We are often asked how Rubrik Security Cloud differs from AWS Backup. It's a valid question because, at first glance, the two solutions seem similar. Both have cloud-first, API-driven architectures. Both are built specifically to ensure reliable backup and recovery for data stored across AWS. Both support a wide range of the most popular AWS workloads including EC2, EBS, RDS, Aurora, and S3.
However, there are several key differences that many Rubrik customers value:
Ease of use
Lower TCO
Built-in cyber resilience
Backup and recovery speed
Over a series of articles, we will explore each of these differences in detail and why customers may choose one solution over the other.
In this article, we will focus on performance, specifically around protecting Amazon S3. It all starts with the numbers. We ran tests that compared the performance of Rubrik Security Cloud to the AWS published benchmarks within the AWS Backup Developer Guide.
The results are in: Rubrik’s outperforms AWS backup by more than 3x.
Rubrik: Over 3x Performance
Rubrik was tested against the AWS published results within the AWS Backup Developer Guide. Here’s how we set it up.
The source S3 bucket (backup source) was located on the standard storage tier. The target S3 bucket (backup storage) was located on S3 Standard-Infrequent Access storage tier.
Source and destination buckets were located within the same account and region to provide the best possible performance. The source bucket was populated with data utilizing a python script that randomly generated data types with the .png extension.
Within the guide, AWS estimates that a 425GB S3 Bucket containing 135 million objects with an average size of 3KB would take roughly 31 hours to complete an initial full backup.
We tested this published bucket configuration with Rubrik Security Cloud’s Cloud Native Protection for S3, and found that Rubrik outperformed AWS Backup by more than 3x, completing the initial full backup in just under 10 hours.
Why is Rubrik faster?
Fast data backup and recovery in the cloud is crucial for minimizing downtime and ensuring business continuity in the face of data loss, system failures, or cyber attacks.
The secret behind Rubrik’s performance is using Rubrik’s NAS Cloud Direct (NAS CD) engine to process S3 data. Rubrik NAS CD was engineered to move billions of files and handle petabytes of data at scale. This makes it a perfect fit to process the millions of objects contained within S3 buckets.
NAS CD performance is mostly driven by two separate components of Rubrik’s Exocompute (an EKS Cluster): the Cloud Slab, and the Data Mover
The Cloud Slab is a highly scalable metadata index that lives within the customer account and provides fast metadata tracking for both backing up and restoring customer data. This index maintains a running list of hashed fingerprints for all the data within the source S3 bucket, constantly updating as objects are added, modified, or removed.
Rubrik’s Data Mover, also running within Exocompute, is able to quickly determine what objects need to be backed up, comparing the live hashed fingerprints of objects with those stored within the Cloud Slab index. Once we have identified our list of changes from one backup to the next, the Data Mover then optimizes for efficient upload to the storage target by arranging smaller objects together and segmenting larger objects. Finally, compression is leveraged to lessen the storage footprint, and parallel upload streams are kicked off to the backup target, providing optimal backup performance for our customers.
And like other Rubrik workloads, an incremental forever approach is applied to the backup chains, with the initial backup being a full backup, and any subsequent backups only copying data that has changed.
Performance Beats Convenience
Enabling AWS Backup is a convenient way to deliver basic protection for your AWS data. But the benefits of an enterprise ready, cyber resilient platform such as Rubrik simply can’t be ignored. Imagine explaining to your CIO that processes are going to take three times longer, simply because you took the easy path!
But performance isn’t the only benefit Rubrik brings to the table. In future articles we will explore other core benefits of using Rubrik to protect your AWS data such as TCO, simplicity, and (of course) data security.
Want to experience Rubrik Security Cloud for yourself? Take our self-guided, interactive hands-on-lab today!