PeerSpot user
Senior Technology Architect at PCCW GLOBAL
Real User
The system is able to determine when it is the best time to do backups. This is SLA-driven.
Pros and Cons
  • "The system is able to determine when it is the best time to do backups. This is SLA-driven, and if it is not possible to maintain this SLA, the system will tell you too."
  • "It needs to support more applications natively, like MySQL/MariaDB."

What is our primary use case?

We were operating more than 10 different backup products company-wide and none of them were doing the job correctly. While reviewing the market, I found Rubrik. They were small at the time, and have since acquired a lot of credibility. The first PoC was a real success. We decided to start with them at the end of 2017. We were amazed by the product's simplicity and performance.

How has it helped my organization?

It improved the backup/restore process by a factor of a 1000. Now, we are sure what we have on our system is an exact image of what it was at the time of backup. Restoration validation is piece of cake. This is all new to us.

What is most valuable?

With Rubrik, there is backup window to manage. The system is able to determine when it is the best time to do backups. This is SLA-driven, and if it is not possible to maintain this SLA, the system will tell you too.

What needs improvement?

It needs to support more applications natively, like MySQL/MariaDB

Put more attention on the physical world. They already support it bit, but I would love to see endpoint protection.

Buyer's Guide
Rubrik
May 2024
Learn what your peers think about Rubrik. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2024.
772,567 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

Still implementing.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The platform is completely stable. We have never a crash.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

So far, so good.

How are customer service and support?

Customer support is very efficient. It is very similar to Nutanix, in my opinion.

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

We tried Veeam, which could be a valid alternative, except: 

  • You still need storage (Rubrik provides a turnkey solution).
  • You need a Windows license (Rubrik is Linux-based).
  • You still need to manage jobs (Rubrik is SLA-based).

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is easy. I created a blog post about it.

What about the implementation team?

I did everything by myself.

What was our ROI?

It is hard to tell so far.

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

Rubrik is not cheap. Hopefully, you can archive your data on cheap storage to keep the investment minimal.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Veeam was considered, but dismissed.

What other advice do I have?

Do not be afraid to go with newcomers. Rubrik is a fast growing company, and there is a reason for it: They understand the business!

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Managing Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Rubrik, Your One Stop Shop For Data Management & Peace of Mind
Pros and Cons
  • "The search functionality is second to none as the speed of the search is fast across the whole system and predictive."
  • "If I could take a snapshot from a physical and be able to stand it up as a virtual immediately without the need to rebuild an entire system and restoring files, that would be HUGE."

How has it helped my organization?

There have been many changes to how our organization has been able to approach backup and recovery thanks to Rubrik. We have been able to reduce the time for recovery, which is invaluable because it not only frees up our time to move on to other things, but it truly makes our customers feel that they are important and given “special treatment.” Typically, with the previous solutions we were using, it was owned fully by our engineering team, but we were able to train our admin team to take over all operational aspects of the product in less than two hours via a web conference thanks to the no-nonsense and easy-to-use product.

This has also become our go-to solution for disaster recovery requirements for many of our applications. The great part is we don’t have to build out DR VMs to sit there and do nothing, instead, we can deploy a snapshot from production at the time of need instead. This not only saves the customer money, but it saves on bloat in our virtual environment.

What is most valuable?

First, lets start with what is Rubrik?

Rubrik Cloud Data Management is a single, software fabric that manages all application data in the cloud, at the edge, or on-premises for many use cases, including backup, recovery, archival, analytics, development, and cloud. Rubrik takes the complexity of maintaining and managing your data and enables you to focus on other aspects of the business. The bottomline is if you have Rubrik, you have peace of mind.

It’s hard to pick out a few features to list, but I will start with these:

  • Instant recovery: This has dramatically reduced our time to restore from over 20-30 minutes for a server to be recovered and back up and running, to less than 60 seconds. It’s a beautiful thing.
  • The search functionality is second to none as the speed of the search is fast across the whole system and predictive.
  • I also love the fact that I can apply an SLA domain to various areas (direct to VM, folder, cluster, etc.). I currently apply most SLA domains directly to a cluster so that we have a set-it-and-forget-it approach. When a new VM is added to that cluster, we KNOW that it is going to inherit the SLA domain and be backed up.
  • Lastly, Rubrik’s support team is phenomenal. Any time that we have had questions, issues or feature requests, the team responds rapidly and keeps you apprised of the progress without you having to follow-up all the time.

