GCP – Elevate your workload resilience in console with data protection for Compute Engine

Protecting your data in the cloud is more critical than ever. As your Google Cloud deployments grow, managing your data protection strategy for Compute Engine workloads can become complex. That’s why we’re excited to announce a streamlined experience that simplifies data protection with powerful capabilities that are purpose-built for Persistent Disk, Hyperdisk, and Backup and DR Service.

Introducing the Data protection tab

Say hello to the new Data protection tab in the Compute Engine VM creation experience. 

This new tab brings together backup and continuous data replication options for block storage in a single unified interface, making it possible to configure your data protection settings when creating a VM in the Google Cloud console, saving you time and effort, and allowing you to focus on what matters most: building and deploying your applications.

Selecting backup plans and snapshot schedules

Snapshot schedules for Persistent Disk and Hyperdisk provide foundational data protection for Compute Engine workloads, including basic scheduling automation at no charge. Snapshot schedules are a simple, cost-effective way to back up VM disks into the region or multi-region of your choice.

For more comprehensive protection, Backup and DR provides immutable backup vaults, securing data from accidental or malicious deletion, ransomware attacks, and project- or organization-level threats. These vaults help ensure that backups remain tamper-proof and resilient against unauthorized changes.

Beyond immutability, Backup and DR offers advanced backup management features, including centralized monitoring, detailed reporting, complex scheduling rules, and compliance-focused capabilities. Designed for teams with sophisticated data protection needs, Backup and DR supports centralized backup management across multiple cloud services (currently Compute Engine and Google Cloud VMware Engine) and includes a separate management pricing model.

Configure continuous data replication 

In addition to selecting snapshots or backup plans, you can choose to protect your data with continuous replication from the new Data protection tab. All capabilities for backup, cross-zone replication, and cross-region replication are designed to work together for layered protection against different types of risk. Continuous replication helps ensure minimal data loss in case of a disaster, complementing the historical recovery points provided by backups.

While some workloads such as test environments may not need any protection at all, most production workloads need protection from temporary outages, disasters, user errors, and malware. For mission-critical workloads that require zero or near-zero recovery point objectives (RPOs) for high availability and disaster recovery, you can choose continuous data replication to another point of presence. In the Data protection tab, this is as simple as selecting a secondary zone or region.  

How it works

When creating a new VM through the console, simply navigate to the Data protection tab.In a project where Backup and DR has been enabled, a default backup plan will be pre-selected; if not, a snapshot schedule will be applied. 

We sometimes see customers lose important data because they haven’t configured any protection for their workloads. Using backup protection for production VMs is a valuable way to minimize the risk of data loss. For test environments, setting up backup protection can help you verify that your restore processes will work once deployed. You can always customize and fully control your backup protection:

• Choose between snapshot schedules and backup plans. Select the option that best meets your needs and budget. You can select either a pre-defined snapshot schedule or backup plan.

• For workloads that need synchronous cross-zone replication (with RPO=0 between zones), you can choose to set your Persistent Disks to be Regional Persistent Disks, or your Hyperdisk Balanced disks to be Hyperdisk Balanced High Availability disks.

• For workloads that need cross-region replication (with RPO < 1 minute between regions), select Asynchronous Replication and choose your secondary region. Replication will be started automatically. 

• You can opt out of using the default data protection options by simply selecting “No Backups” when configuring the VM or by modifying the Compute Engine Project settings. Learn more. 

• Data protection tab selections only affect the choices for the VM being created in the console. To configure VMs at scale, you can configure your data protection options with the API, gCloud, or Terraform.

Get started today

Protect your VMs with a comprehensive data protection strategy using snapshot schedules or backup plans, along with continuous data replication to secondary zones and regions. Ensure your data is safeguarded and manage your data protection needs in one place.

The new Data protection tab is available now in the Compute Engine VM creation experience. Try it out today and streamline your data protection strategy! Learn more here.