How to Back Up to Google Cloud Platform

Public cloud platforms, such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP), are becoming increasingly popular, as enterprises pursue digital transformation in an effort to be more agile and flexible. The price of that agility and flexibility, however, is increased complexity when it comes to managing and protecting data across hybrid or multicloud environments.  

Part of the complexity occurs as a result of a common assumption: that the cloud provider is responsible for protecting an organization’s data. That assumption is mistaken, and can put your data at risk.

The Shared Responsibility Model

All public cloud providers, GCP included, operate under a Shared Responsibility model. That means while the cloud platform does offer uptime, redundancy, and failover functionality, it does not back up customer data or provide for recovery point in time capabilities.

GCP’s definition of Shared Responsibility, for example, states that Google is responsible for managing the security of its infrastructure and customers are responsible for securing their data. It’s also stated within GCP’s terms of service: “Customer is solely responsible for securing and backing up its application, project, and customer data.” Any kind of data or application you would back up on-premises should be backed up in the cloud. Simply storing your virtual machines, data, and applications in the cloud doesn’t mean you have a backup.

GCP Backup Tools Have Limitations

While GCP does offer some cloud backup functionality that you can take advantage of, it’s fairly limited and often involves manual processes. For instance, Google Cloud does offer snapshot capabilities, but it’s difficult to access or automate them in any way. GCP-native backups also don’t have the monitoring and data management tools that are typically included in on-premises backup solutions.

Backup tooling that comes with GCP also isn’t sufficient to protect and manage your data across an entire hybrid or multicloud ecosystem—and that’s an important issue, as a majority of enterprises are using hybrid or multicloud systems, according to industry experts.

What You Should Look for in Cloud Data Protection for GCP

A better solution than the native GCP tooling is one that offers a wide range of functionality that can extend GCP’s existing capabilities—for instance, a solution that leverages the provider’s built-in snapshots, as well as Google Cloud Storage Buckets and Google’s Identity and Access Management features. By leveraging Google’s capabilities, the solution can eliminate the need for agents and doesn’t negatively affect application consistency.

How Rubrik Can Help

Rubrik’s approach to cloud backup and recovery for data in GCP is extremely simple. We offer a single software solution designed specifically to work within GCP to orchestrate all the most important functions, from backup and recovery to search, cloud archival, analytics, and more—and it works across your hybrid or multicloud environment.  

• Maintain control of all your data by keeping it in your Google Cloud Projects—with the addition of automated backup and accelerated operational recovery features. 

• Automate data management and enable quick access to data through global search and a robust metadata catalog.

• Simplify cloud backup across hundreds of Google Cloud Projects or across multiple Google Orgs.

• Auto-protect GCP instances through native support for Google Cloud labels. 

• Automate discovery and assignments of SLA policies to SAP HANA databases. 

• Enjoy centralized policy management, reporting, and overall data management from a single control plane.  

Learn more about how Rubrik can help you better protect and manage your data on Google Cloud Platform.