Do you really need both?
At first glance, it’s easy to think that Predatar’s capabilities are the same as the resiliency features that are available natively inside Rubrik Cloud Data Management.
You might hear both Rubrik and Predatar talking about things like Threat Hunting, Cyber Recovery, and Clean Rooms. So why would Rubrik customers consider adding Predatar Recover Assurance?
This article will answer that question by focussing on 3 key areas:
1. Cost and feature availability
2. Automated recovery testing
3. Vendor and workload support
Core Functionality
Before we dig into the details, it’s important to recognise that when looking at Rubrik and Predatar, it’s not an ‘apples for apples’ comparison. Rubrik aims to be an all-in-one backup and resiliency platform. Predatar, on the other hand, doesn’t do the backup management bit. Predatar is designed to work with leading backup products, including Rubrik, to give customers unprecedented recovery confidence.
Predatar’s core purpose is to prove that all of your backups, whether they’re managed in Rubrik or another backup product, are always recoverable and free from infection. So if the worst happens, you know you’re good.
1. Cost and feature availability
When weighing up the options for boosting resilience in your backup environment, it’s important to know that many of Rubrik’s resiliency features are only available with a Rubrik Enterprise Edition License.
Rubrik customers on the top subscription tier – Enterprise Edition – will benefit from one of the most comprehensive cyber resiliency toolsets on the market with features including data classification, advanced threat hunting powered by Google’s Mandient threat intelligence, SIEM integrations and Cyber Recovery Simulation.
However, Rubrik customers with Foundation Edition or Business Edition licenses will likely find that the resiliency features that are available to them are pretty basic.
Check out our features comparison and FAQ for more detail.
Upgrading your Rubrik Subscription:
For lower-tier Rubrik customers with a need to boost resilience, upgrading your subscription is the obvious option. While we can’t say exactly what the cost of upgrading your Rubrik subscription would be (your price will be specific to your organisation and dependent on several factors), a Foundation Edition customer should expect to pay something in ballpark of an additional 40-50% to switch to an Enterprise Edition licence.
In most cases, the cost to add the Predatar Recovery Assurance platform to you existing Rubrik backup will be significantly lower. What’s more, Predatar doesn’t have complicated subscription tiers. Your Predatar price is based on the size of your backup environment, and all of our features (even the really cool ones) are available to all of our Recovery Assurance customers.
If you’re a Rubrik customer, a Predatar subscription is a great way to add features like enterprise grade anomaly detection, and threat hunting (powered by Trend Micro Vision One) to your backup estate. Not to mention our totally unique automated recovery testing and deep malware interrogation. Let’s talk about that now…
2. Automated recovery testing and deep malware interrogation
Continuous, pre-emptive testing in a CleanRoom environment is what really sets Predatar apart. Predatar is all about proving that your data is recoverable, proving that it can be recovered quickly, and proving it’s free from malware. So, if the worst happens – like a natural disaster, cybercrime incident, or another type of IT outage – you know you’re recovery will be effective.
When it comes to Recovery Assurance, there is no other product on the market that does it as thoroughly, or as easily as Predatar does.
Predatar customers don’t wait for a cyberattack, or even for a threat alert to validate their data is recoverable and clean. They do it every day.
With out-of-the-box automations that can be set-up with a few clicks, Predatar can be up and running in under an hour. Once live, it’s always-on, continually recovering your backups into the CleanRoom, powering them on, and interrogating them for malware – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The result?… Predatar has found malware in the backups or snapshots of more that 90% of its customers. The reality is, regardless of which backup product you use, you probably have malware hiding in backups. If you use immutable snapshots, you might have malware in those too. We’ll talk about multi-vendor and multi-workload support in just a minute.
What about Rubrik Cyber Recovery Simulation?
Rubrik customers looking to achieve a similar capability to Predatar’s automated Recovery Assurance can use Rubrik’s Cyber Recovery Simulation (Enterprise Edition licence required) as a starting point. While this does enable users to validate backups for recoverability, integrity, and cleanliness in an isolated sandbox, there is no out-of-the box automation. Users must manually select the workloads they want to test. Automation is only be possible with custom scripting using Powershell modules or third-party tools like Ansible or Terraform. You’re going to need specialist skills in-house to build and maintain these workflows.
So, what is Rubrik’s Clean Room Recovery in the Cloud?
It’s easy to see why there is a common misconception that Rubrik’s Clean Room Recovery, created in partnership with Google, provides the same capability as Predatar’s CleanRoom. But there is a very significant difference.
The Rubrik/Google CleanRoom is a reactive tool. In a cyber incident, every second counts. This Clean Room solution is designed to ensure that Rubrik customers can restore data into a safe, secure, location in the cloud immediately when an attack is detected – and quickly begin forensic analysis – using Google’s Mandiant threat intelligence tools.
Predatar flips this model. Your Predatar CleanRoom is always-on, continually validating the integrity, recoverability and cleanliness of your data. And if the worst does happen – you can switch your CleanRoom to ‘Response mode’ and use it for post-attack analysis too.
3. Vendor and Workload Support
Backup application support:
Rubrik’s threat detection and resiliency capabilities are designed exclusively for, and are built into the Rubrik platform. This is great from a simplicity point of view, particularly if your organisation is ‘all-in’ on Rubrik. For Rubrik customers that don’t have important data or critical IT systems backed-up using other backup platforms, Rubrik’s own resiliency features may be adequate.
For organisations with more than one backup solution in play, Predatar is a strong choice. Predatar is vendor-agnostic. It works with backup platforms including Veeam, IBM Storage Protect, IBM Defender Data Protect, Cohesity – and of course, Rubrik too.
Additionally, Both Predatar and Rubrik can also be used to boost data resilience on some primary storage platforms too. Both can be used with Pure Storage, while Predatar also supports IBM FlashSystems.
For organisations with complex storage environments, Predatar provides a standardised approach to recovery assurance and across different systems. There’s also the added benefit of a centralised user interface for management and reporting.
Workload Support:
Rubrik’s resiliency features focus primarily on virtualised workloads, however it does provide integrations for files servers, M365, and Oracle workloads too.
Predatar supports full validation of Windows and Linux VMs, physical servers, AIX workloads and SQL databases too. If your organisation has important data and systems running on these workloads, you should consider deploying Predatar to continuously validate they are clean and recoverable.
Final Thoughts
While Rubrik’s cyber resilience features are arguably the most innovative and robust of the big backup vendors, many of them are reserved for their top-tier customers only. Additionally, they can only be used for the workloads in your Rubrik cluster. You should consider adding Predatar if:
#1. You have business critical data backed-up on platforms other than Rubrik.
#2. You want the benefits of advance resiliency features, but you’re not a Rubrik Enterprise customer.
#3. You have a requirement to prove your ability to recovery quickly, cleanly, and completely.
#4. You simply want the piece of mind that comes from continuous, pre-emptive Recovery Assurance.
Want to dig deeper?
Take a look at our Rubrik & Predatar features comparison table and FAQs.
It’s easy to get started with Predatar
A Predatar Recovery Assurance Platform can be deployed and configured for your Rubrik environment in under an hour. Contact our team here, send us an email at hello@predatar.com or book a demo to start your journey to recovery confidence.
Keep us honest:
At Predatar, we make every effort to ensure our content is accurate. If you believe anything in this blog is misleading, incorrect, or out-of-date, please let us know.
