Rubrik Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

it_user762009

Systems Engineer

Oct 26, 2017

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The initial setup was straightforward. The bootstrapping process was right to the point and direct.

Pros and Cons

"They have a great PowerShell module and easy mediums to speak to the people who create and enhance them."

"The functionality is missing, but they are very receptive to our thoughts and ideas."

How has it helped my organization?

Saved tons of man hours on not having to do constant babysitting.

What is most valuable?

Personally, the scripting portion is my favorite aspect. They have a great PowerShell module and easy mediums to speak to the people who create and enhance them.

What needs improvement?

The functionality is missing, but they are very receptive to our thoughts and ideas.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We ran into a few issues with physical Briks and EDGE Appliances crashing, but they were all resolved by either settings, tweaks, or hotfixes.

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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues with scalability. We have added two Briks to our environment with success.

How are customer service and support?

Customer Service:

A 10 out of 10.

Technical Support:

A 10 out of 10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used a combination of Veeam and Micro Focus Data Protector (was HPDP). The scalability of those two products was lacking, and it took a lot of man hours to babysit the products.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. The bootstrapping process was right to the point and direct.

What about the implementation team?

In-house.

What was our ROI?

Not applicable.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Not applicable.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We had a PoC between Veeam/HPDP, Cohesity, and Rubrik. Rubrik won out.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user1142469Sales Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

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Aug 22, 2019

What are the benefits in pointing Rubrik to a CSP like AWS/S3 over a private S3?

it_user236505

IT Director with 51-200 employees

Feb 24, 2016

The r300 Series is a Converged Data Management appliance that provides automated backup, instant recovery, unlimited replication, and data archival at infinite scale.

Originally posted at https://vinfrastructure.it/2016/01/rubrik-reinvent-the-backup/

Some months Rubrik announced the release of version 2.0 of Rubrik Converged Data Management to deliver complete data protection and rich data services at a global scale (see also my previous post).

The idea is quite simple but disruptive: reinvent the backup models in order to eliminate backup software by integrating data protection, instant recovery, and DevOps infrastructure into a single scale-out product!

Data protection is usually something complex, or at least with several components:

Rubrik can remove all of them:

An simple move to converged, scale-out and appliance based architecture:

The idea is similar to Cohesity approach (for example) but Rubrik stats with the data protection in mind as a first scope of their solution, so several features (in this area) are better developed (yet). It’s interesting see also people from Symantec, Data Domain, Veritas in the investors list.

During the last IT Press Tour #17 I’ve got the opportunity to learn more about this solution, directly the board of Rubrik: Bipul Sinha (CEO), Arvind Jain, Arvind Nithrakashyap. For the technical presentation there was also Chris Wahl.

As written the solution is (physical) appliance based, using the model of Data Domain (that has change the tradition backup infrastructure), but using a “Web-Scale” model typical of hyper-converged product, with a grow as you go approach in 2U increments. And with a really easy setup and configuration: it can be up and running in 15 minutes!
One of the best quote is: “it looks simple because we make it simple”, Bipul Sinha. It’s really simple to use and with a fast interface.

The r300 Series is a Converged Data Management appliance that provides automated backup, instant recovery, unlimited replication, and data archival at infinite scale.

The Rubrik cluster should start from three appliances, each of them can have 12x4TB HDD or 12x8TB HDD, plus 4x400GB SSD, and can grow as you need. Deduplication is cluster-wide to improve space usage.

Actually it support VMware vSphere 5.1, 5.5 or 6.0 and you have only to point to a vCenter Server and use policy based rules (called SLA Domains) to protect your VMs. At this time only VMware platform is supported, but the entire architecture is platform agnostic, so could be possible see new virtualization platform supported in the future.
In order to provide application consistency, Rubrik push a VSS provider inside each VMs.

As show in the previous picture it’s possible replicate or simple increase the retention with an external object storage: S3 is supported, but for on-prem infrastructure (if needed) could be used S3 (for example with Scality) or Swift. Also NFS could be used for on-prem long term retention.

For site replication more Rubrik appliance could be used, both for DR purpose or Dev/Test cases.

