Rubrik has launched Apache Iceberg Protection, a backup and recovery solution tailored for Apache Iceberg tables on Amazon Web Services, addressing challenges posed by native snapshot tools that do not safeguard critical metadata.
- Protects metadata and data for Apache Iceberg tables on AWS
- Enables immediate query access after restore via catalog re-registration
- Supports backup in customer AWS accounts or Rubrik's Cloud Vault
What happened
Rubrik announced the general availability of Rubrik Apache Iceberg Protection, a new backup and recovery capability designed specifically for Apache Iceberg tables running on AWS. This solution safeguards not only the underlying data files but also the table metadata stored in AWS Glue Data Catalog, addressing a critical vulnerability in native Iceberg snapshot mechanisms.
Unlike traditional snapshots that only store metadata pointers, Rubrik’s approach involves copying both compacted snapshots and catalog metadata. This ensures that if a table is deleted, encrypted, or overwritten, the table definition can be restored without manual metadata reconstruction. The solution supports backups in either the customer's AWS account or Rubrik’s air-gapped Cloud Vault.
Why it matters
Apache Iceberg tables are increasingly central to data lakehouse architectures and critical business systems, running in scalable environments such as Amazon Athena, Apache Spark, and Trino. However, native Iceberg snapshots only capture pointers to data files, making recovery incomplete and labor-intensive when metadata is lost due to incidents like ransomware attacks or accidental deletions.
Rubrik’s solution closes this gap by ensuring both data and metadata are recoverable, enabling data teams to restore tables fully and resume analytics workflows immediately. This significantly reduces downtime and protects enterprise data lakes against operational risks, ransomware, and AI-driven errors.
What to watch next
As data lake adoption grows, expect increasing demand for integrated data protection solutions that cover metadata alongside underlying files. Rubrik’s Air-gapped Cloud Vault and in-account backup options could become a competitive differentiator, especially for organizations balancing security and compliance requirements in cloud data environments.
Future developments to monitor include how Rubrik extends support for other lakehouse technologies and cloud providers, as well as integrations with governance and AI agent control tools introduced by Rubrik earlier this year. These could further enhance unified protection and management across complex cloud-native data ecosystems.