Cloud data management might not seem like a priority for your company, but having a backup and disaster recovery plan in place may save your business time and money. You never know when your business could lose data.
Your business could lose data from a data breach, a natural disaster or even human error, so it’s better to be prepared! The way to ensure you are prepared is to invest in backup and recovery solutions.
Many companies offer these solutions, often in the form of software or hardware — or sometimes both. This article will explore two leading companies in backup and data recovery: Rubrik and Commvault.
Find out the pros and cons of both companies’ products to help you make an informed decision when it comes to investing in your own business’ data recovery solutions!
Rubrik: A Converged Approach To Backup And DR
Rubrik is a cloud data management company founded in Palo Alto in 2014. The company’s primary mission is to provide backup that’s simple, fast and future-proof.
Rubrik markets its flagship product as a data management platform. Rather than having a bunch of disparate systems for backup, disaster recovery, analytics and archiving data, the firm aims to bring all of these together under the control of a single piece of software. The hope is that this will cut labour time, make more data accessible and improve the quality of analytics.
Rubrik uses a “self-learning system” which the company claims can seek out data across a range of computing environments and make it accessible through a central hub. Analysts can use an intuitive dashboard to for a variety of tasks including compliance, analytics, search, archiving, recovering and backup without having to go through the complex process of trying to get different systems to talk to one another.
When the founders of the company first set out their vision for their product, they wanted to create something that was truly vendor-agnostic. In their view, it shouldn’t matter what the current IT setup of a company was or what software they were using, Rubrik’s data management platform should work regardless.
In just a few short years, that’s precisely what the firm achieved, creating best-in-class compatibility across a range of programmes and computing environments. Rubrik’s software will work on the cloud (including on Oracle Cloud, Office 365, Azure, and AWS), in virtual environments (using Hyper-V, Nutanix and VMware) and on physical systems (using windows, SQL server, NAS, SAP HANA, and Epic Cache).
Commvault: Established Backup Vendor With Loyal Client Base
Commvault is an established backup and recovery vendor that began operating in 1988 as part of Bell Labs. The company focuses on offering best-in-class data protection solutions and is, in many ways, the grandfather of many of the platform- and cloud disaster recovery software we see on the market today.
Commvault’s software is, again, a data protection platform that includes a range of features such as the ability to back up data, test systems, replicate, restore and search data.
At its root, Commvault’s service offers what companies need from their data management platform: a solution to “dark” or siloed data — information that is somewhere in their network but has become cut off from the resources that make it useful. Commvault’s product has a search function that allows customers to quickly and easily find data repositories distributed across their various environments and put them to good use.
Commvault, like many other data protection products on the market, allows firms to manage their data recovery needs across hybrid IT environments, spanning both cloud and physical. It offers several advantages over traditional backup and recovery, including full support for all file systems and applications, the ability to replicate copies of live data in secondary locations, and the ability to integrate software solutions with hardware that can deliver data snapshots.
Perhaps the most exciting feature of Complete Backup And Recovery — the firm’s main DR product — is the ability to intelligently archive and store data in mailboxes, on-premises and the cloud. The programme uses machine learning and AI to automatically seek out and file items on your network that it thinks might be relevant to your data needs.
As the value of data grows, the importance of data protection will accelerate. Commvault enables businesses using virtual machines, the cloud and local physical computers to back up and store data in a way that ensures they can carry on with business as usual without hassle if data is ever lost.
Rubrik vs Commvault
Fundamentally, Rubrik and Commvault have a similar mission: to make the job of backing up and storing data easy. The differences are there, but they can be hard to spot.
The main difference between the two products from the perspective of IT professionals is simplicity. With Rubrik, you buy its data management platform and you immediately get access to all the company’s goodies, including the ability to sync and validate data, dev/test, analyse workloads and scale. With Commvault, you have to buy a range of separate products.
Commvault’s Complete Backup and Recovery, which we discussed above, gives enterprises the ability to backup and recover data across a range of platforms. However, if you want the ability to develop or test your backup recovery solutions, then you’ll need to buy Commvault Orchestrate too. And, finally, if you require the ability to search and extract insights from your data (for analytics and compliance), then you’ll need to buy Commvault Activate.
Some might argue that splitting up the product stack like this is good for firms because it allows them to pay only for what they need. But the reason Rubrik blends the whole lot into a single product is that most enterprises require access to all these tools, not just some.
The other significant difference between the two has to do with systems integration. Right from the start, the founders of Rubrik committed to creating a vendor-agnostic platform across a range of environments. Rubrik works with practically any software or hardware setup and can be applied in the cloud as well as in physical, on-premises computing environments.
Commvault was one of the first data management firms to release a product to market and has a loyal client base of large enterprises. It clearly has a focus in that direction, which may explain why it’s not used as much by small firms. However, if for example, you don’t need the ability to extract insights from your data, then Commvault might be the better option so you only pay for what you need.
Which is the best option for your business?
Rubrik’s target market is smaller, and mid-size firms are more likely to opt for this as they can get a complete data recovery resource. Large enterprises with large IT departments often prefer Commvault’s solution which has more features as they can deal with the complexity of Commvault’s products.
Rubrik, therefore, is for IT managers who need something that will be intuitive and work out of the box. Commvault doesn’t focus so explicitly on integrating siloed data or providing analytical tools from within the platform, although it does offer this functionality.
If you’re not sure which product to choose, don’t forget that specialists can help. Remember, selecting great data management software isn’t sufficient when building a DR plan. You have to consider both hardware, software and total business continuity. As well as choosing the right software for your firm, specialists can help you build a complete solution for your data protection problems.
