servers, databases, or whatever we're protecting to an SLA. The SLAs work well, as in, they do what you expect, which seems intuitive. However, coming from our previous backup solution, backup software and intuition don't always go together. So, we are very happy.

Their Live Mount technology uses Rubrik as storage, while using our Cisco UCS Blades as compute for rapid restores of backups, which is really awesome. That is one of the biggest value-adds that Rubrik provides. It saves time as well as being easy and works well. Our previous backup solution restores were cumbersome, time-consuming, and labor intensive to do. They required a lot of validation. With Rubrik Live Mount, you can restore a system in well under a minute, whereas it would take up to hours in the past.

Live Mount is where we do the majority of our big recoveries, unless it is a file recovery. A file recovery takes a few minutes to restore to where the file in the event a file was accidentally deleted by a user, etc. There has been at least a 90 percent reduction in recovery time based on our previous solution, from the need to recover something to when it's actually recovered went from hours to minutes.

We really like their SQL tools around SQL Server as well as the ability to do transaction log backups and restore to a point-in-time based on those transaction logs. We also like the restore options: restoring in place or mounting a database to another server. Their toolset around SQL Server works really well.

We like the web interface a lot. It is simple, but powerful.

We like the solution’s archival functionality. We currently archive offsite to an NFS store in one location and a cloud S3 location for some other objects. We have been happy with the way that both of those work.

We have used their search, which is powerful.

I would like to see Rubrik better integrate with Microsoft Active Directory. Instead of just backing up a full domain controller, I would like the solution to have Active Directory object knowledge so we can restore specific objects in Active Directory versus restoring the whole domain controller. 

I have been using this solution for about two and a half years.

We are happy with the stability. As far as the stability of the solution, like the software itself, it seems like it has been good. Obviously, it is not perfect, but we have been happy with the upgrade cadence and software release cadence that Rubrik has released with stability fixes and/or bug fixes.

As far as the company goes, they had probably more questions a couple of years ago, but now it seems like Rubrik is one of the big players in the data management sphere, and it doesn't seem like the company is going anywhere, at least as far as we know, which is a comforting thing.

We haven't had to do too much on the scalability front. However, the on-prem scalability makes sense. We are happy with it. We have currently an eight-node cluster on-prem, and if we needed to add more storage, we would essentially add another node or two to our cluster. So, we are happy with our options. We could scale from small to very large easily and with minimal configuration changes.

We have been very pleased every time that we have had to contact their support. Their support has been really good. 

We came from an old IBM solution that was complex. 

The initial setup is straightforward. The hardware install and initial setup went very smoothly and quickly. 

The only issue, two and a half years ago, was that we didn't have a great recommendation on how to back up specifically large servers. There are two different ways that we could do it: 

1. With a full VM snapshot.
2. With a file set level, which basically goes through the server based on a filter and only backs up specific files. 

We initially did the file set method, even though we were backing up everything. That was not the most effective way of doing this. We reversed course and just started backing up everything via vSphere snapshots, which works so much better. However, we probably could have received a little better guidance initially on that front from the guy who came onsite to set the appliance up.

Initial setup, after the planning, was probably only about four hours before we started getting backups. It was about a full week before all the backups were complete. We have some very large file servers that we were backing up. Some of those took a long time to finish for that first full backup.

We switched from our previous backup platform. We just transitioned over to Rubrik, shutting off the backup of the old system one day, then starting to back up with Rubrik the next day. Because most of our servers or objects are in vSphere, our Rubrik integration with vSphere made this very easy.

The main thing would be the time savings for those of us in IT operations. In the past, coming from a complex backup solution that involved disk, tape, and rotating tapes, it ended up being almost a full FTE's job to manage and babysit the backup solution. We are down to under a quarter of an FTE. My manager says that it provided us with an FTE savings, and that frees us up to work on other more value-add things, because backup is not a huge value-add. It's necessary, and Rubrik has a lot of value-add features, but the backing up data isn't a value-add until you need it. So, we are saving between 35 and 40 hours a week.

It is like an insurance for when the inevitable happens. You don't know you need something until the minute you need it, then you need it right away.

Rubrik is not the cheapest solution, but we've been happy with the time savings that we have seen. At least from what we have spent so far, we have been happy with the return on investment.

We did a trial of Polaris Radar, which is ransomware detection. We saw value there, but it didn't fit in our budget, at least for the fiscal year that we were working with it.

I don't think Rubrik Go was an option when we initially purchased this solution.

We evaluated an upgraded version of our IBM solution, because our version was old. We also evaluated Veem. We have been very happy with our selection of Rubrik.