What needs improvement?

We have put in a feature request against their physical agent. Currently, the physical server agent will only back up folder structures and not truly give you the ability to restore to a bare-metal box. Well, we would love to see the physical agent have the ability to essentially P2V machines from the backup. This would be huge!

It would assist in so many areas of our virtualization projects and especially during a DR scenario. If I could take a snapshot from a physical and be able to stand it up as a virtual immediately without the need to rebuild an entire system and restoring files, that would be HUGE. It would also give us the ability to get away from physical hardware, in general, when we go through to clean up older physical boxes that are no longer under service contract or need to be segregated for any reason.

For instance, we have an initiative to get all 2003 physical servers left in our environment to a segregated cluster and we do use P2V to get them, so bypassing the P2V and just restoring a backup would speed that process up tremendously.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not encountered any instabilities with the product outside of limitations on the back end with our AD user object size. We have so many users that Rubrik has an issue handling so many objects, so it makes it difficult to use the RBAC features that were just released in the Firefly/3.0 code release. That being said, Rubrik support has been phenomenal working on this issue with the engineering team and we look forward to their solution very soon.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability has been a great process, as we have gone through a few at this point. Rubrik handles everything. They will come onsite, upgrade the units, ensure all is working properly and it typically only takes a couple of hours. That being said, we have deployments in multiple locations and they do not currently have a management hub that allows you to manage multiple clusters from a single place. You have to go cluster to cluster to make changes.

How are customer service and technical support?

Rubrik’s technical support has been phenomenal! They are extremely quick to respond and 99% of the time, they are able to take care of everything behind the scenes via the Support Tunnel. They not only respond to emails almost instantaneously, they will contact us about potential issues before they happen.

They have been extremely easy to understand on the phone and encourage you to write in, even with simple questions and feature requests. That has been huge, too: feature requests. We have put in numerous feature requests that were coded in amazing time, not that every feature request has come to fruition, but most have been at least put on the roadmap if they made sense globally.

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

We used many different products before going to Rubrik, including Tivoli and SnapManager, Nutanix Protection Domains, NetBackup, etc. They were all cumbersome and typically a pain to not only set up, but to recover from as well. By switching to Rubrik, we have been able to simplify many aspects of our backup and recovery procedures.

On top of that, we were able to gain back valuable space on our Nutanix clusters, as we were finding in some instances that snapshots were taking up 50% of the available datastores, which we all know, with Nutanix, is NOT cheap. By switching, we were able to gain that space back for VM deployments instead of having to buy additional blocks as the constraint with Nutanix has typically always been the space, not the CPU and memory.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was extremely straightforward as Rubrik sends a field engineer out to handle everything. This goes for expansions as well. We had our initial two sites from the PoC stood up in less than two hours per site. The only reason it wasn’t faster was due to how locked down our network is. Other products we stood up at the same time took far longer to set up, and I mean one was two weeks before we could use it.

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

I would say that the biggest thing to keep in mind about the pricing, as it may be more expensive than other products you are looking at, is keep the operational ease in mind. Most of the other products we looked at would take far more time to manage, train and just in general use! So, when we compared the overall costs, Rubrik was cheaper because the engineering and operational side required FAR LESS dedication. So, all in all, they actually were cheaper than the competition.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at many other products, including our existing solutions and products like Veeam and Cohesity. First off, Rubrik had the upper hand for the initial interest based on this... We have all gone through meetings to vet a new product of interest. During these meetings, you ask questions and get a lot of, “Oh, no one has ever asked that before” or “Let me get back to you on that,” whereas the Rubrik team had an answer for EVERY one of our questions, right then and there. That is a pretty rare thing in and of itself. That was a huge factor but obviously, the simplicity during the demo was a huge eye-catcher.

What other advice do I have?

I would highly recommend this product to ANY company who is concerned about their backup and recovery processes as well as DR scenarios. This product will simplify your life beyond belief. Not only that, you will be able to give the recovery process over to anyone, even if they don’t have a background in backup and recovery solutions.

