Standardizing Data Protection with a Unified Single Pane of Glass
We are excited to announce the allowlisted preview of a significant integration between Google Cloud NetApp Volumes and Google Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery (GCBDR). This milestone brings enterprise-grade file storage into the heart of Google Cloud’s standard data protection workflows, enabling customers to simplify and scale their backup strategies with ease.
A Unified Strategy for Data Protection
As organizations host their enterprise workloads by leveraging multiple Google Cloud services, managing fragmented data protection policies become complex. This integration addresses that challenge by bringing NetApp Volumes into the single pane of glass manageability offered by GCBDR.
Through this integration, NetApp Volumes customers can now standardize their data protection strategy in full alignment with other Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services they consume and protect. This alignment ensures that your most critical file-based workloads benefit from the same robust, centralized backup management tools used across your entire GCP environment.
Key Features in the Allowlisted Preview
Initially targeting the Flex Unified (File and Block) service level, this preview introduces several powerful capabilities designed for mission-critical data security:
- Granular Hourly Backups: Achieve lower Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) with the ability to schedule backups as frequently as every hour.
- Custom Scheduler: Tailor your backup windows to match your specific business requirements and maintenance cycles.
- Cross-Project Backup and Restore: Backups of production data can be stored in a different project and can also be restored to a different project, allowing complete independence on manageability and recoverability of mission-critical data.
- Enforced Retention: Protect against ransomware and malicious deletion with indelible backup policies that ensure data remains preserved for a defined period.
- Cross-Region Restore: Flexibly restore data to different regions within allowed pairs to maintain business continuity during regional outages.
- Switch Backup Vaults: Seamlessly transition your volume to a new backup vault without deleting existing backups. Existing backups remain accessible for restore, while all future backups are automatically directed to your newly selected vault.
Getting Started
The allow-listed preview capabilities are currently available for usage through the gcloud CLI and Terraform. While UI support is planned for future releases, these developer-friendly interfaces allow you to immediately integrate GCNV protection into your Infrastructure as Code (IaC) workflows.
Sample Backup workflow
Here is a three step guide on how you can start protecting your NetApp Volumes with GCBDR.
- Create a Backup Vault named “gcbdr-gcnv-vault” and optionally enable enforced retention.
gcloud backup-dr backup-vaults create gcbdr-gcnv-vault \
--location=asia-south1 \
--backup-min-enforced-retention="1d" \
--description="Vault to store backups of NetApp Volumes"
- Configure a Backup plan named “gcbdr-gcnv-plan” designed to initiate backups every four hours operating between 8 am and 8 pm.
gcloud backup-dr backup-plans create gcbdr-gcnv-plan \
--project=my-project \
--location=asia-south1 \
--backup-vault=gcbdr-gcnv-vault \
--resource-type=netapp.googleapis.com/Volume \
--backup-rule=rule-id=hourly-rule,recurrence=HOURLY,hourly-frequency=4,time-zone=Asia/Kolkata,retention-days=7,backup-window-start=8,backup-window-end=20
- Associate the Backup Plan to a NetApp Volume by name “gcnv_data_gcbdr” to start protecting it. The volume is presented as a resource to the Backup Plan Association.
gcloud backup-dr backup-plan-associations create gcbdr-gcnv-data-vol \
--project=my-project \
--location=asia-south1 \
--backup-plan=projects/my-project/locations/asia-south1/backupPlans/gcbdr-gcnv-plan \
--resource-type=netapp.googleapis.com/Volume \
--resource=projects/my-project/locations/asia-south1-b/volumes/gcnv_data_gcbdr
Join the Preview today
This feature is available in allowlisted Preview and isn't open by default. To request access to this feature, contact sales.
Once allowlisted, you can explore the supported operations for these new features via the gcloud documentation.
Standardizing your data protection has never been simpler.
Join us in this preview to experience the power of NetApp Volumes and GCBDR working as one!