Definitely consider Rubrik if you value a simple, elegant, powerful backup tool.

We did a trial of Rubrik Polaris Radar, which automatically detects file changes that would be an indication of a ransomware infection. We were happy with that. In the event of ransomware, their cloud-based tool would detect it. Also, we would be happy with the way that we could recover. Thankfully, we have not had to put this in practice. We haven't had to recover from ransomware. However, in every test that we have done, we have been very happy with how it works and the concept of immutable backups. Once the data is backed up, it can't be changed. This is important for ransomware recovery, so we are happy with how this would work in the event that we would ever have to use it.

Rubrik's pre-built integrations or API support for integration with other solutions are some things that we would like to explore more in the future, other than just referencing some basic PowerShell commands or referencing the API through some basic PowerShell.

I don't have an example of where we had to recover something from a catastrophic failure, which is good. However, we have confidence that if we did need to, there would be a reduction in downtime because of their recovery features.

Biggest lesson learnt: We don't need to spend as much time managing backups as we used to.

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

Our use cases are for backing up all critical databases on our SQL servers. It also backs up critical virtual machines in our VMware environment.

The most specific reason why Rubrik is a step above just about everyone else out there is that it's cutting edge. With Live Mount I can instantly spin up a server for backup in less than two minutes. It takes 10 minutes to backup and it also takes under a few minutes to recover. With Avamar, these would take an hour or more.

The ease of use is the most valuable feature. It is a very simple system compared to just about any other backup technology like Commvault or EMC Avamar. It is extremely easy to use and very versatile.

They have what's called an organization which means different groups of access to Rubrik, but the alerting only goes to the admins. My suggestion to Rubrik is to make sure that the separate organizations or groups of users get the appropriate alerting.

I have been using Rubrik for six months. 

The hardware is on-premises and also replicates to the cloud. It's a backup appliance but that appliance has software on it. We are also utilizing a software version at another data center where we're not going to install the hardware. And it also tiers to the cloud.

Rubrik seems rock-solid to me. We haven't had that many issues, we're able to backup and recover things a lot faster. We haven't had that many support tickets as opposed to other solutions.

It's very scalable. You're able to add additional controllers and also add storage on the file. It's also expanding their Polaris, which is their online software manageability portion. That, in their future release, will allow us to manage all of our Rubrik clients at all of our data centers which is excellent for scalability.

We have around 20 users. The majority of those are our database administrators. They are allowed access to database servers, so they can do their backups, manage backups, and recover backups. A handful of people in the U.S. and Canada are the backup administrators. The overall maintenance works on the machines to backup schedules and recovery.

For the maintenance, you can do it with as little as one person per site. We have five to 10 people for both Canada and U.S., which is five data centers.

My role is to design and implement this technology. Our systems administrators who manage the VMware environment would be the ones that would handle the day to day with the Rubrik backups and recovery.

We're in the process of replacing all the old backup technology with this. We're looking at roughly 300 virtual machines per data center. So we're looking at an environment that is probably 3000 virtual machines. The database count for all of those is probably in the hundreds. It's pretty significant. We have around a 65% adoption rate. 

Rubrik has the best vendor support that I've dealt with. They're probably the best. They're the most knowledgeable, they're the most respectful, they call a lot better, they will follow through to the end. Not like with VMware.

We used Commvault in Canada and in the U.S. we had Dell EMC Avamar.

We switched from them because of the cost of ownership. The complicity of Avamar, the fact that Avamar constantly had software and hardware errors that had to be dealt with support, and the fact that Dell EMC support is horrendous made us switch. They would not take ownership of an issue and work it through to the end. They'd give us a one-word answer. It was a nightmare.

There are not very many pros, as far as staying with the Avamar solution. It's old, it's outdated, it's slow, and it only half works. It's extremely expensive. It takes forever to restore. There isn't a pro to keeping the old solution.

I didn't use Commvault that much. That was our UK team or our Canada team. I couldn't give too many details. I know that it was an older solution as well, and I know that they were having issues with it.

Versus any other solution, Rubrik was a lot simpler to configure. The first system was up, on the network and configured and ready to backup in under 20 minutes, versus multiple days of configuration with another solution.

We used Rubrik and we also used one of our vendors for the deployment. Rubrik was very knowledgeable and knows what they're doing especially because it's pretty new to them. We had to bring on Rubrik resources, but Rubrik is an excellent company to support.

We have seen ROI. The cost is much cheaper. It's also because I was able to recover three machines in 15 minutes versus nine hours.

Anyone who's using Rubrik or any solution is to do a POC, or a proof of concept, that is key. If you can do a proof of concept and you can put the device on your environment and test it, it would justify any costs that Rubrik will be asking for that product.

