Data protection options for disks and instances

This document discusses the options available on Compute Engine to back up and replicate the following Compute Engine resources:

• Persistent Disk and Google Cloud Hyperdisk volumes
• Virtual machine (VM) and bare metal instances
• Workloads running in Compute Engine and on-premises

To safeguard important data, Google recommends using one of the backup options discussed in this document. You can't recover a compute instance, disk, image, or snapshot if you delete it, even if the deletion was accidental.

Options

The following table compares the features you can use to back up and replicate disks and instances.

Resource to back up	Feature	Description	Use cases
VMs, including attached disks	Backup and DR Service	A managed service that provides secure backups for compute instances across projects.	Defend against ransomware and other risks through insights into security threat events. Improve cyber resilience with immutable and indelible backups. Protect instances while retaining governance and oversight. Implement comprehensive monitoring, auditing, and reporting for compliance.
VMs, including attached disks	Machine images	Instance backups that offer consistency at the I/O operation level or crash level.	Store all the configuration, metadata, permissions, and data from one or more disks required to create an instance. Back up and restore instances for long-term retention. Clone and replicate instances.
Disks	Standard snapshots	Point-in-time backups that capture the state of your disk.	Back up disks geo-redundantly for disaster recovery. Improve performance and space efficiency by storing as differential copies.
Disks	Archive snapshots	Low-cost geo-redundant disk backups.	Back up rarely accessed data that must be retained for several months or years. Use standard snapshot capabilities at a lower cost for cold storage. Retain backups for compliance, audits, and long-term cold storage.
Disks	Instant snapshots	Quick local disk backups that enable rapid data restoration in case of application failure, failed upgrades, or user error.	Capture a disk's contents at a particular point in time and save it in the same zone or region as the disk. Restore data rapidly with low recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO). Optimize storage space and improve performance by using a differential copy of the disk.
Disks	Disk clones	Live duplicates of the source disk that can be instantly attached to an instance.	Quickly create staging environments from production. Quickly copy a disk for backup verification or export offloading. Avoid using for disaster recovery.
Disks	Images	Copies of a disk, especially a boot disk, that can be used to create other instances.	Quickly create many instances. Import instances and create disks quickly.
Disks	Regional disks	Disks that maintain a copy of data in another zone, offering RTO of less than one minute and RPO of zero.	Achieve high availability in the rare event of a zonal outage. Avoid using for data backup.
Disks	Asynchronous Replication	A replication feature that maintains a copy of disk data in another region to provide cross-region, active-passive disaster recovery (DR) with low RPO and RTO.	Achieve business continuity for critical applications by minimizing data loss (RPO of about one minute) in the rare event of a regional outage. Perform DR testing, failover, and failback for multiple disks using consistency groups. Replicate regional disks to protect workloads from both zonal and regional outages.

Best practices for backups

Observe the following best practices when creating backups for your disks.

Avoid temporary standard snapshots

To immediately create a copy of a disk in the same zone for verification or export, use disk clones or instant snapshots instead of standard snapshots. Compared to disk clones and instant snapshots, standard snapshots have longer copy times for upload and download.

Schedule hourly standard snapshots for backup and disaster recovery

Schedule hourly standard snapshots. If you require daily snapshots, consider scheduling snapshots every 6 hours.

Use images for fast and frequent disk creation across regions

To create many disks from a single data source, use images instead of snapshots. Because Compute Engine performs local caching in target zones, disk creation from images is faster than disk creation from snapshots.

Use machine images to create backups of all disks attached to an instance

To create backups of all disks that are attached to an instance, use machine images. A machine image can be used to back up multiple disks at a time to help ensure that the data captured in the machine image is consistent across all disks. A persistent disk snapshot can only back up a single disk at a time. For more information, see When to use machine images.

Use Google Cloud Backup and DR Service to manage instance backups at scale

With Backup and DR Service, you manage backups of your instances across projects and environments by using advanced policies, centralized monitoring, and backup reporting in the following way:

• Create backup vaults that serve as secure storage locations for your backups.
• Create backup plans to configure the schedule and rules for your backup.
• Apply backup plans to existing instances or during instance creation.
• Assign specific permissions for backup access.
• Proactively and reactively monitor backup jobs.
• Create reports for tracking backups across resources spanning multiple projects.
• When needed, restore an instance from a backup vault.

You can also integrate Security Command Center with Backup and DR Service to additionally:

• Track audit logs for backup access.
• Monitor for malicious activity on your backups.

What's next

• Read Best practices for persistent disk snapshots.