Rubrik Converged Data Management Date: July 2015 Author: Vinny Choinski, Senior Lab Analyst; and Tony Palmer, Senior Lab Analyst

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1 ESG Lab Review Rubrik Converged Data Management Date: July 2015 Author: Vinny Choinski, Senior Lab Analyst; and Tony Palmer, Senior Lab Analyst Abstract: ESG Lab recently completed testing of the Rubrik Converged Data Management Platform, which is designed to converge backup software and deduplicated storage. Testing focused on Rubrik s goal to eliminate the need for traditional backup software. ESG Lab examined how Rubrik users can get started quickly, drive down recovery time objectives (RTOs) with live data access, and locate data instantly with Google-like search. The Challenges Demands on organizations to more efficiently manage data and storage requirements continue to increase while environments become increasingly complex. ESG s 2015 IT Spending Intentions Survey revealed that, as they have been since 2010, increased use of server virtualization, improved backup and recovery, and data growth management remain in the top ten most frequently cited IT priorities (see Figure 1). 1 Additionally, use of cloud infrastructure services made the top ten most-cited list for the third year in a row. Figure 1. Top Ten Most Important IT Priorities Over the Next 12 Months Top 10 most important IT priorities over the next 12 months. (Percent of respondents, N=601, ten responses accepted) Information security initiatives Improving data backup and recovery Managing data growth Increasing use of server virtualization Desktop virtualization Using cloud infrastructure services Regulatory compliance initiatives Business continuity/disaster recovery programs Building a private cloud infrastructure Improving collaboration capabilities 26% 26% 25% 25% 25% 24% 23% 22% 22% 34% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, As these areas of IT focus become more business-critical and data becomes more distributed, the need for integrated data protection, business continuity, and disaster recovery solutions increases. 1 Source: ESG Research Report, 2015 IT Spending Intentions Survey, February The goal of ESG Lab reports is to educate IT professionals about data center technology products for companies of all types and sizes. ESG Lab reports are not meant to replace the evaluation process that should be conducted before making purchasing decisions, but rather to provide insight into these emerging technologies. Our objective is to go over some of the more valuable feature/functions of products, show how they can be used to solve real customer problems and identify any areas needing improvement. ESG Lab s expert third-party perspective is based on our own hands-on testing as well as on interviews with customers who use these products in production environments. This ESG Lab report was sponsored by Rubrik.

2 ESG Lab Review: Rubrik Converged Data Management 2 The Solution: Rubrik Converged Data Management Rubrik Converged Data Management is designed to combine the functionality of backup software with globally deduplicated storage into a single fabric that horizontally scales across private and public clouds. Rubrik s approach is a major departure from the typical backup and recovery architecture, in which backup software and backup storage are separately acquired often from different vendors. Rubrik offers a flash-optimized web-scale infrastructure designed for backup and recovery, allowing users to horizontally scale a single system to manage ever-increasing data volumes. Web-scale refers to the architecture pioneered by companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon to scale performance and capacity proportionally by adding resources. The architecture was conceived to remain resilient through infrastructure failures and to be operationally efficient as the system grows in size. Figure 2. Rubrik Converged Data Management Rubrik is engineered to automatically discover virtual machines without agents, protect them with a single mouse click at the appropriate service levels, and automatically move snapshots offsite to the cloud for business continuance while enabling simple, quick recovery of individual files and application objects locally or from the cloud and live mount of snapshots for restores or to run secondary workloads (e.g., test/dev, development, and analytics). Getting Started ESG Lab looked at how organizations can use Rubrik to rapidly deploy a data protection solution in a virtualized environment, discover and protect systems without agents, and seamlessly move protected data offsite to the cloud. ESG Lab used a four-node Rubrik cluster to protect a simulated data center environment consisting of Windows and Linux virtual machines running multiple applications in a VMware vcenter environment.