I believe we looked at Cohesity. There's a couple of other EMC solutions. Their latest, IPDA, is their latest Avamar solution. It's an integrated Avamar. It also was not appealing. It was expensive. And it had the same complicity and the same slowness the old system had.

Cohesity wasn't an instant recovery, like Rubrik. That was the main issue. Live Mount is one thing that I think customers will find a blessing. It gives you the ability to just spin up a machine that's already been backed up instantly on your network. No one else can touch that.

My advice would be to work closely with their personnel to implement it. For a large organization like ourselves create an internal project with a project manager.

You can have different departments and teams work together on implementing the different systems from the old backup solution to the new backup solution because you will have to have different teams working in cohesion to change that over.

The biggest lesson I would say I've learned using Rubrik would go for any new technology. Make sure to do a proof of concept with another vendor at every device and build a test plan, a project on how you want to test that product and put it through all the different tests. Ask: how fast does it back up, fast does it recover, how easy is it to use, what is their support department like?

I would rate Rubrik an eight out of ten. Their product is getting better. There are still some things that they need to polish off. In comparison, I would give Avamar a two out of 10.

It was a test environment for testing the backups.

Rubrik is a little better than Cohesity.

Rubrik, when compared to Cohesity, Dell, and Veritas, was the best of the four.

For the most part, it is easy to use.

It is secure.

The dashboard and user interface could be improved to make them more user-friendly.

Rubrik was last used six months ago.

We had some stability issues. We encountered some bugs and glitches.

I recall having to go to the lab because we couldn't get in from the outside, we had to gain access from within, and I had a network.

Rubrik is easy to scale.

We had a team of about seven users when we were working with Rubrik.

Technical support was pretty good. They were excellent.

I have also worked with Cohesity, Dell, and Veritas. Cohesity was one of the simplest. It is more user-friendly.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The Rubrik, team assisted us with the installation and the updates.

I would rate Rubrik a nine out of ten.

We use Rubrik for backup and recovery.

Rubrik is critical for our organization because it keeps our data safe. It helps us meet all of our POs and TOs.

The most valuable features of Rubrik are the restoration and ease of use.

The solution could improve by having fewer VM Stuns.

I have been using Rubrik for approximately three years.

We have recently scaled the solution and it went well.

We have an administrator and people who do the restorations that use the solution.

I rate Rubrik support a five out of five.

We were previously using Avamar, but we switch because it was too expensive.

The initial installation was very simple. 

I would create the ease of installation a five out of five.

We used a VAR for the implementation and our experience was excellent.

We haven't actually calculated the ROI, but there's a good return on investment.

I would rate the ROI of Rubrik a four out of five.

We are on an annual license to use Rubrik and it is priced well.

I would rate the price of Rubrik a four out of five.

We evaluated other options before, such as Cohesity. We choose Rubrik because it was overall a better solution.

If you are wanting to implement this solution I would recommend doing your homework and evaluating other solutions.

I rate Rubrik a nine out of ten.

What I like about Rubrik is that you can back up to the cloud. It is a different kind of backup where you're not archiving the tape. Rubrik is a physical appliance. It is a dedicated appliance to which you can back up, and you can also back up to another device. So, you can back up to Rubrik and then to another device. If you have more than one site, you can set up Rubrik on site A and also on site B. You can back up to the Rubrik on site A and then replicate that data to the Rubrik on site B.

I like it. There are so many functions. It can also be used as a file server. It is a physical appliance. It is a backup device, but it can also be used as a file server. It can back up a file share. 

It is a lot more expensive than other solutions, but you get what you pay for.

I didn't have any issues with it.

You can scale it. It is expensive, and it normally requires their support team's help because it is a physical brick. So, you usually connect another brick to it, and it scales out to that brick. So, it is easy to scale out. Scalability is not a problem. 

Since the time I've used it, I never had to call their support. I didn't have any issues with it.

It is pretty easy to set up because it is a physical appliance. You just need to configure IP addresses. There is not much to set up on that. You just plug it into the network and assign IP addresses. After that, you just log in, and you're ready to go.

Some people say it is expensive, but you get what you pay for. If you want a Maserati, you have to pay for it. If you want to buy a Porsche, you have to pay for it.

If you're still backing the tape, Rubrik is not going to be for you.

I would rate it a strong nine out of 10. It is a solid product.

Rubrik is our primary backup solution for production and development systems. We also use it for testing purposes when we need to spin off a temporary non-production environment. The solution protects some of our VM's, SQL, and even physical appliances.

