In a business, it is important to pay attention to storing and copying data, so that the business can continues to grow. The method of of storing data depends on certain servers within an organization, which still require IT team to move and archive data onto diskettes. In this way, copying and archiving data requires repeated completion and a lot of costs The importance of data resolution is for analysis, backup, recovery from hacking attacks, crashes and other purposes.

Actifio is here to help answer these deficiencies in terms of copying and archiving data. Actifio uses virtualization technology and intelligent software to automatically run and creating one exact data copy of production applications. However, as of 24th December 2020, Actifio is a part of Google Cloud.

Backup and DR are services on Google Cloud Platform for centralized and application-consistent data protection. This is for recovery is a vital component in a business continuity plan. Actifio is a platform that provides backup, cloning and analytics for local VMs and databases by providing RTO, RPO and low cost. According to Vice President and General Manager of Google Cloud, this acquisition demonstrates Google Cloud to help companies protect workloads on-premise and in the cloud. Google Cloud customers will be helped in preventing data and time loss due to external threats, network failures, human error, and other disruptions.

Within Google Cloud, this service is called Google Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery (GCBDR). GCBDR is a reliable and centralized backup and recovery solution for cloud-based and hybrid workloads. GCBDR allows data to recover quickly so business operations can run fast. 

  I. HOW GOOGLE CLOUD BACKUP & DR WORKS

Google Cloud Backup & DR save the copies data in the original format that could read by the application, so that many workloads are available directly from long-term backup storage without the need for time-consuming data movement or translation.  After the full backup occurs, then the next backup will occurs incrementally, updating and retaining any data that has changed since the last backup. All backups, including common applications, like VMware VM, VM Compute Engine, databases and file systems are managed by the Google Cloud console. So the backup process can finished quickly.

1. Create and apply a backup plan

After your data is backed up, 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.

• How long your application data backups are retained.

• Where and how application data backups are replicated.

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.

3. Access your backed up data

There are multiple methods for accessing your data in production or other storage formats that you can choose.

  II. BENEFITS USING GOOGLE CLOUD BACKUP & DR

In Cloud Backup & DR, there are several benefits that customers will get :

1. Manage your backups and restores all in one place

If managing data in one place, that can optimize the performance and streamline the backup processing time. Data can also be managed easily and recovered in the same place using Google Cloud console.  

2. Ensure costs are as minimal as possible

Google Cloud Backup & DR also strives for minimum TCO or Total Cost of Ownership for data backup. By implementing “incremental-forever” in storage technology to ensure that payments are as needed. 

3. Eliminate downtime with on-demand, instant recovery

In Google Cloud Backup & DR offers a low Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). So when do the backup process can finished quickly.  

4. Reduce space required for storing backups

To avoid unnecessary duplicate data storage and to save the space, the “incremental-forever” approach is applied. This approach will only save changes incrementally, so that can save storage space and costs also recover the data quickly. 

  III. FEATURES OF GOOGLE CLOUD BACKUP & DR

Besides the benefits that will be get, using the Google Cloud Backup & DR can supports data protection partner solutions and provides service-level data protection features.

1. “Incremental-forever” backups

2. Instant mount and recovery

3. Application-consistent database backups

4. Reduced operational burden

5. Broad database support

6. Centralized management

7. Plan-driven data management with automated retention

8. Cross-region backups

9. Flexible backup storage options

10. Instant data access on-premises or in cloud

11. Cross project recoveries

12. Multi-region disaster recovery

13. Virtual clones for test data management and ransomware recovery

14. Data encryption in transit and at rest

  IV. COMPONENTS IN GOOGLE CLOUD BACKUP & DR

In Google Cloud Backup & Services service architecture through the following components :

1. Management console

The management console acts as a management plane tool for data backup or restoration.

2. Backup/recovery appliances

The function of backup/recovery appliances to capture, transfer, and manage the lifecycle of data that has been backed up within the organization.

3. Backup and DR agents

Backup and DR agents are software tools to efficiently capture data from production application incrementally and permanently and provide application awareness at the time of the data recovery. The agents are installed on the application host. 

  V. STORAGE TYPE IN GOOGLE CLOUD BACKUP & DR

The data has been backed up will be stored in local snapshot. The data can be copied to storage with the aim of long-term storage. In Google Cloud offers the following storage types :

1. Minimal capacity persistent disk

Use this storage type if you only want to protect Compute Engine VMs. Backups are stored as original persistent disk snapshots.

2. Standard persistent disk

This storage type offers efficient block storage, start with a 4 TB persistent disk. It is recommended for VMware Engine VMs and databases or file system application with the medium to high I/O. 

3. SSD persistent disk

This storage type offers fast block storage, start with 4 TB persistent disk. It is recommended for VMware Engine VMs and databases application or file systems with very high I/O.