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 regardless of their location, be they on-prem or in a public cloud like Google Cloud Platform (GCP). However, there are some common misconceptions when hosting workloads on public clouds, including GCP.

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

Fact: While GCP offers high-availability features at an extra cost, they’re not backed up by default. GCP makes use of VM-based persistent-disk snapshots to protect its VMs, which requires users to manually assign snapshot schedules.

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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

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.

• Hands off approach with guaranteed compliance
  Relieve yourself from manual snapshot management with HYCU’s policy-based solution, that can ensure backup SLA compliance round the clock. Define the protection policies to fit your organizational backup SLAs. Once defined, you can automate their assignment to existing and new VMs created within your GCP cloud account.
• 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
  Transcend GCP snapshots limitations of intermittent full copies and implied high-cost with HYCU’s guaranteed, compute-free and space-efficient incremental-forever backups to already cost efficient GCP object storage. HYCU can further enhance GCP object’s cost efficiency with auto-tiering to GCP’s Archive Tier and needs no manual intervention for backups and restores.
• Assure backup security at all time
  Instead of solely relying on GCP snapshots that are vulnerable to malicious attacks when an entire GCP project is compromised, make sure you have peace of mind with HYCU’s secured backups to GCP object storage, that is fully air-gapped in an isolated project with highly restrictive access permissions to the GCP bucket. This can guarantee recovery from any form of malicious attacks (such as ransomware).
• 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!