Backup and DR Service overview

This page provides you an overview about Google Cloud Backup and DR Service capabilities, key benefits, what you can backup, and how it works.

What is Backup and DR Service?

Backup and DR Service is a powerful, centralized, cloud-first backup and disaster recovery solution for cloud-based and hybrid workloads. Backup and DR Service lets you to recover your data quickly, supporting rapid resumption of critical business operations.

To know more about Backup and DR Service components and architecture, see Components of the Backup and DR architecture.

Key benefits of Backup and DR Service

Backup and DR Service provides many features and capabilities, including:

  • Incremental-forever backups: Efficient, incremental-forever backup leveraging changed-block tracking significantly reduces the time it takes to back up, minimizes impact on production servers, and optimizes bandwidth and storage utilization for low RPO and costs.
  • Instant mount and recovery: Instantly mount and access VMware Engine VMs and databases from backups stored in Cloud Storage for low RTO. No need to first move backup data to warm storage to access it.
  • Application-consistent database backups: Ensures databases are quiesced before data capture for application-consistent backups that can be recovered quickly. Transaction logs are backed up as well, as frequently as every 15 minutes, enabling recovery to any point in time.
  • Reduced operational burden: Reduces storage requirements for Compute Engine and VMware Engine VMs since selective disks can be excluded from backup.
  • Broad database support: Application-aware backup and recovery for databases, such as IBM Db2, Microsoft SQL Server, MongoDB, MySQL, Oracle, SAP ASE, SAP HANA, SAP IQ, SAP MaxDB, and PostgreSQL.

    For a detailed feature list, see this feature list.

What resources can I back up and recover?

You can backup the following resources with Backup and DR Service:

  • Compute Engine
  • VMware Engine (GCVE) VMs
  • Databases: SAP HANA, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, IBM Db2, SAP IQ, SAP MaxDB, and SAP ASE.
  • File systems:

    • NTFS, SMB, ReFS
    • EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, XFS, ReiserFS, BTRFS, NFS

For detailed Backup and DR Service supported resources, see the support matrix.

Regions availability

For the list of regions supported by management console and backup/recovery appliances, see Supported regions.

How it works

Backup and DR Service stores backup data in its original, application-readable format, resulting in many workloads being made available directly from long-term backup storage with no need for time-consuming data movement or translation.

After an initial full backup is performed, your data (general applications, VMware VMs, Compute Engine VMs, databases, and file systems) is backed up incrementally, updating and storing any data that has changed since the last backup.

All backups are executed on a backup/recovery appliance that can be located in the same region and zone as the workload. The backup/recovery appliances are managed using the Backup and DR management console, which uses object and job metadata provided by the backup/recovery appliance to give you a holistic view of your backups across multiple workloads and simplifying management of your data protection plans and stored data.

Basic overview of Google Cloud Backup and DR

Access Backup and DR Service using the management console

Backup and DR Service ensures that your data is managed, protected, and accessible using both hybrid and cloud-based backup/recovery appliances that are managed using the Backup and DR management console. Features of the management console include the following:

  • Holistic view of all your applications: See an aggregated view of backup/recovery appliance health and resource utilization through for all managed appliances.

  • Data backup and recovery: Discover and manage applications using the Onboarding wizard and perform backup and recovery processes.

  • Backup/recovery appliance management: Manage backup/recovery appliances, assign resources, create and assign roles to users, and create and manage storage pools.

  • Backup plan configuration: Configure backup plans to define how long to retain data.

  • Data mounting, cloning, or restoration: Access your captured and backed up data and perform mount, clone, LiveClone, restore, or replicate operations for backup images of your applications.

  • Backup/recovery appliance monitoring: Monitor backup/recovery appliance health and system performance in real-time.

  • Detailed reporting: View reports about jobs, backup plan compliance, resource utilization, and audit reports.

How Backup and DR Service works

The following workflow describes how Backup and DR Service creates and applies a backup plan to protect your data.

  1. Create and apply a backup plan. Use the Backup Plans tab in the management console to create data-handling policies that manage the following aspects of your data backups:

    • How often your application data is backed up by the backup/recovery appliance.

    • How long your application data backups are retained.

    • Where and how application data backups are replicated.

    To learn more about creating a backup plan for your data, see Backup plans.

    After you configure your backup plan, you must apply it to your application to enable the plan. See How to apply a backup plan.

  2. Restore your data when needed. After your application has a backup image according to your backup plan, you can restore the application from the image back to production at any time. To learn more about the restore function, see Restore overview.

  3. Access your backed up data. There are multiple methods for accessing your data in production or other storage formats. For quality assurance, migration to new storage, and more use cases, see Data access.

Pricing

Refer to Backup and DR Service pricing for pricing details.

What's next

The following quickstart guides can help you begin a backup and recovery workflow for your application: