Rubrik Alta goes native for AWS EC2, adds MSP Envoy

The latest version of Rubrik Alta Cloud Data Management software adds data protection and management capabilities across clouds, for enterprise users as well as managed service providers.

Rubrik Alta 4.2 launched today with the ability to protect and manage Amazon Web Services EC2-native applications in the Amazon cloud. Alta can now index, catalog and protect apps running on EC2 just as it does on-premises applications, according to Rubrik chief technologist Chris Wahl.

Rubrik also unveiled Envoy to help MSPs protect data for multiple tenants and provide self-service for their customers. Rubrik Alta 4.2 also added support for Oracle Solaris and IBM AIX enterprise platforms and integration with VMware vCloud Director cloud management software.

Alta’s EC2-native capabilities come from talking to EC2 APIs and managing data running on AWS. Wahl said the goal is to eliminate snapshot sprawl by managing them with the same application that handles core data protection and management. He said Rubrik Alta does application consistent backups of EC2 instances that use Elastic Block Storage (EBS) services, indexes the files inside and moves them across storage tiers.

“We talk to APIs and pull in the data,” Wahl said. “We crack open and index the files in there. People take EC2 snapshots and tend to go hog wild with them, and you have a lot of data spread across EBS volumes. There’s a lot of data sprawling all over the place with no true lifecycle management. Now you can assign a policy – say a four-hour RPO for this instance – and make sure it’s replicated to a secondary site for a different region. You no longer have snapshots hanging around forever, we make sure they’re sent to the right location and removed.”

Alta works across multiple public clouds, but has no similar lifecycle management capabilities for Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform or other public clouds.

“We’re starting with the gorilla in the room,” Wahl said of AWS. “We’ll get lifecycle management plugged into EC2, and go from there. We find the Azure world is mostly focused on virtual machines, which is a different beast than the APIs running in Amazon.”

Envoy displays an MSP’s Rubrik cluster in a tenant network. It allows end users to customize and manage backup and DR in a private cloud.

Wahl described Envoy as “kind of a proxy end point that can be deployed into a tenant network. An MSP with hundreds of tenants can put this lightweight agent into the tenant network, then log into the Rubrik and talk to their environment to do network-based backup. They don’t have to rely on third-party libraries or APIs, then can talk directly to the workloads by secure proxy. And the MSP customer can get in there to do backup or DR as a service.”

Alta is the release name for version 4 of the Rubrik Cloud Data Management (CDM) platform. Rubrik Alta 4.0 launched in June 2017 with broad on-premises and cloud platform support. Version 4.1 added support for Microsoft Azure Stack, Google Cloud Platform integration and advanced AWS services last September. CDM runs on Rubrik branded appliances, partner hardware or in the cloud.