And what about the data services, like the ability to have application-level recovery? Actually this is not included or integrated and it’s far from other products (like Veeam). Rubrik has a partnership with Kroll on Track to provide this services, but I think that simplicity and convergence mean also have those kind of services inside the solution itself and I hope to see something in the next releases.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Chris ChilderhoseLead Infrastructure Architect at ThinkON

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Jul 25, 2016

Nice review. The product sounds very interesting but until they have the integration to restore to AD or Exchange it would be something to keep in the back of mind.

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reviewer1054101

IT Manager at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees

Jul 30, 2020

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An easy initial setup, very stable, and offers a very fast recovery process

Pros and Cons

"The initial setup is easy."

"The solution needs to be more secure and needs to better protect against ransomware."

What is most valuable?

The instant recovery aspect of the solution is the most valuable aspect for me. It can recover the entire VMO database within five seconds. It's really quick. The database can be recovered on the local backup machine disk, and then brought up by the virtual machines.

Of course, afterwards, you need to refresh your vMotion back to the original storage area. That takes a long time, maybe hours, however, the instant recovery portion only takes seconds to recover on the SSD hard disc.

The initial setup is easy.

What needs improvement?

The solution would be better if it was cheaper and cost us less to use.

The solution could be more user friendly. The current UI could be improved considerably, which would make it more comfortable to navigate.

The solution needs Continuous Data, or CDP. It may be that we don't have it because we have an older version. It may be on version 5.2 or 5.3 already.

The solution needs to be more secure and needs to better protect against ransomware.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution, at this point, for about one and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is very stable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It's reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I believe the solution can scale pretty well. I haven't actually tried it out at our organization, therefore, it's hard to say for sure.

There only a couple of admin personnel on the solution at our company.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have dealt with technical support in the past. In fact, we have three open cases right now. They've been pretty good in terms of the service they provide. They are responsive and are able to fix the problems we have.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before we began using Rubrik, we used to use HP Data Protector. We decided to switch due to the fact that the HP solution we had was getting to be too old and we realized simply upgrading it would have cost us quite a bit of money.

The old solution we had was using a tape library to backup the data and it took too long to backup all the data on the tape. We were trying to find another better way or faster way to backup our data source. That's why we ultimately chose Rubrik.

How was the initial setup?

We found the initial setup to be very straightforward. It wasn't complex for us in any way.

The deployment process took a few hours. It didn't take too long.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The cost of the solution is quite high. It's not cheap.

What other advice do I have?

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with Rubrik.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we are using, however, it may be a variation of version five.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If it had a friendlier user interface, I would probably rate it higher.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user240054

Technical Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Nov 2, 2015

The Rubrik software scans the vCenter for a list of virtual machines and from there, you can select VMs to backup to the Rubrik appliance.

Originally posted http://theithollow.com/2015/06/29/a-new-standard-for-backups-rubrik/

It’s pretty weird to get excited about backups, but I’ve found myself thinking how cool the new technology that Rubrik‘s designing. If you haven’t heard of these guys yet, you will. They presented at Virtualization Field Day 5 in Boston and had some new announcements that will blow your socks right off your feet.

All travel expenses and incidentals were paid for by Gestalt IT to attend Virtualization Field Day 5. This was the only compensation given and did not influence the content of this article.

The first of these announcements really had nothing to do with technology, but rather with people. Rubrik announced to the world that my good friend Chris Wahl was joining their team as Technical Evangelist. Thats a pretty big “get” for Rubrik, signing a top 10 Virtualization blogger and two times over VCDX to their team. I think it also lends some credence to their legitimacy, as I don’t suspect Mr. Wahl would have joined a team that didn’t already have something going for it.

Why is Rubrik Cool?

The Rubrik CEO Bipul Sinha explained to us that the main objective of Rubrik was to make backups useful and easy to manage. His example was using Apple’s Time Machine technology. How come my laptop backup is so easy to manage, but a corporate server backup is so difficult. Obviously servers are backed up more often with more stringent SLA etc, but his point was well received. It should be easy to do because no one wants to spend their time managing backups.

Rubrik’s model uses a hardware appliance with a scale out architecture similar to Nutanix. (This shouldn’t be a coincidence since Bipul is a founding investor in Nutanix) Rubrik’s appliance is sold as a brick (chassis) with 4 nodes (servers) in it. Once the appliance is racked, cabled and IP’d the next step is to connect it to your vCenter server(s). The Rubrik software scans the vCenter for a list of virtual machines and from there, you can select VMs to backup to the Rubrik appliance. Rubrik’s team is touting this process that only takes 15 minutes to get up and running.

