Rubrik have today announced an expansion to their existing Converged Data Management Backup Appliances adding the secure backup focused r528 to the rXXX appliances. They have also released version 2.2 of their hardware plus software backup platform which introduces a couple new features to the Rubrik Management UI. The r528 is a targeted shift for Rubrik aimed at looking to secure what was historically a niche part of the backup market but one that has become a more sort after feature so that backups can not only be there for recoverability…but also for security and encryption at rest.

The r528 comes in a 2U Appliance Brik and has 2 nodes per appliance. Each node contains 1xSSD and 6xHDDs of which the drives are rates for FIPS 140-2 L2 Self encryption and U.S Government NIST validated. In addition to that the r528s have all the same great features and interface goodness of the existing Rubrik Briks. Encryption at rest is done via Self-Encrypting Drives (SED) and is completely secure if a drive is removed. The Rubrik Cryptographic Library that secures the data will be certified via the Common Criteria at the EAL2+ level.

Converged Data Management 2.2

As mentioned above, Rubrik have also announced version 2.2 of their software platform which adds a bunch of new features.

• Enhanced Auto Protect and SLA Inheritance
• Enhanced Performance Based Throttling Detection
• Increased Scalability
• Cluster Policy Enhancements
• Proxy Connection Support
• NAT Support for Public Replication
• Enhanced UI and Management

The new enhancements in 2.2 are more tweaks than new features as you would expect in a point release however it shows that the Rubrik team are listening to their customers as many of the new enhancements where direct requests from existing clients such as the proxy and NAT support as well as the ability with the Cluster Policies to achieve more granular SLAs and set blackout windows and have the ability for a global pause of cluster activity for maintenance tasks.

In terms of scale, Rubrik are now claiming 40 nodes capable of backing up 10,000 VMs under vSphere 6.0 and quicker live mount performance which includes Storage vMotion of VMs to primary storage. They have also introduced better latency monitoring thresholds to avoid possible impact to production workloads.

Overall more good news from Rubrik and certainly an interesting play releasing a specific use case type of appliance in the r528. Looking forward to seeing them continue to improve and add features in the lead up to VMworld.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIPS_140-2

http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cmvp/documents/140-1/140crt/140crt1451.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaluation_Assurance_Level#EAL2:_Structurally_Tested