In this blog
Two years ago, Rubrik launched Ruby to assist customers of all expertise levels in performing backup and recovery operations and make Rubrik Security Cloud easier to use. We integrated it into our cyber resilience workflows so you could ask questions like “What happened?” or “What should I do?”
But the landscape has changed significantly; IT teams are under immense pressure to use increasingly limited resources to secure increasingly complex environments against increasingly sophisticated threats.
Unfortunately, you can’t clone your best engineers or manufacture more hours in the day for your current team to respond to all the flashing red lights. When a backup fails or a ransomware alert hits, you don't need an AI assistant to chat with. You need AI that can act.
So we promoted Ruby from a generative AI assistant to an agentic AI. Now, Ruby doesn’t just answer questions; it operates within your policies and approvals, understands your goals and context, analyzes, recommends, and—only with your permission—acts.
Ruby In Action
As AI has evolved, so too has Ruby. In the two years since the initial launch, Rubrik has continued to invest in AI technology to reduce the friction IT teams face. We analyzed support requests to identify the tedious work that eats up hours without creating value. In most cases, valuable time is lost to troubleshooting failures and managing routine backup operations.
With Ruby, we can give you that time back. Here is how that shows up in your day:
Troubleshooting: Imagine a backup fails. Instead of hopping between clusters and logs, Ruby runs a root cause analysis. It might say: “The vCenter is disconnected. I recommend refreshing the connection and restarting the job.” You approve; Ruby executes and confirms success. The fix is completed in minutes, not hours.
Reporting: Another kind of work that drains time and resources is fielding questions from different teams. The Finance team wants to know why storage spending spiked. Leadership asks for this week’s backup success rate. Compliance needs an assessment roll‑up. This requires pulling data from multiple views, time ranges, and object types, manually gathering metrics, and translating raw data into insights.
With Ruby, it’s a straightforward prompt. You ask Ruby, “Show me 7‑day compliance by cluster. Highlight anything under 95%.” Ruby maps to the right data and definitions, respects access controls, and returns a visual report. You can then drill down, filter, or schedule it as a weekly report, using a simple prompt.
Recovery: Finally, it’s the moment where all this matters most—recovery. Let's consider a business-critical SaaS app likeM365. When an outage occurs and impacts thousands of users across Exchange, OneDrive, Teams, you can’t snap your fingers and bring it all back online instantly. That can take weeks—or even months.
With Ruby you can focus on recovering the minimum viable company required to address the crisis right away. You tell Ruby who needs to be online first—like the C-Suite or Legal department. Ruby analyzes the access telemetry to map exactly what data these teams need to function right now, creates a surgical recovery plan, asks for permission to recover, and gets the critical group back online.
Adopt AI With Confidence
Anything that touches your business-critical data should have strict guardrails. So with Ruby, you can decide exactly how much control you want to maintain. You choose the operating model you're comfortable with—advisory mode with recommendations requiring approval or pre‑approved actions within strict boundaries.
These modes allow you to implement Ruby at your own pace. For example, you can create an adoption strategy that follows a process that starts in Advisory Mode to build confidence with explainability and audit trails. Once you are comfortable with the technology, you can set policies and define where Ruby needs approvals before it can act. Start with recurring backup failures or weekly compliance snapshots, then expand as trust grows.
Once fully adopted across your enterprise, Ruby should deliver a number of key benefits:
Fewer interruptions and escalations
Faster time to resolution and recovery
Consistent, accurate answers for all stakeholders
Hours back in your day
Ready to gain a teammate that understands your goals, reasons across your environment, and acts safely under your control? Reach out to your Rubrik team to enable it in your environment or take a quick tour.