Note: right now this is a 1.0 product and only supports VMware, but the roadmap is to support Hyper-V and Physical machines as well. It is not meant to be only for VMware environments for ever.

Backup Process

The process of backing up virtual machines to the Rubrik device consists of selecting a virtual machine and selecting a SLA. There are some default SLAs that come with the appliance but the backup admin is allowed to create as many as he/she needs in order to meet the organizations retention periods and backup windows.

Once the backups start, the virtual machine is snapshotted and the bits are shipped over to the Rubrik appliance where they are inline deduplicated and stored on flash temporarily. Depending on the SLA, these backups will be stored on disk as well as possibly shipped off to an S3 storage endpoint, most likely Amazon S3. This is neat right? How many times have you heard corporations state that they want to keep all data for seven years right up until they hear how much storage they are going to need to buy to accomplish that? Now Rubrik can keep the most recently backed up information locally on disk but ship off some of the bits to a cloud storage device.

Recovery Process

OK, the backup process is pretty slick. Pick a VM and a policy and let Rubrik do its thing. But everyone knows that the backup is only as good as the recovery process. Rubrik’s recovery model is great! From the Rubrik HTML5 web portal, pick the VM and a backup date to restore, or for a single file restore pick the vm, the file and the file date to restore. Simple process and the search process is VERY fast. This is because all of the backup metadata is stored on the Rubrik flash drives for quick recalls.

Now that we’ve found the files, we can perform either a recovery or an instant mount. The recovery process will power down the existing virtual machine and recover the backup in its place. Nothing new there, but if we need a recovery to take place faster, we can mount the backup directly on the Rubrik flash tier and mount it to vCenter over an NFS mount point.

Summary

I don’t know what these appliances are going to cost, but Bipul assured us all that they won’t disappoint. With an easy backup process, simple and fast recovery process, ability to scale out and still keep a single deduplication domain and a fast storage appliance, all I can think of to say is to “shut up and take my money.” We’ll see how this product does on the market , but I have a feeling that this is going to be the new gold standard for backup solutions.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Chris ChilderhoseLead Infrastructure Architect at ThinkON

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Sep 29, 2016

Great review. We are seriously looking at Rubrik now for our 2017 roadmap. Also plan to do a PoC with them and an appliance on-site which is great. Great team over there and a technology to watch for sure.

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reviewer1202862

Technical Sales Engineer Individual Contributor at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Jan 19, 2022

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Very scalable solution for protecting against ransomware attacks

Pros and Cons

"The feature that I have found most valuable from Rubrik is its protection against ransomware attacks. Rubrik is a very nice, very good solution because it is able to protect your data and you have the possibility from the backup to detect any abnormal behavior, like a ransomware attack. You are able to detect and restore very easily with this solution. This is a major differentiator in comparison to the other competitors."

"In terms of what could be improved with Rubrik, we need to improve the backup for remote sites. The competitors are stronger in terms of their remote office back up. Rubrik needs to improve to be stronger for backup. This is the main thing."

What is most valuable?

The feature that I have found most valuable from Rubrik is its protection against ransomware attacks. Rubrik is a very nice, very good solution because it is able to protect your data and you have the possibility from the backup to detect any abnormal behavior, like a ransomware attack. You are able to detect and restore very easily with this solution. This is a major differentiator in comparison to the other competitors.

Rubrik is a cloud based solution and the main differentiator for Rubrik in comparison to the others is that you do not have to configure your backup job, you just have to set up an SLA, Service Legal Agreement, and Rubrik has matching learning and AI, Artificial Intelligence. Rubrik then does maximum automation of these tasks. You have a multiple feature, including a search engine, like a Google search engine in the UI, and I think this is a very modern approach. Rubrik has a very modern approach. Rubrik is an all-in-one solution for your backup so you don't have to think about how to configure the architecture. Because Rubrik is a scale out solution, you just have to pay for an all-in-one solution, starting with a small brick and growing with your needs.

You can start with few needs, and if you need more resources or more power, you just have to put another brick and the merged cluster grows automatically. In comparison to other solutions, you do not need to think about how to grow your architecture. With Rubrik, you don't have to think. If you have resources or more storage, you just have to buy a new brick. You put this new brick in the existing cluster and the whole system is configured automatically.

What needs improvement?