3 ESG Lab Review: Rubrik Converged Data Management 3 First, ESG Lab logged into the Rubrik web management console to configure the cluster. After naming the cluster, entering the IP addresses for the nodes, and configuring DNS and NTP, ESG Lab clicked Setup System as seen in Figure 3. Figure 3. Deploying a Rubrik Cluster In just over five minutes from sitting down at the keyboard, the cluster setup was complete. ESG Lab next entered the VMware vcenter credentials. Rubrik automatically discovered all virtual machines in the environment without the need for agents. It s important to note that while traditional backup agents are not required, virtual machines must have VMware tools installed to ensure application-consistent backups. Crash-consistent backups and recoveries can be performed without VMware tools. Next, ESG Lab connected the cluster to the Amazon Web Services S3 (AWS) cloud. After the keys were entered and cloud connectivity established, the user is ready to create an SLA Domain.

4 ESG Lab Review: Rubrik Converged Data Management 4 SLA Domains define the frequency and retention period for snapshots as well as policies for onsite and cloud data retention. Rubrik offers preconfigured Gold, Silver, and Bronze levels, which differ in the frequency of snapshots, retention periods, and timing of migration to the cloud. Users also have the ability to define SLA domains customized to meet the requirements of the specific applications and user communities in their environment. Figure 4. Creating a New SLA Domain ESG Lab created a custom policy with daily snapshots retained for 30 days, monthly snapshots retained for one year, and annual snapshots retained for two years. In the same policy, the length of time to retain data onsite was controlled by a simple slider. At this point the cluster was ready to begin protecting virtual machines with customized data protection and retention policies. Figure 5. Protecting Virtual Machines

5 ESG Lab Review: Rubrik Converged Data Management 5 Selecting machines could not have been simpler users can browse or search a list of all virtual machines, select the machines to protect, then choose the appropriate SLA domain as seen in Figure 5. ESG Lab was able to modify virtual machine SLAs by simply clicking on them and selecting a different service level agreement (SLA) domain. Users only need to create SLA domains once, and can then globally apply these policies to any data managed by Rubrik. This eliminates the need to create individual SLA policies for each new set of data. Why This Matters When asked to name their organization s most important IT priorities, three of the top four most-cited answers from survey respondents were improvement of backup and recovery, managing data growth, and increasing use of server virtualization. 2 Therefore, data protection must evolve to meet these requirements simply and efficiently, by delivering dynamic data protection management solutions that easily scale as the environments these solutions protect grow and change. ESG Lab was able to quickly and easily deploy a Rubrik data protection cluster and was protecting virtual machines and application data both locally and in the cloud within minutes of sitting down at the keyboard. In fact, the initial cluster setup process took approximately five minutes and defining protection attributes was made extremely simple by combining multiple traditional protections concepts into the simple SLA-based protection schema. The solution can be seamlessly expanded locally and in the cloud to address changing business requirements and data growth. Efficient Data Management Next, ESG Lab navigated to the Rubrik dashboard shown in Figure 6. The dashboard presents system, performance, and utilization information in a clean and easy to read interface. ESG Lab was able to find protected machines using a simple search interface reminiscent of Google. As the server name was entered, Rubrik s predictive search instantly generated search results of matching system names, allowing ESG Lab to quickly select the desired system. There s no need to install a separate search server or manually browse through individual snapshots to locate the desired file. Figure 6. The Rubrik Dashboard Rubrik provides the ability to scroll through a calendar to find a specific date and see all snapshots taken at that time, or use the search function. ESG Lab clicked on a local snapshot of the virtual machine prod_webserver, then right-clicked and selected Mount to spin up a virtual machine using the local snapshot on the Rubrik Cluster. Options include Mount, Instantly Recover, Export, and Browse Files. Mount simply spins up a new virtual machine, live mounting it directly on 2 Source: ESG Research Report, 2015 IT Spending Intentions Survey, February 2015.

