Dell Networker vs. Rubrik

For users with a basic backup system that does not provide advanced data protection this is a life saver in the age we live in where hackers are looking to encrypt and ruin your important backups. I would recommend [Dell EMC Networker] based on its features, price, and ease of use. If you have a similar product already it does not offer many unique features however.

Incentivized

Rubrik is great for large enterprises but might not fit the best for smaller sized companies with low backup demands. We have had to restore virtual machines quickly , and Rubrik's quick mount on solid state was tremendous at getting the client back running. The only negative is the mac address changed even though we had checked retain mac. We had to go back into vmware and set it.

Incentivized

• Networker has a UI and set that is relatively easy to use. It has a policy-based backup system that is straightforward as far as configuration.
• Networker has fairly robust reporting on current save sets and easily exportable pdfs and spreadsheets of statistics and metrics
• Networker has a monitoring dialogue which allows you to find out quickly what has succeeded or failed.

Incentivized

• Easy onboarding. We were able to make a connection to our M365 environment in less than 5 minutes, and backups were processing within just a couple minutes after that.
• Good customer service. From sales to post-implementation, the staff at Rubrik were helpful, professional, and focused on me.
• Set and forget. Outside of regular test restores, I don't have to worry about constantly trying to tweak settings within the Rubrik console to get it working better. It just works.

Incentivized

• Networker terminology is awful. My favorite example is that many required-to-function configuration changes need to occur with the advanced configuration enabled. To make this worse, the 'advanced configuration' I am speaking of is actually called 'Debug Mode'. That's right, you must use debug mode in order to have a functional administrator interface.
• Errors are common and to resolve you often must go to support. You really need to be an expert to fix many errors, the steps usually involve being really knowledgeable in the CLI tools, which I am getting good at, but the public documentation is seriously lacking for troubleshooting these issues. That said, support (through emc) is really good at handling the common issues, friendly, generally knowledgeable, and quick to respond.
• It runs on Java, and sometimes I need to clear java cache to fix interface bugs. Generally this isn't an issue, but it is additional software you must worry about.

Incentivized

• Reporting and creation of custom Reports
• Orchestrated Recovery is not available for Nutanix AHV yet
• Threat Hunt Investigations in YARA rules are difficult to find documentation on how to write.
• Data Protection All "Search Across Rubrik" doesn't encompass files/folder you have to specify the brick to search for that to restore.

There are three reasons for not renewing our use of NetWorker: 1) the rising and extremely high cost of support and proprietary hardware needed for deduplication, 2) the complete unreliability of the product (we couldn't recover from a true disaster if we wanted to), and 3) the horrible support from EMC for the product

Incentivized

The support has been incredible. Any time we have had a question, it has always been answered within 24hrs. Also, the team is always will to hop on a Zoom call to help walk us through the dashboard and troubleshoot any issues we are having. Also, having the peace of mind that our data is protected should anything happen in our system.

NetWorker has the clunkiest interface and unfriendliest CLI with which I have ever had to work. I spent three years hating this application because it took ALL of my time just to keep it running. Even then, I had no confidence in our ability to recover from a disaster because of its unreliability.

Incentivized

The GUI was successfully designed to be very easy to use and work through. It is a very logical work flow that is easy to navigate and just makes sense. That is part of the charm when in the moment of stress, you can still find your way around and accomplish the desired recovery.

Incentivized

Rubrik's brik is designed with redundancy in mind, ensuring that if one node experiences issues, others can continue to provide backup and recovery services.

Incentivized

Yes. Even on VPN and poor occasional poor internet speeds we've had no issues.

The support team has always been good, and there is never an issue that can't be resolved. The techs are competent and know the product. The slightly less than perfect rating I'm giving is because Support shouldn't carry the burden themselves. We hear from Dell sales people all the time, but they never call and ask about this product, nor do they offer to upsell it or make it better. That lack of sales support and coherence hurts the overall rating a bit. When I spend my company's money on your product, I expect you to at least ACT like you care, if not actually care for real. It influences my opinion and future purchasing habits.

Incentivized

Rubrik support is hands down some of the best product support we have. They know their product and are quick to assist. Submitting support cases is easier and they are very responsive. You don't have to use Rubrik support often but when you do they have your back.

Incentivized

Very easy to take in and pass on.

Incentivized

Easy to follow and very thorough. Trainer was knowledgeable and helpful answering any questions and providing detailed answers where possible. It's also nice to gain another badge :) There is also the Rubrik University online tutorials to refer back to and keep updated with new innovations. I would say the exam was very hard.

Incentivized

How can anyone build a house without a blueprint? NetWorker was ramrodded into place here without a design or implementation plan. The result was a setup that was doomed from the start and never worked reliable over the full three years of our contract obligation.

Incentivized

From experience the implementation was smooth and easy, like a simple plug and play format but would need coordination from your network team to be able to see the entire IT infrastructure.

Incentivized

Our trust in DataDomain as a premier deduplication technology naturally leads to [Dell EMC] Networker being the appropriate backup application to integrate with. Networker provides the most favorable dedup with DataDomain when compared to other backup technologies, and provides the highest combination of protection flexibility and performance that most other applications cannot provide. For example, Veeam provides excellent VM backup capability, but is unable to protect Meditech. If you go down the list of backup applications, you'll find that Networker is unique in what it is able to protect and in its backup performance.

Selected Rubrik due to API driven, modern easy to use interface and appliances in a scale out architecture with a secure file system protecting backup data

Incentivized

Very easy to add new 'briks' (or nodes as everyone else calls them :P) as long as the network is plugged in and configured, the briks will discuss among themselves and welcome the new comer into the cluster

Incentivized

• Now that it's been implemented and the many kinks worked out, we have far less exposure to downtime, but that's only because we didn't have an adequate backup solution in the target environment initially. We used native tools to protect SQL data and a few other tricks, but really didn't have anything proper. In other words, the bar was low.
• We have reduced the load on some of our application servers through the use of Networker's agent for Microsoft. However, compare that with Veeam, which just has a checkbox and no agent required to properly back up a SQL box.
• Agent-based backups require monitoring and periodic updates. This adds complexity and additional staff time to manage.

Incentivized

• Rubrik has eliminated all our other backup tools that we were trying to accomplish what they offer.
• Rubrik has made management of backups a non-issue.
• Recovery of systems and files takes seconds or minutes.
• We have a better strategy against ransomware.

Incentivized