Backup and recovery are essential in extreme situations that impact an organization’s entire Google Cloud account. Having an immutable, logically air-gapped version provides an additional layer of security for critical data.

Recently, on Sept. 10, Google Cloud enhanced its backup and disaster recovery services by introducing an unmodifiable vault.

This service is currently in preview mode but will soon be accessible to Google Cloud customers in parts of the U.S., Europe, and Taiwan in the upcoming months.

New Backup and Recovery Service with Logical Air-Gap

The backup vault feature is unique in that it is immutable, meaning data cannot be altered, and indelible, ensuring it cannot be deleted. Data is transferred to the backup vault from the Backup and DR service and securely stored to prevent cyberattacks or major errors. Additionally, users within the parent organization do not have access to the backup vault.

Administrators have the ability to set a retention period during which the vault remains unmodifiable.

Projects utilizing Google’s Compute Engine VM can store their data in the new vault as well. These vaults are independent of the source project and can be based in Compute Engine VMs, VMware Engine VMs, Oracle databases, or SQL Server databases.

The process of backing up Compute Engine VMs can begin at the time of creation, integrating seamlessly into the VM provisioning process. This alignment with Google Cloud Identity and Access Management policies ensures a streamlined and secure setup, as stated by Google.

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Create and Manage Google Compute Engine VMs

Administrators and application developers can manually monitor scheduled backup and restore jobs, generate reports on failed or skipped jobs, and receive alerts for critical backup-related events. To create a backup with a Compute Engine VM, an administrator simply needs to define a backup plan within Google Cloud.

Another approach, instead of duplicating Google Cloud backups, is to implement a multi-cloud system, which offers advantages, as demonstrated by the UniSuper outage due to the loss of their Google Cloud account and backups earlier this year.

roosho Senior Engineer (Technical Services)

I am Rakib Raihan RooSho, Jack of all IT Trades. You got it right. Good for nothing. I try a lot of things and fail more than that. That's how I learn. Whenever I succeed, I note that in my cookbook. Eventually, that became my blog. 

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