The fact that the product is so well thought out in its simplicity for end users, makes it easy to worry less about whether or not it’s doing its job. You will have much higher confidence that you will actually be able to recover the system you are working with, instead of, “I hope it’s been backed up properly.” It will change the way you view your data, especially if you are looking for an effective and simple way to handle disaster recovery.

I have given this product a perfect rating for multiple reasons. The simplicity and ease of use are hands down better than any product we compared during the same PoC period. We have never had an issue with our system on the software or hardware side, other than an issue with the amount of objects their back end will handle for AD user authentication.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Nathan Monk - PeerSpot reviewer
Nathan MonkManaging Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Real User

@Rwurtz - How did your testing go with SQL & Oracle? Has your company decided to move forward with Rubrik? Hope all is well.

See all 5 comments
Buyer's Guide
Rubrik
May 2024
Learn what your peers think about Rubrik. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2024.
772,567 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Lead Storage and Backup Engineer at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Reduced recovery time, improved productivity, and features excellent technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "The Live Mount feature is excellent; it's useful for the backup administrator and end user."
  • "I want to see more features regarding filtering in the Snapshot Window, as I need to be able to set a filter for specific dates and times. If I want to check an old backup, I must scroll through one or two years of backups to find what I'm looking for."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is to back up our physical and virtual environments. The solution is deployed both on-prem and in the cloud. 

We use Rubrik to protect virtual, physical, and cloud-native environments.

The types of systems and applications protected by the solution include VMs, SQL, NOS servers, and Office 365. 

How has it helped my organization?

The solution reduced the time we spend on recovery testing, and the Live Mount feature greatly helps with that. We can instantly restore required files without needing a traditional recovery, and depending on the type of file, we can have time savings of 50-70%.   

The solution reduced our recovery time by 20-30%; we noticed a gradual difference compared to other tools. 

In terms of overall productivity, we have fewer people working on backup, which significantly improves productivity. 

The backups with Office 365 happen seamlessly, and I can manage all the native Microsoft solutions in a single pane. 

What is most valuable?

The Live Mount feature is excellent; it's useful for the backup administrator and end user.

The SLA-based policy automation is very effective in cloud archiving, as we have archives in the cloud.

Regarding the solution's archival functionality, there is a Hot and Cold Tier concept, a handy feature we can implement within Rubrik. 

We used the solution's Polaris, SaaS-based framework for extracting metadata, and the compliance and governance are excellent, especially during audits.  

What needs improvement?

I want to see more features regarding filtering in the Snapshot Window, as I need to be able to set a filter for specific dates and times. If I want to check an old backup, I must scroll through one or two years of backups to find what I'm looking for.

The reporting is another area with room for improvement; it needs to be more detailed and have more options for customization. Nowadays, reporting is primarily automated, so I'd like to see the same from Rubrik.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Rubrik for three years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Native Rubrik is stable, but we have struggled a lot with stability in our recently installed cloud-based instance of the solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable, and it's straightforward to scale. We have around ten users, including database and server administrators, plus security staff. Most users have read-only access, and a few have write access too.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support in India is excellent; they are quick to respond and resolve issues.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

I previously used Commvault and EMC NetWorker. We switched because Rubrik is more affordable and user-friendly.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward, and it took approximately one hour to get up and running. There are many background steps to take regarding network configuration. I carried out the deployment and perform the maintenance for the solution by myself. 

What was our ROI?

With this kind of product, we get an ROI when a problem occurs, but we haven't faced any outages or ransomware. The recovery and backups are there, but thankfully, we haven't encountered a situation where we needed them. 

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

We use Rubrik Go, the provider's evergreen subscription purchasing program, and it's affordable. 

There are additional costs for add-ons, and they recently upgraded a new cluster, which also carries a price.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Veeam and are considering looking at it again, as the virtualization is better, and Rubrik has some issues with Azure.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Rubrik nine out of ten. 

I highly recommend the solution as it's very user-friendly and easy to work with out-of-the-box; there's nothing complex about it.

We have yet to integrate Rubrik with other solutions, but we plan to integrate it with vCenter.

The solution didn't save us time on managing backups as such, but the UI is very user friendly.

We do not use the solution's ransomware recovery. 