A definite improvement using Rubrik has had on our organization is that it cuts down the operational time spent in the backup world, equaling fewer support calls and less time spent on engineering the product. This is because everything essentially functions straight out of the box. SLA-based policy automation is easy to use and easy to customize. It has made day-to-day operations a lot simpler because of the simplicity in creating SLA procedures. It saves us time.

The Live Mount is one of the most valuable features since it allows us to spin up copies of our current systems in what is just basically a development state.

The Rubrik archival functionality is also a good feature that works well and is definitely useful.

The integrated reporting is not really that nicely built. The reporting functionality could definitely be a little bit more customizable from an administration perspective, with an easier to understand interface.

I have been using Rubrik for four years.

Rubrik is definitely a stable product.

I consider Rubrik scalable because all you need to do is add another Brik and it's seamless.

At this point we have adopted it 100 percent, so we do not have plans to increase its usage.

I have found Rubrik's technical support to be extremely knowledgeable and easily accessible.

Prior to using Rubrik we used Commvault. We switched solutions because of the features, the simplicity of the product, and its speed. 

I'm spending less time managing the solution. I would estimate that Rubrik recovery testing saves us 80% in time as compared to our prior solution.

Rubrik's support is definitely on the expensive side, but I consider it to be top of the line. We incur no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees.

Needless to say, we evaluated Commvault, as we were making use of it at the time. Other solutions we evaluated include Veeam and Dell. I think it was the ease of use, reliability, and scalability of Rubrik that influenced our decision.

The Rubrik web interface is really easy to use. Three or four people work on Rubrik in operational roles.

In addition, our use of Rubrik Polaris, which is a SaaS-based framework, is showing good savings in the time it takes us to manage backups.

In response to customer feedback, Rubrik has already implemented an improvement which enables you to restore Active Directory at a more granular level.

The primary use cases of Rubrik are to back up critical files, servers, documents, VMs, and partition drives from servers. We protect our Linux and Unix OSs.

I am using both their physical appliances and software. We are using it on SaaS.

The SLA-based policy automation affects us greatly because we don't need to monitor it daily. We just allow the SLA to screen and do a daily checkup, e.g., if the SLA proceeded and or if it failed. This makes our work much easier. 

We use the archival functionality in terms of our cloud operations. Instead of buying extra hardware or extra large devices for Rubrik, we attached it and transferred our on-premise data to the cloud. We had a seamless connection from the AWS platform.

Lately, we appreciate the archival to cloud and search finder for restorations, where we don't need to back up or restore the overall backup of a drive. Instead, we just retrieve specific files from specific servers.

Rubrik's web interface is user-friendly. It takes time to understand every aspect of the system and interface, but it is understandable and quite easy to use.

It is seamless with fast backup storage.

The reporting in the dashboard and reporting for extractions both need improvement. I would suggest making them easier to understand and use, not just out-of-the-box. We should also be able to customize them.

I have been using Rubrik for around two years.

We have had some minor issues, but they have been solved. In terms of backup, it has been quite good and works as expected.

I would rate the scalability as a three out of five because additional hardware is a must if in terms of infrastructure loads. In terms of archival functionality, the scalability is good because you can achieve that through cloud storage.

We have four Rubrik clusters with 41 DB in them. I would assume that we are backing up around 100 terabytes of data from the company.

We have three system administrators who handle the infrastructure side of the company.

In terms of escalating tickets or bugs, they are very quick in terms of their support system.

We used a different solution called Legato, which is an old school tape backup solution. We switched to Rubrik because of:

1. Costs.
2. Time.
3. Hardware updates and outdated technology.

Compared to the way that we were previously backing up different files and servers, using Rubrik is as easy as clicking a button, except using dates.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Rubrik's partner (Trend Micro) usually does the heavy work on it. It only takes around three to four hours to set up, depending on the company's infrastructure and security. We had a very good experience during the deployment process.

We were able to decrease the process around five minutes using Rubrik from a day's work.

It trims down recovery testing time from eight hours to 10 to 15 minutes.

In terms of usage, Rubrik has allowed us to retrieve data 80 to 90 percent faster than our previous technology.

We reviewed Commvault, Rubrik, and Dell EMC. Rubrik won out in stability, support, and functionality.

Know your needs first and understand if Rubrik can provide the solution to your problems. In terms of backup, Rubrik is a top-notch technology. In terms of user-friendliness, UI, and the price, it is suitable for a company or startup to consider this solution.

Time matters in terms of receiving and backing up data. Having a solution that can fit in terms of time management can help a company thrive.

We don't actually backup cloud systems. We only do archival. We upload the on-premise data to the cloud.

I would rate Rubrik as a 10 (out of 10).

