One common thread among all application requirements is the need for reliable, performant storage. Today, that comes in a variety of different shapes and sizes – from legacy, dual-controller arrays to software defined storage using distributed, scale-out architectures. All of the choice can be a tad daunting at times, especially when you consider the criticality of workloads that will be writing and reading their data.
At Rubrik, we see a vast number of different storage solutions in production for our customer workloads. One of the first questions that crop up is around compatibility – can we provide data protection services for their VMware virtual machines? The simple answer is: sure! As I’ve rambled on about before, abstraction by way of vSphere APIs for Data Protection (VADP) allows our Converged Data Management fabric to largely ignore the underlying storage technology being used to provide data services to an application. While not all of them are fashioned in the same way, specific nuances are handled by the hypervisor directly.
But it’s one thing to say that two technologies work together and quite another thing entirely to prove it out. My many years as an engineer and architect have taught me to “trust, but verify” most everything about technology. Thus, I enlisted the help of the infamous Cormac Hogan to craft a joint solution using the latest VMware Virtual SAN 6.2 release along with the Rubrik Converged Data Management appliance running our 2.2 code. Working with Cormac was awesome, as I’ve been an avid reader of his content for years. Through our efforts, we’ve captured the process to design, instantiate, and operate Rubrik and VSAN in our latest white paper which is available here!
Additionally, I was quite fortunate to spend a bit of time with Pete Flecha and Duncan Epping over on the Virtually Speaking Podcast to nerd out over the “behind the scenes” portions of the paper. This includes some of my experiences going through the build process and writing the paper, along with a peppering of questions from the hosts on what makes Rubrik tick. All in all, I had a great time and hope you’ll enjoy the energy and fun in our discussion!
Rubrik and VMware Virtual SAN white paper available here.