In terms of what could be improved with Rubrik, we need to improve the backup for remote sites. The competitors are stronger in terms of their remote office back up. Rubrik needs to improve to be stronger for backup. This is the main thing.

In the next release I would like to see more advanced features. For example, currently you only have the possibility to archive your data on one target. I suppose they are working to develop this feature, but tomorrow, many customers want to have two target archives. This is the first issue. Also, they need to improve their Office 365 solution because Rubrik is able to back up the Office 365 solution, but currently they are not able to cover full functionality of Microsoft Teams and some customers tell us that we need to improve this feature.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Rubrik for two or three years because it is a new technology. My company sells this solution.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have a big customer in France who chose this solution and they have a big, big cluster with more than 50 bricks, so I can say that this solution is reliable and stable. Rubrik might need to improve some features, but it is a stable solution.

How was the initial setup?

Deploying this solution is very, very easy. As I said before, you don't have to ask a lot of question of the customer. You just receive the solution, the brick. You put the brick in the customer's data center and you just ask some questions about networking, IP address, what do you want to back up? And the solution is ready to work quickly. The installation is very easy, and the sizing solution, which is my job because I am in pre-sales, is easy enough.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Rubrik's pricing is good. The most important thing to understand is that when you buy Rubrik, you don't buy only the software, you buy the software and the hardware.

You should not compare it with other backup editors if only because with Rubrik you get the software and the hardware, so it is difficult to say if the solution is expensive. You need to show to the customers the total cost of ownership or the return on invest, because the solution is very easy to manage every day. I suppose somebody could say it is expensive, but it is not too expensive.

What other advice do I have?

When a customer buys this solution, he has to pass through a partner like Scasicomp. The customer will never install the solution by himself. Rubrik does not sell the solution directly to the customer, it sells the solution to the partner, like Scasicomp, and the partner will install this solution for the customer. But as I said before, it is very simple to install.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Rubrik an eight.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner

reviewer1148001

Administrator at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees

Jan 9, 2022

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It's a good solution for enterprises of any size

Pros and Cons

"Rubrik is stable and easy to use."

"Rubrik is expensive."

What is our primary use case?

We use Rubrik to create backup servers for VMware.

What is most valuable?

Rubrik is stable and easy to use.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been working with Rubrik for two or three years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Rubrik is scalable, and it can work for enterprises of any size.

How are customer service and support?

Rubrik support is outstanding.

How was the initial setup?

Setting up Rubrik is easy, and their support team helped us through the process.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Rubrik is expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Rubrik 10 out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user865374

Network Engineer at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees

May 2, 2018

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The process to manage backup and recovery is painless with this tool

Pros and Cons

"Rubrik has made the process to manage backup and recovery painless. This frees up more time to work on other projects."

"I would like for unmanaged backups to be able to be saved in a separate policy."
"I would like a way to set monthly backups on a certain date and time."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is easy backup and recovery for multiple servers and workstations. It also backups NAS, SQL Servers, and Nutanix.

How has it helped my organization?

Rubrik has made the process to manage backup and recovery painless. This frees up more time to work on other projects.

What is most valuable?

The quick, easy backups and fast restore work great. I also enjoy support calls and the easy updates to the software.

What needs improvement?

No areas need to be updated at this time.

The addition features that I would like are a way to set monthly backups on a certain date and time. Also, I would like for unmanaged backups to be able to be saved in a separate policy.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user821751

Infrastructure Services Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 25, 2018

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Replaces legacy tapes and disk backups which are unreliable, expensive, and space consuming

Pros and Cons

"Replaces legacy tapes and disk backups which are unreliable, expensive and space consuming."
"It has the ability to test DR in a controlled, inexpensive way and to restore between environments."
"CloudOut, because only blocks are pushed after compression and deduplication, not raw sizing."

"Better integration for complex NAS structures having to mount at root adds time and workload to the process of NDMP."

What is our primary use case?

Replaces legacy tapes and disk backups which are unreliable, expensive, and space consuming.

How has it helped my organization?

It has the ability to test DR in a controlled, inexpensive way and to restore between environments.

What is most valuable?

CloudOut, because only blocks are pushed after compression and deduplication, not raw sizing which is often a flaw with storage products.

What needs improvement?

Better integration for complex NAS structures having to mount at root adds time and workload to the process of NDMP.

For how long have I used the solution?

Still implementing.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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