Businesses that move away from on-prem and migrate their company data to the Cloud unlock many advantages. They often feel very comfortable in terms of backup: “our data is stored in the Cloud, so that’s got us covered for recovery in case of data loss”. This must be one of the biggest misunderstandings in cloud computing. It’s not because your data is stored in the cloud, that it can automatically be recovered when a disaster, user errors, application errors, ransomware, or other malicious activities resulting in data loss happen. In this post you’ll discover the different ways in which your data is already protected in Google Cloud, and which steps you should take yourself to make sure you’re 100% covered in case ‘disaster’ strikes.
About backup & data restore in Cloud computing
Let’s start with a simple question: what is backup and recovery? According to Wikipedia,
a backup, or the process of backing up, refers to the copying and archiving of computer data so it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. Recover data after its loss, be it by data deletion or corruption.”
Indeed, data loss is one of the worst nightmares of enterprises. Unfortunately, data can be corrupted, destroyed or lost at any unforeseen moment. On top of that, networks sometimes go down, natural disasters strike and software updates can contain critical bugs – just to name a few of the service-interrupting events that can happen at any time. As an organisation and as the head of IT, the last thing you want is for these unfortunate events to happen and to make you lose precious data.
How to avoid this? “My data is already stored in the Cloud, I thought my Cloud vendor protects my data?” Here we arrive at one very common misperception in Cloud computing. Just because you are using the Cloud to store your data (and leverage the powerful technologies related to that!), doesn’t automatically mean that you can recover it in case disaster or data loss strikes.
Why you need a backup solution for Google Cloud Platform
In case of Google Cloud, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers failover and redundancy, which might be perceived as backup. But that’s not the case, as it doesn’t offer a point-in-time back up or a historical copy of your data to be stored in a storage bucket in another location. Google provides 100% protection for hardware and network failure but not for data corruption, user error or application corruptions.
Google Cloud Platform will manage your infrastructure, but the responsibility for the backup of your data lies with yourself. This means that you ideally need a good backup strategy for your data. Every organisation should have a recovery mechanism in place that can be used to restore data in the event it gets corrupted, destroyed or lost.
So where do you start with this backup strategy? What are the possibilities to create that solid and reliable recovery mechanism that will minimise the impact and ensure you can continue operating in case something happens to your data? Surely a well designed and tested data recovery plan can ultimately save you a lot of headache and money.
Benefits of disaster recovery in the Cloud vs on-prem
Most companies already backup their data, but the question is how and where they do that. There are different models for backup, data recovery and data loss prevention that enterprises can adopt in their infrastructure strategy. On-premise or Cloud data can for example be backed up on-premise, in the Cloud or one step further in terms of security: in a Cloud Disaster Recovery (DR).
This last one is a secure backup strategy that stores and maintains copies of data in a Cloud computing environment.
When you use the Cloud as a backup target instead of an on-prem data center, you can drastically reduce costs via the low cost structure of Cloud storage. It allows you to minimise the need for expensive on-prem storage devices or a second data center, which will save your company a lot of money.
Using Google Cloud Platform as a backup storage target for example gives organisations a ton of advantages over more traditional solutions. Lower costs; higher reliability and greater availability are only a few of the benefits of modern data backup solutions in Google Cloud. Google Cloud Platform offers robust, flexible and cost-effective Data Recovery solutions.
Enters fully managed backup-as-a-service
Take the idea of data backup and disaster recovery in Google Cloud one step further; and you arrive at backup-as-a-service in GCP. To get entirely rid of backup and security headaches, you can now count on backup-as-a-service solutions to implement in your backup and data recovery strategy.
What are the advantages of backup-as-a-service? With this kind of solution in place, there’s no need to:
- deploy or manage your data protection infrastructure
- manage the day to day – just choose the VM and apps that you want to protect and assign the backup policy you desire
- have agents or additional scripts
Different vendors out there can take care of a secure backup of your organisation’s data in the Cloud, like for example HYCU.
HYCU solution for backup in GCP
If you’re already working with Google Cloud Platform, we can certainly recommend HYCU: the first native, fully managed backup-as-a-service developed specifically for Google Cloud Platform that has integrated security and invoicing. Implementation of HYCU is straightforward with zero deployment and maintenance.
The tool is a 100% GCP Cloud Native app, integrated within the GCP console and accessible from the GCP Marketplace. It allows you to scale endlessly with ease, just like you’re used to with Google Cloud.
Watch the HYCU session at Google Cloud Next San Francisco 2019 to get a feeling of what’s possible with HYCU:
Trusting Google Cloud to manage your infrastructure in Google Cloud Platform gives you all the benefits of cutting edge technology, scalability and flexibility. Make sure you’re prepared in case you have to recover your data, and take advantage of backing up your data in the Cloud or an integrated backup-as-a-service solution to fully enjoy headache-free infrastructure and security.
Want to know more about putting a disaster recovery and data loss prevention strategy in place for Google Cloud Platform with HYCU? Join the webinar on September 26th 2019!
