Rubrik Reviews

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. 

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.

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.

We use it as a backup for our memory store. It protects virtual and physical environments for us, all on-prem. The applications being protected include VMware VMs, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, SharePoint, our file services, and operating systems.

The backups are a lot more reliable. That's the core headline. It's taken the onus off making sure that backups run and making sure that we're protected. It gives us time to work on other things proactively. It's a very reliable solution. Our technical team has benefited from it in terms of both time and capacity.

Rubrik has absolutely reduced the time we spend on recovery testing by about 75 percent. It has reduced the time we spend on managing backups by the same amount. The reduction in recovery time is even greater. It's in the Exchange and database stuff that we've really noticed the difference. It's so much easier for the guys in support to recover single files, so the reduction in recovery time is as much as 85 to 90 percent.

And because we've been able to recover more expediently, it has reduced downtime. We don't have a lot of downtime, but we know that there's a safety blanket there if we need it.

When it comes to overall productivity, the team isn't having to manage and check backups on a daily basis, so they're interfacing with our end-users or proactively checking other aspects of the infrastructure and making sure that they're running. That's what the positive effect is. Problems are being headed off before they start causing an impact. From the ITIL problem management perspective, that's fantastic.

The most valuable feature is the speedy restore. It helps in expediting RPOs and RTOs across our core applications.

I would rate the solution's web interface at eight out of ten. It's just fantastic and intuitive. It's so easy to use. I've never done any formal training on Rubrik, but I was able to quickly come to grips with its capabilities. That's a fantastic thing, especially for somebody who is just looking to adopt it, because they don't have to worry about training for their wider support function.

We would like to be able to do granular restores directly from Exchange. Also, more granular management of VM backups would help.

We've been using Rubrik for 18 months. We've got four Briks across two data centers.

The stability is fantastic. We rarely have to engage with Rubrik support.

The scalability is also fantastic.

I have used many other solutions throughout the years. This one just seemed to be quite refreshing at the time. It seemed to be the most cost-effective with the best support options.

We needed to protect our core applications and virtualized environment, which is what Rubrik did.

The initial setup was very straightforward. It was a solution in the box. We didn't have to complete much configuration, other than having the right port open on our destination servers and deploying the various agents. It was very easy to configure the vCenter connections and start backing up our virtualized environment.

The trickiest part was figuring out how crawler sits in there. We set up a standalone server for that and installed crawler there. I can recover an entire database and granular emails within 15 to 20 minutes, now that I've practiced.

We're having another one put in and the implementation strategy will be to upgrade the current Brik, have the new Brik upgraded to that version as well, plug it in and it will configure itself, essentially.

We did it with our team and Rubrik support. The Rubrik team have been fantastic for the lifecycle of the product.

We have seen return on investment in Rubrik.

Veeam was also a front-runner in there, but there are a lot of horror stories about Veeam and Exchange backups. That affected the decision. Other differences between Veeam and Rubrik include the level of reliability and support as well as third-party support available from the vendor.

Depending on the size of your environment, I would say go for it. This is a very flexible and reliable product, but I don't know how it would do in a large, enterprise-size infrastructure. I can't comment on that because I've never tested it.

The SLA-based policy automation is just another name for protection group. It hasn't really changed the game. It's just a logical way of grouping the things that you protect and making sure they're all backed up in a similar way. It's good.

I've tried some of the API from Rubrik, to automate the SQL resource, but it took a bit of a backseat. I've toyed with it a little bit, but not to the full extent of its capabilities. So far, the APIs seem fit for purpose. We have also looked into the Polaris SaaS-based framework for extracting metadata, from a risk perspective, but we haven't used it.

There are just 40 of us in IT and about 30 of us have got access to it. I don't think many of them interface with it on a daily basis. The only regular user is probably just one of the infrastructure guys. We use it as a backbone for protecting the data of 900-plus law firm employees.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate this product at eleven. It is really good. We are a happy customer.

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.