Google announced three improvements to Google Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery to enhance customers' ability to manage backups simply and securely, while enhancing speed and reducing the workload on IT teams.
Backup and disaster recovery technologies are essential components of ransomware defense. The first enhancement allows users to create backup storage systems that cannot be accidentally modified or deleted. Backup data is stored in projects managed by Google and is “logically separated” from Google Cloud projects, the company said in a blog post. Compute Engine virtual machines (VMs), VMware Engine VMs, Oracle databases, and SQL Server databases are supported.
Backup storage is not visible to users within the organization, preventing direct attacks, and Google manages access through Google Cloud Backup and DR service application programming interfaces (APIs) and user interface (UI). Users can set vault backup rules on modification and deletion when vaults are created. Backups are completely independent, giving users the opportunity to recover when the source resource is no longer available, helping teams keep production applications online.
Google is also making updates to its central backup management system. Its new fully managed service is an integrated, developer-focused self-service model that allows application developers to back up their virtual machines while the teams managing the storage and backup systems maintain governance and oversight. Monitoring and reporting capabilities include scheduled backup jobs, restore jobs, customizable reports, alerts, and notifications.
The system, integrated with Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM), allows developers to create backups while building Compute Engine VMs so that users have the correct data protection policies deployed from the start of project build.
Google said both products are currently available for preview. The backup feature will be generally available in the coming months. During the preview, users will be able to access these features through the UI and Google Cloud CLI to protect Compute Engine VMs. Once generally available, users will have access to the APIs and Terraform.
