Rubrik Converged Data Management 2.2 and a new model

Today Rubrik released Rubrik Converged Data Management 2.2 and with that a new Appliance which uses FIPS 140-2 Level 2 self encrypting drives.
But first things first. For all of my readers who don’t know who Rubrik is here is a short introduction.

Rubrik Inc.

Rubrik was founded in January 2014 by Bipul Sinha (CEO), Arvind Jain (VP Engineering), Soham Mazumdar (Architect) and Arvind “Nitro” Nithrakashyap (CTO). All of these guys came either from Goolge, Facebook or Oracle. At the moment Rubrik has more than 125 employees including their snazzy Tech Evangelist Chris Wahl. Rubrik is a Converged Data Management Solution which combines backup software and backup storage appliance in a 2U appliance called “Brik”. You can think of Rubrik as the Time Machine backup for the enterprise. The primary aim for Rubrik is to simplify backup. The approach is not based on legacy (traditional) backup where you define backup jobs, start/end time, retention policy etc., but rather you set a data-protection policy per VM or groups of VMs and define there your SLA’s like RPO/RTO, retention etc.

What’s new in Rubrik Converged Data Management 2.2

Enhanced Auto Protect and SLA Inheritance

• Dynamic Assignment – Set policy on vCenter, Datacenter, Cluster, Folder, Host and more
• Inheritance Options – Any new object will inherit automatically the parent SLA assignment
• Do not Protect – block SLA policy from a parent object

Richer Performance based Throttling Detection

• Performance Metrics
• Internal Task Scheduling
• Halting Running Activities – halt running tasked if a specific threshold is reached

Insane Scalability Testing

• 40 Node Cluster – 10 r348 Briks in a single scale-out fabric
• 10.000 VMs
• Improved Live Mount Performance

Cluster Policy Enhancements

• Recurring First Full Snapshot Window – Ability to control when full backups are taken within a SLA policy
• New Retention Periods
• Blackout Windows – period in which no operational tasks are performed
• Global Pause – Temporarily pause cluster activity for e.g. hardware or software maintenance

Proxy Connection Support

• Support Tunneling – Proxy for remote-hands assistance (Global technical support team)
• Telemetry – fo higher security datacenters to beam metrics to the cloud-based dashboard and alerts system
• Logging Data – Transfer the collection of clsuter logs

NAT Support for Public Replication Traffic
User Experience and Management

• Enhanced Activity Logging – New filters for categories, types, statuses, dates
• Increased Reporting Visibility
• Optional App Consistency
• Archival Locations
• In-Place File Restore – restore files and folder to their original location

Physical Realm – Manage and Backup natively SQL Server and Linux

r528 Hybrid Cloud Appliance

The r528 is the first appliance using FIPS 140-2 Level 2 self encrypting drives. It’s like the other Briks a 2U appliance but with only 2 nodes per Brik. Each node contains 6 HDD (8TB each) and 1 SSD (800GB). Both HDD and SSD are self encrypted drives (SED). All data that is written to disk is automatically encrypted and everything that is read from disk is automatically decrypted. There is also no performance issue because everything is handled by the hardware. With the r528 Rubrik offers comprehensive encryption in Flight and at Rest for all data. Key management can be accomplished in two ways:

• Key Management KMS (KMIP 1.0 Compliant Key Management Solutions like Thales, SafeNet, etc.)
• TPM (Trusted Platform Module) on the appliance

Beside the self encrypting drives there is also a Rubrik cryptographic library (also FIPS 140-2 Level 2 certified) which is for the in Flight encryption (Intercluster communication, replication etc.). Rubrik will also be certified on the Common Criteria at EAL2+ level.
Technical Specifications

Rubrik Naming Convention

Don’t Backup, go Forward.