6 ESG Lab Review: Rubrik Converged Data Management 6 the Rubrik datastore, Instantly Recover restores the snapshot to its original location, and Export allows the user to export the snapshot to any ESX host or datastore in the environment. Figure 7. Live Data Access Mounting a Snapshot After selecting Mount, as seen in Figure 7, the virtual machine was automatically created in vcenter and ESG Lab was able to verify that it was running on a datastore provided by the Rubrik cluster. The ability to spin up virtual machines directly on the Rubrik cluster allows users to actively use their backup data as a multi-faceted business asset for application test and development, or any other purpose they would normally restore a backup for. Finding and recovering individual files was just as intuitive. ESG Lab used the search function to locate a file with the word manifest in its name.

7 ESG Lab Review: Rubrik Converged Data Management 7 Figure 8. Finding and Restoring Individual Objects As seen in Figure 8, ESG Lab was presented with all files with the matching string, the date and time of the snapshot, and the number of versions retained. The user can restore the file to its original location or download to another location, as needed. If the version to be downloaded is on the cloud, the download will take longer, as would be expected, but is completely seamless. Why This Matters In addition to backup and recovery, managing data growth, and virtualization, nearly one in four survey respondents cited business continuance and disaster recovery programs when asked to name their organization s most important IT priorities. 3 As environments increase in complexity, the ability to leverage simple, effective tools increases in importance. While Rubrik s approach to data management and recovery is not traditional, they leverage their intimate knowledge and tight integration into the VMware eco-structure to provide a radically simple, powerful offsite protection and recovery of highly virtualized environments. Rubrik s web-scale architecture delivers an elastic system that allows users to easily manage data growth by scaling out capacity and performance with the addition of nodes to the cluster. The system is managed as a single system from one interface, even as the system increases in size and capacity. ESG Lab was able to use simple but powerful search tools to find virtual machines as well as individual objects and recover them, for instant restores, test and development, or any other purposes, without having to install any software. In ESG Lab testing, Rubrik delivered a comprehensive data management solution that transformed backup data into a multi-faceted business asset for business continuity and application development. 3 Source: ESG Research Report, 2015 IT Spending Intentions Survey, February 2015.

8 The Bigger Truth ESG Lab Review: Rubrik Converged Data Management 8 Server virtualization has become a mainstream deployment due to its proven benefits: physical server consolidation, cost reduction, efficiency, and flexibility. However, it can throw a monkey wrench into data protection processes. According to ESG research respondents, backup administrators must manage physical and virtual servers, consolidated workloads, and multiple hypervisors while often lacking virtualization skills and training. 4 Organizations are looking for a way to ensure that virtualized applications and workloads are protected, simply and completely. Rubrik Converged Data Management is designed to provide the ability to automatically discover virtual machines without agents, protect virtual machines with a single click at the appropriate service level, and automatically move backup data offsite to the cloud for business continuance. At the same time, Rubrik enables simple, instant recovery of individual files and application objects locally or from the cloud and live mount for restores or to run secondary workloads. Instant data delivery enables the creation of recovery plans where users can easily and regularly test recovery and have confidence their data will be available for restore in the event of a failure or disaster. ESG Lab was able to set up a Rubrik cluster, connect it to the cloud and begin protecting virtual machines with custom SLAs in a VMware vsphere environment in less than 20 minutes. Recovering entire machines and granular objects was equally intuitive, with the ability to browse or search, and recover locally or from the cloud, completely transparently. Rubrik s scale-out data management platform converges backup software and deduplicated storage into a single fabric with the goal of radically simplifying data protection and management in highly virtualized environments. It is ESG Lab s opinion that Rubrik delivers outstanding simplicity and ease of use; users can get started quickly, drive down RTO with live data access, and locate data instantly with Google-like search. Organizations with highly virtualized environments who are looking to simplify data protection and business continuance would be well served to take a closer look at the Rubrik solution. All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at Source: ESG Research Report, Trends for Protecting Highly Virtualized and Private Cloud Environments, June 2013.