Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct: A Technical Overview of Architecture and Workflow

Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct (NAS CD) is a modern data protection solution designed to efficiently back up and recover petabyte-scale unstructured data across on-premises and cloud environments. This paper provides a technical overview of the NAS CD architecture and its backup workflow. We describe how NAS CD combines a cloud-based control plane with stateless connector virtual machines to deliver high-throughput, scalable backups for network-attached storage (NAS) and object data. Key mechanisms such as advanced parallel scanning, an incremental-forever backup model, data chunking, and inline compression are detailed. We also discuss how the system ensures data integrity, security (through immutability and zero-trust access controls), and rapid recovery capabilities. Through an in-depth examination of the architecture and backup process, the paper illustrates how Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct addresses the challenges of protecting massive unstructured datasets with high performance and reliability.