I have yet to learn if Rubrik reduces downtime because we haven't faced that issue. Whenever I did a test restore, it happened so quickly that we didn't really have downtime.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Sr Storage Administrator at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
There's a lot of day-to-day time savings that allows us to get freed up to do other things
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "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?"

What is our primary use case?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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. 

For how long have I used the solution?

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.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is not an issue. 

How are customer service and technical support?

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.

How was the initial setup?

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. 

What other advice do I have?

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. 

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Senior Systems Manager at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Driving Automation With Rubrik's API-First Architecture
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution’s ransomware recovery, from a security perspective, 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."
  • "There is room for improvement through a further extension of their Office 365 backup platform. In addition, it's still a bit cost-prohibitive to backup NAS. Those would be the two primary areas for improvement."

What is our primary use case?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been a customer for 4 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

How are customer service and technical support?

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

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

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.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What about the implementation team?

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

What was our ROI?

We have 62 percent TCO savings.

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

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.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Lead Support Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Enables archive to cloud location and automation around the PowerShell script but doesn't cater for open source databases
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the archive to cloud location and the automation around the PowerShell script. There are also reports and dashboards."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Rubrik for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is excellent.

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

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. 

How was the initial setup?

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

What about the implementation team?

We worked with Rubrik for deployment.

What other advice do I have?

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.

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.
PeerSpot user
Operations Analyst at Royal Bank of Scotland
Real User
Reduced our maintenance efforts, improving our productivity
Pros and Cons
  • "It has reduced our maintenance efforts. The amount of time and effort that would have gone in troubleshooting various issues related a data crash has been addressed by Rubrik. So, it has helped to improve our productivity. The data is being captured about our customers periodically that is secure and safe."
  • "The licensing cost is quite high. That is something that needs to be worked out, because so many times it happens that the team does not have the budget or there are other issues at that time. Cost has become an important factor in deciding whether to continue with the Rubrik solution."

What is our primary use case?

We have been mainly using Rubrik's backup and recovery solution for our microservice-based products, which we have for different trading applications. We have a trading application, where the customer makes use of any workflow through the GUI of the trading application. The request goes through our microservices server REST API. These microservices server REST APIs are sometimes using DynamoDB as a database solution.

Our applications are quite scalable and user-friendly. We wanted our database solution to be highly scalable. Since all the trades being carried out between customers are highly secure in nature and carry sensitive data, we wanted this in case there was some type of application crash due to a timeout or downtime. Our database should not crash and the data should not be lost. For that purpose, we needed to use Rubrik's backup and recovery solution. So, on a weekly basis, we take regular snapshots of our databases via Rubrik's solution in case of any downtime, especially during the week from Monday to Friday when trading is being done at a high peak level. At that time, we take snapshots. In case there are any issues, then we will simply roll back our database to the previous snapshot which we had captured.

We are protecting VMs. They are all virtual.

How has it helped my organization?

It has reduced our maintenance efforts. The amount of time and effort that would have gone in troubleshooting various issues related to a data crash has been addressed by Rubrik. So, it has helped to improve our productivity. The data is being captured about our customers periodically that is secure and safe.

Our entire team uses the Grafana application to monitor the response time of various API that we have in the application. Because we can restore our application to its normal state, gradually the graph of the downtime comes down for APIs. For Grafana plotting, we are using different error codes. We see in graph form if there are any spikes in the error code, for how long those spikes remain, and how much time it took for the spikes to go down their normal level.

What is most valuable?

From a security point of view, data is highly-encrypted using the Rubrik security solution. Therefore, we don't have to worry about any image/data loss or data leakage.

If there is any corruption of the snapshot, e.g., the target is corrupted while taking the snapshot, Rubrik is our faster option to have two snapshots: snapshot one and snapshot two. If there is some issue with snapshot two, then we still have the option to restore the data to snapshot one. In this way, we never lose the customer's trade data.

Rubrik's web interface is very user friendly and easy to use with all its navigation, e.g., it is easy to identify if you're looking for any help. So, the help features are there. The customer support feature is very nice. We are regularly using that. The alignment of all the fields of the platforms on the Rubrik GUI are very good.

