Why You Need Cloud-native Data Protection When You Have Snapshots

In any business, data is considered to be one of the core assets and must be safeguarded from user errors, malicious attacks and unforeseen catastrophes.

This applies to all business-critical workloads, whether they reside on-premises or in public clouds like Google Cloud Platform (GCP). However, as cloud adoption accelerates, so do misconceptions about the security and resilience of workloads hosted in the cloud.

Myth: All workloads hosted on GCP are protected by default.

Fact: While GCP offers high-availability features (often at extra cost), workloads are not automatically backed up. GCP relies on VM-based persistent-disk snapshots. This require users to manually assign snapshot schedules and do not constitute a comprehensive backup strategy.

Myth: GCP’s native snapshots with custom scripts are sufficient to recover from any form of data-loss situation.

Fact: While GCP snapshots are the key building blocks of a data-protection strategy, you still need a cloud-native data protection solution that can perfectly complement GCP snapshots. The data protection solution should provide value at several roles across an organization. The levels are:

• End users
• Cloud administrators
• IT management

Why Cloud-Native Data Protection Is Essential

Cloud-native data protection goes beyond traditional backup by addressing the evolving landscape of cyber threats, regulatory requirements, and operational complexity. Here’s what’s changed:

• Rising Threats: Cyberattacks, including ransomware, are more sophisticated and frequently target cloud environments. Immutable and air-gapped backups are now critical to ensure recoverability even if cloud credentials or projects are compromised.
• Multi-Cloud Complexity: Many organizations operate across multiple clouds. Consistent, centralized data protection is necessary to manage risk and ensure compliance in these diverse environments.
• AI-Driven Threat Detection: Modern data protection solutions leverage AI and machine learning for real-time anomaly detection and rapid response to potential breaches.
• Regulatory Compliance: Stricter regulations demand robust, auditable data protection measures, including end-to-end encryption and regular security assessments.

End User Value:

For the end user, typically the application or server owner, developer or help desk user, there are three key areas of value that any data protection solution should provide. And, here’s how HYCU can help for each.  

• Granular recovery of files and folders
  In a typical backup and recovery scenario, 90% of an organization’s recovery requests from end-users are to recover missing or corrupted files. Enhance the end users experience from a multi-step restore process from GCP snapshots with HYCU’s instant recovery of any file or folder. This is done with HYCU’s native integration with GCP snapshots and GCP’s IAM to promote a self-service model.
• Assured application consistency
  Recovering from application and data inconsistent backups can result in nasty surprises during the post-recovery process, such as filesystem and database consistency checks that can severely impact the RTO. Simply enable GCP snapshots to automatically quiesce filesystems and applications with HYCU’s pre-post application framework. This doesn’t require any agents or plugins.
• Clone and DR applications at a snap of a finger
  Amplify the scope of data recovery capabilities for your application owners. From simple restores using GCP snapshots to instantly clone their applications and VMs for test-dev or migration purposes. Also, in a case of a disaster, perform a multi-regional failover and failback to any site within GCP in an extremely simplified manner.

Cloud Admin Value:

For the cloud admin, there are a number of key areas of value that any data protection solution should provide.

Here are a few ways HYCU can help.  

• Policy-based automation
  Eliminate manual snapshot management with policy-driven automation. This ensures backup SLAs are met and new workloads are automatically protected.
• Promote the self-service model
  Free up administrator’s time for more valuable and critical tasks with HYCU’s self-service model. Empower application owners and end users to manage their own VM and application data protection with HYCU’s built in multi-tenancy capability, inherited GCP’s IAM and Projects. HYCU can also help in grouping multiple GCP projects for a unified protection approach.
• Round the clock monitoring and alerting
  Get rid of manual and scripted ways to track the status of your backups with: 
  HYCU’s centralized dashboard for a quick view of overall backup, restore and target capacity status,
  HYCU’s comprehensive reporting for a detailed overview of GCP data protection
  HYCU’s alerting to notify on issues that needs your attention with backup and recovery failures

IT Management Value:

For IT Management, there are three key areas of value that any data protection solution should provide. Don’t lose sight of these when you factor value into your data protection provider of choice. Here’s also how HYCU can help.  

• Cost-efficient long-term backups
  Overcome the limitations and costs of snapshots with incremental-forever backups to GCP object storage, including auto-tiering to lower-cost archive tiers.
• Immutability and security
  Protect against ransomware and insider threats with immutable, air-gapped backups stored in isolated projects with strict access controls.
• Zero maintenance with proactive support
  Why bother updating your custom scripts or learning new manual steps to manage your GCP snapshots, when HYCU’s true DPaaS model maintains and updates itself to the latest GCP and HYCU’s own features? And what if you are aided with a high-end technical support that can proactively resolve any issues even before you know them?

Manual techniques and custom scripts can be a painful, impractical and an inefficient alternative to manage and maintain GCP snapshots. That’s why we developed HYCU for GCP. We fundamentally believe you need a purpose-built, cloud-scale solution hosted as-a-service that can complement GCP snapshots to provide a comprehensive data-protection solution. If you’d like to know more about how HYCU can simplify the data-protection process on GCP, drop us a note at google@hycu.com, or check us out at HYCU for GCP!

Further Reading

• Adventist Risk Management Data Protection Infrastructure
• 5 Reasons Why You Should Backup Your Google Cloud Platform Environment