What is our primary use case?
Rubrik is for ransomware and stuff like that. Rubrik Polaris is an application as a service. So it's in the cloud and the version is V 2021817-9.
Rubrik Backup and Recovery and Polaris also help in case of recovery to identify ransomware and vulnerabilities.
We use it to back up our virtual environment, which consists of VMware, and we have some Cisco HyperFlex appliances there. It's an all-in-one appliance for storage.
We just actually started using Polaris just a couple of weeks ago. We primarily use it for reporting. We are not using Polaris for backing up cloud environments. We don't use Rubrik to backup our cloud environment.
How has it helped my organization?
Rubrik has reduced the time spent on recovery testing with recovery principles, especially the environments. It's hard to say how much it has reduced the time it takes to recover because if it's a single file, it's just faster to do it with Rubrik because it's easier. If it's a VM, it's pretty much almost instant recovery. On average it's three to five times faster.
It has also saved us time managing backups. It's pretty stable. So it sends us a report if something goes wrong, then you get a report. You don't really need to manually monitor this software over time. If something happens, you'll get an error and you'll get an email notification and then address it. We found the product pretty stable if it's configured correctly. So it has reduced management time.
Downtime for our production data has also been reduced because the recovery speed is faster and our outage is shorter. So we found that it definitely does improve our uptime for our production data. It has improved uptime 20 to 30%.
Our team's overall productivity goes faster and it's improved because we need less management. People can concentrate on tasks other than just babysitting data.
We get very good reporting in Rubrik, also. You have very good visibility into your backup. You can also define different levels of backup, for example, image-based backup. Live Mount is also a good feature to get recovery.
What is most valuable?
It allows for easy integration. We use NetApp, so it integrates with NetApp snapshots. It is very easy to set up and start backing up. You don't need to do custom configurations. It's simple and straightforward compared to traditional backup solutions. It's easy to adapt the user interface and easy to navigate. It has good reporting. It also has nice monitoring. My dashboard is also very good.
The SLA-based policy automation is a good way to create different policies, such as retention, frequency of backups, or retention of backups based on the data owners' need for protection. We create different SLAs based on our requirements for data. And then when we need them, we find the appropriate SLA and just attach them to this SLA which makes it easy. You don't need to create a policy for each resource. You basically group your resources under the SLA.
The Archival feature is very good. Rubrik requires you to have at least one local copy on the Rubrik break, but then you can archive either to basically any storage. They also integrated clouds like Azure and AWS, where you can archive to a different tier. So you can apply archiving to F3 for something that you may need for faster recovery.
We, fortunately, didn't need to use Rubrik for ransomware. We also own Rubrik Polaris Radar, which creates a report and looks into our environment and any suspicious activities that could be related to ransomware so we can check right away. And if it's a real vulnerability, we can address it in a timely manner. We didn't have to do anything to recover from ransomware yet, but I feel like we are better protected now with Rubrik Polaris Radar.
What needs improvement?
The Polaris piece could use improvement. When you get a report and you have events that are suspicious, you cannot drill down and find out why it's suspicious. You only know it's suspicious, but you don't know the root cause. Other than that, everything works well.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is very good. As your need for backup capacity increases, you just add more to the same cluster. So it's all managed from one interface. You don't need to manage each process separately. It's easy to scale up. And you can replicate to the outside.
Our environment is about 150 terabytes.
How are customer service and technical support?
I would rate their technical support at least a nine out of ten. The support is very good. Nobody's perfect but it's very good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I use a lot of different backups. For example, NetBackup from Symantec. The main difference between that and Rubrik is that Rubrik is policy-based, so it's easy to apply.
NetApp is very hard to configure. You would need a full-time employee just to manage and configure backups. With Rubrik, it's pretty much plug-and-play, so that's a big difference. And it works both in a physical and virtual environment, so that's another advantage.
How was the initial setup?
The physical installation of appliances takes one day. And then configuration takes maybe another day but it also depends on how many data sources you have and if your policy is defined in advance. Sometimes we have to wait for data owners to define the requirement for backing up. Within one, two days, you can set it up and get it going.
What was our ROI?
The safety of our data is the main concern. We don't see a direct return on investment, but having our data protected is peace of mind. If it's lost and you can recover it quickly, it's a big value. So it's hard to value a return of investment on the backup software until you do a big restore. We do some small restores, and so far we see the value of the program.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The product is not cheap, the pricing is pretty high. The product is good, but the price could be lower. I wish it would be lower so we could back in more stuff. I wouldn't say it's great value as far as price is related.
We use the Evergreen Subscription Purchasing Program.
What other advice do I have?
I think Rubrik is a very good backup solution. The only thing is that it's not cheap, but it is easy to understand and implement with great support. It's more expensive, but you don't need that many man-hours to work on your backup solution. It equates with some other product pricing, but I would recommend it. It works well, it's pretty reliable, stable, and easy to use. I don't see any negatives in Rubrik, only positives. They work to improve the product constantly as well.
I would rate Rubrik a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
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