The modern enterprise is changing. We are moving towards a world of containers, API-first architectures, and cloud-native applications; the latter two are discussed by Chris Wahl, Rubrik’s Chief Technologist, in a previous post. Enterprise technology is moving from email to Slack, relational databases to NoSQL, and more. But not every company is moving at warp speed, and both Oracle and Microsoft are still relevant in almost every data center.
While Rubrik protects the enterprise on-premises, we are far more than a converged data management hardware appliance. We support multiple architectures beyond hardware via Rubrik Edge, our software-only appliance for ROBO, and Cloud Cluster for cloud-native apps and public cloud data protection. Rubrik is evolving and growing rapidly to meet cutting-edge business requirements while maintaining a Google-like, web-scale architecture and striking simplicity.
Let’s Talk Applications!
Tim Carr is right (don’t tell him I said that) — DBAs typically do not like to step outside of their comfort zone or native toolsets. Luckily, with our new Oracle integration, Rubrik provides its core benefits such as immutability and policy-driven management while integrating with native Oracle capabilities. Our approach is to integrate with RMAN, which provides agentless support (yay!) but still allows Oracle DBAs to use familiar tools. Additionally, there is support for ASM, providing a noteworthy difference compared to an array-based snapshot method.
As much as DBAs do not like using new tools, they probably hate long recovery times more. How long does it take to restore a 1TB database? On a scale of zen-like calm to desk-flipping angry, how frustrating is it waiting for a full database restore when you only need to query a handful of tables? With the Alta release, customers can Live Mount a Microsoft SQL database directly on Rubrik. This provides immediate access with a near-zero RTO. SQL Live Mount leverages Rubrik’s robust Atlas File System and its algorithms for promoting active blocks into flash for improved performance.
Moving Beyond Applications
We’re equally excited that Rubrik now offers “Hypervisor Freedom!” with support beyond vSphere – knock yourselves out with Microsoft Hyper-V and Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV) if that’s your cup of tea. Better yet, if you’re more of the cloudy type, Rubrik Alta still applies to you!
The use of cloud storage has been a part of the Rubrik story since the initial GA release in 2015. Customers have been able to capture data on-premises and use cloud resources as a long-term archival target while keeping a single catalog to provide global search, browse, and restore capabilities. Rubrik’s cloud capabilities have been extended even further with cloud instantiation, allowing virtual machines that have been archived to Amazon S3 to be powered on in the cloud.
I laughed out loud when I read Tim’s words: “Like the winged monkeys marching in The Wizard of Oz, Rubrik has charted a course in the data ocean that’s taken them from a scrappy startup…to a clear contender for Enterprise data management needs.” He’s right. The course has been charted, but the most exciting part is that the journey is just beginning. Stick around to see what we do next.
Want to learn more?
- Sign up for the Alta release webinar series and take a gander at the Lightboard videos.
- Particularly interested in the cloud journey? Filip Verloy and Bryan Krausen have great blog posts about the topic.
- Many great bloggers, including David Marshall, Richard Arnold, Ethan Banks, Chris Wahl, Mike Burkhart, Dan Frith, Sam Shouse, along with many others have written on the release. You can read my post here.