This project initially started out as a replacement for our legacy backup system, IBM Tivoli, which was backing up our VMware environment. Since our environment is almost entirely virtualized, protecting those assets was the primary goal. We also knew that we wanted to get to a state where our backups were protected against ransomware via immutability or air gapped backups, which we've now accomplished with Rubrik.

Shortly after the initial deployment, we realized the full capabilities of Rubrik. We are utilizing Rubrik's backup integration with Oracle databases and SQL databases. There are several other business critical applications, like Tableau, that are also being protected via  Rubrik.

Due to Rubrik's ability to execute in protecting our on-premises assets in the data center, we decided to utilize Rubrik's Office 365 and AWS Cloud Native solution to protect our data in the cloud.

The SLA-based policy automation has streamlined our data protection operations. We have moved away from backup windows and moved to letting the SLA policy actually determine when is the most efficient time to do backups. We apply the SLA based on business rules to certain artifacts or entities within our environment and let Rubrik run with it. It has been extremely efficient and has cut down on the operational overhead of managing backups.

In addition, we have absolutely seen a reduction in the time we spend on recovery testing. We have automated the validation of backups for our tier-one assets using Rubrik's API.

We're seeing about a 62 percent TCO savings and 90 percent management time savings since switching to this solution. And we've reduced the data center footprint, which comes with operational overhead, by 75 percent since switching from Tivoli.

Since acquiring Rubrik's Polaris GPS offering, we have further increased our productivity by utilizing SLA policies that extend across clouds and multiple on-premises data centers.

It's hard to specify a feature that is most valuable. The overall architecture is where we find the most value. Having an API-centric approach has allowed us to utilize a lot of automation to trigger the capabilities of Rubrik. This helps us minimize the operational overhead of managing and restoring backups. We have integrated Rubrik with our ticketing system and have some custom triggers to present Dev/Test environments from Rubrik to our development team.

The web interface is extremely intuitive and, with recent changes to the API, it has become more responsive than it was when we initially implemented the product two years ago.

We love the archival functionality and we utilize it a lot. We archive out to Azure Blob Storage to have an additional layer of protection and extend SLA times.

From an information security and business continuity perspective, the solution’s ability to recover from a breach, is one of the biggest features of the product. We don't have to worry about the operational complexity of air-gapped backups and can rely more on the immutability approach. It is a highly valued feature in this solution.

At the time of this review, Rubrik is still missing several components to their Office 365 backup offering. These ideas have been voiced to Rubrik and their product management team.

It's been our experience that when our ideas are surfaced to Rubrik, we are brought into a feedback session with Rubrik's product team. We now view Rubrik as a partner in our business continuity and disaster recovery strategy.

We've been a customer for 4 years.

The stability of the Rubrik solution has been extremely solid. In the 2 years we've owned the solution, we've had no downtime because of hardware or software failures.

The ability to just attach additional bricks to scale-out capacity is great!

Rubrik's tech support is amazing, which is yet another differentiator with this solution.

Before Rubrik we used IBM Tivoli; however, we could never get Tivoli successfully tied into VMware. Tivoli's snapshot technology was a continual failure, and even with the support of IBM, we could not get it working without it causing infrastructure issues to our VMs. This left us in a state where we had no confidence in the ability of the product to actually execute backups or restores.

The initial setup was extremely straightforward. The install took place one afternoon and included an upgrade. Within three hours we had our VMware environment tied in, SLAs configured, and we were prepared for the initial round of backups that were going to take place over a weekend. By Sunday morning, we had our entire infrastructure protected by Rubrik.

There were two people directly involved in the implementation, Rubrik's pre-sales engineer and one of my engineers.

We have 62 percent TCO savings.

Rubrik Go was not available when we initially acquired the solution; however, as we look to further investments in Rubrik, we plan on executing with their subscription model.

Outside of extending into the SaaS platform with Office 365 and Cloud Native offerings, there have been no additional costs.

We looked at Veeam and Cohesity. 

With Veeam, it seemed like they were stitching solutions together to provide the single platform. Also for several reasons, we did not want to write our backups to the same storage array as our production system. These two factors quickly eliminated Veeam.

Cohesity was positioning themselves not only as backup solution, but also as secondary storage offering. We quickly determined that Cohesity was not as intuitive or as simple in their backup approach, which eliminated them as one of the products we were considering.

We felt it was the best strategic decision going forward to choose Rubrik since their engineers were solely focused on solving backup and their solution was the simplest and most intuitive to manage.

The biggest lesson I've learned throughout our time using Rubrik is that the investment in simplicity, has proven to be extremely valuable.