Its archival functionality is very nice. On a regular basis, we snapshot our VMs and server logs. So, we keep archiving the logs and snapshots into Rubrik for archival functionality on a monthly basis. For 30 days, we maintain the snapshots of our data using the Rubrik archival functionality. Whenever we need to retrieve any snapshots that have been stored for the past one month, we can easily retrieve them. The retrieval process is also very fast from the archival function, and it doesn't take too much time.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Rubrik for around three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In my experience of using Rubrik, once or twice it didn't work and the issue was resolved quickly. Otherwise, it is quite stable.

My colleague, my assistant, and I manage it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is highly scalable. We can easily add more VMs to our configurations or Rubrik account. It also can easily take snapshots.

In-house users are around 25 to 30 people who are mostly from the DevOps profile: software engineers, the infrastructure team and release managers. Developers are also involved.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have received excellent customer support from Rubrik when addressing any of our queries, from time to time.

The technical support is very good. They are quite well-versed with the Rubrik solution, so they provide quick solutions to our queries.

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

We were not previously using another solution.

We learned third-party backup and recovery solutions can be good enough to handle and exhaust all our requirements. Instead of starting to build a backup recovery solution from scratch, we explored outside our organization. Now, third-party vendors are very good and intelligent data recovery solutions are available.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was between an easy to medium difficulty level. To install the Rubrik application, we created an account, then specified the contribution of our VMs. The microservices took the most amount of time during the setup part. Later on, defining the duration and frequency at which we want the snapshots to be taken was easy. 

The setup took three to four days.

What about the implementation team?

A colleague and I deployed it. Whatever we couldn't do, we directly contacted Rubrik for that.

What was our ROI?

Due to this effective, faster backup and recovery solution, we are now able to focus on other creative tasks to meet our entire pipeline. So, we have seen ROI in terms of the improvement of productivity in our team. We save around one million dollars a year.

The solution has saved us 25 to 35 percent of our time.

The maintenance has been very quick and fast to retrieve our snapshot from the archival functionality. If you had to source for any data research query, then that used to take around one hour for one terabyte of data. Now, that has been reduced to 20 to 25 minutes. It takes less time for us to restore data as well as reduces recovery time. 

The downtime has been reduced. Downtime used to be around five to six hours. Now, it has been reduced to three to four hours. This reduction happened after two or three weeks.

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

The licensing cost is quite high. That is something that needs to be worked out, because so many times it happens that the team does not have the budget or there are other issues at that time. Cost has become an important factor in deciding whether to continue with the Rubrik solution.

The maintenance cost is low.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We also initially evaluated Cisco, Dell EMC, and Nutanix and found the Rubrik solution to be the most effective for our requirements. Almost all these solutions were equal. With the other vendors, the main problem was the customer support when we initially gauged those vendors, e.g., to get hands-on training to get a demo, then later on to follow up with their teams, the entire process wasn't smooth. However, with Rubrik, we didn't see this problem.

We are considering migrating our microservice stack from a VM-based solution to Docker-based solution. So, we are considering a Docker integration with Rubrik for the communication of our microservices with ModAPI of our solution. For that, we probably need a handshaking mechanism. For that purpose, we are considering the Rubrik security REST APIs.

What other advice do I have?

I would strongly recommend trying the Rubrik solution. Their solution is stable, scalable, and intelligent. It has cloud solutions for our backup and security needs.

We are not using the SLA-based policy automation feature of Rubrik. We might look at this in the future. Now, we have our own separate SLA-based automation tool.

We are using Polaris, but there is another team at my organization who handles governance and compliance.

They are in touch with our team to understand our entire integration, setup, architecture, how things have been done, and how Rubrik is helping us. The plan in the future is that certain teams will start using Rubrik in their application.

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Srinivas-R - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager - IT Infrastructure / Security at The Himalaya Drug Company
Real User
Effective Live Mount feature, reliable, and straightforward installation
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature has been the Live Mount feature."
  • "There are some features to improve on in Rubrik. For instance, they should have a tool where we can integrate with our SAP HANA. Directly from the HANA studio, we should be able to do a backup. That's what I'm looking forward to in the future."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Rubrik for our server backups.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature has been the Live Mount feature.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Rubrik for approximately three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Rubrik is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and support?

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

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

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.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was directly from the OEM.

What was our ROI?

We have received a return on investment.

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

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.

What other advice do I have?

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Rubrik Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: May 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Rubrik Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.