Driscoll’s Protects the Finest Berries with Rubrik

RTOs

Near-zero RTOs

Simple

Integration and ease of use

Longer

Retention periods

Overview

Family-owned for over 100 years, Driscoll’s is passionate about growing and providing premium fresh berries. Headquartered in Watsonville, California, the company generally focuses on the berry supply chain, from breeding seedling plants to packing, shipping, and marketing the harvested berries to retailers after receiving the berries from its growers. Driscoll’s runs one of the largest strawberry breeding programs in the world.

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At Driscoll's, Rubrik provides VM- and file-level backup of applications powering the cooler facility. Berries harvested from contracted growers are sent back to the cooler, which serves as the central area in which berries are packed and then distributed to retail channels.

It’s important that we are able to backup the VMs in our cooler facility. If we don’t, we cannot receive and ship berries. We can now successfully and easily backup the applications underpinning our supply chain—at both a VM and file-level. That way, we continue to deliver the finest berries to delight our customers.

Jose Ambrosio
Systems Engineer

Featured Product: Rubrik Cloud Data Management

Challenges

Management complexity from array-based snapshots
Inability to do file-level recovery easily and reliably
Limited backup retention

Results

Ease of use and integration
Instant file search and near-zero RTO for recovery (RTO=minutes vs. hours)
Longer backup retention periods

The Solution

VM and file-level recovery for virtualized environment
Public cloud for pay-as-you-go long-term data retention

Challenges

Using Array-based Snapshots Creates Recovery Challenges

When Driscoll’s embarked on its virtualization journey five years ago, backup for its virtualized environment became a huge challenge. The IT team switched from backing up to tape to using array-based snapshot and replication to protect its virtualized environment. “Using primary storage-based mirroring and replication for our backup strategy created three issues for us. It shortened our retention periods since we’re using capacity on primary storage. Second, it exposed us to greater odds of recovering backup files from the same site as your primary storage. Third, it was complex to manage given lack of file granularity. Locating a specific file meant you had to mount an entire set of backup data before embarking on an Easter egg hunt,” explains Nathan Bach, Senior Systems Engineer. For SQL databases, Driscoll’s used two separate solutions for backup software and storage but this still created management complexity. “At one point, replication broke and we weren’t notified by the system,” recalls Jose Ambrosio, Systems Engineer. “Diagnosing and resolving the root cause of issues in a timely manner was difficult since we were working with two different external support teams."

At one point, replication broke and we weren’t notified by the system. Diagnosing and resolving the root cause of issues in a timely manner was difficult since we were working with two different external support teams.

Jose Ambrosio
Systems Engineer

Solutions

Implementing Rubrik for Deployment, Management, and Recovery Simplicity

“We’ve been looking for a solution that provided physically different disks for our backups, ease of use with VMware, great performance and deduplication capabilities, and ability to take app-aware snapshots without agents,” says Bach. “We have already gone through two deployments with Rubrik, and have been really pleased with the ease of set-up. It takes about twenty minutes to rack the appliance, and four minutes to set up. We input our configuration details, the Rubrik system maps our VM environment, and we’re ready to start protecting our data.”

We have already gone through two deployments with Rubrik, and have been really pleased with the ease of set-up. It takes about twenty minutes to rack the appliance, and four minutes to set up.

Nathan Bach
Senior Systems Engineer

Featured: Rubrik CDM

Delivering VM and File-level Recovery for Driscoll's Supply Chain

Driscoll’s is now using Rubrik to protect the applications that power the heart of the supply chain. Berries harvested from its growers are sent back to Driscoll’s cooler facility, which serves as the central area in which berries are packed and distributed to retail channels. “We have a file server VM about a TB in size. We were using our legacy backup software and storage solutions to protect this file server, but our file-level backups were failing. On top of that, we were having issues with our log-in credentials. We dedicated resources to troubleshoot our backup infrastructure for a week to no avail.” Ambrosio quickly resolved this by using Rubrik to protect the file server, delivering VM and file-level recovery.

With our legacy architecture, it would take us 30 minutes to an hour or more to do a file-level restore. Now, I can instantly search and recover at a file-level easily.

Jose Ambrosio
Systems Engineer

Featured: Rubrik CDM

The Results

Ease of use and integration

“The system is simple to implement, allowing us to think about the things you really care about, such as the SLA policies to apply for protection."

Instant file-level search and a near-zero RTO for recovery and testing

“With our legacy architecture, it would take us 30 minutes to an hour or more to do a file-level restore. If we’re restoring from our primary storage, we’ll need to find the location in which the file was vaulted, comb through the dates on that system, mount the backup, check to see if it was what we were looking for, and repeat if we couldn’t find. Now, I can instantly search and recover at a file-level easily.”

Longer retention periods

“By migrating to a separate backup infrastructure, we can opt for longer retention periods without sacrificing primary storage capacity. The system’s powerful scale-out deduplication allows us to drive additional efficiencies in capacity.”

Ability to instantly live mount data

“We can mount our data directly on the system with great speed and performance. Our team is now figuring out how to leverage this in our test/dev process.”

Ability to use the cloud

“The ability to archive data to the public cloud was really interesting for us. Cloud-based solutions have gotten more affordable over time and Driscoll’s is already using the cloud for file sharing and desktop backups. By archiving data to the cloud, we can lower our investment in upfront hard capacity and pay as we go.”