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Google Backup and DR service

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Ease of management
Quality of support
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Pricing from
Pay-as-you-go
Free Trial
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User industry
  1. Media and communications
  2. Information technology and software
  3. Education and training

What is Google Backup and DR service

Google Backup and DR service is a Google Cloud service for backing up workloads and orchestrating disaster recovery to Google Cloud. It targets IT and infrastructure teams that need policy-based backups, point-in-time recovery, and DR runbooks for on-premises and cloud environments. The service integrates with Google Cloud storage and recovery infrastructure and is typically operated through Google Cloud consoles and APIs. It is positioned for organizations standardizing on Google Cloud for recovery sites and long-term retention.

pros

Native Google Cloud integration

The service integrates directly with Google Cloud identity, networking, and storage services, which simplifies operating backups and recovery within a Google Cloud environment. It supports API-driven administration and can fit into infrastructure-as-code and centralized cloud operations. For organizations already using Google Cloud, this reduces the need to deploy and manage separate recovery infrastructure. It also aligns DR execution with Google Cloud regions and resource provisioning.

Policy-based backup management

Backup and DR uses policies to standardize schedules, retention, and recovery objectives across protected resources. This helps teams apply consistent controls across multiple workloads and environments without configuring each job individually. Centralized policy management can reduce configuration drift and operational overhead. It is useful for organizations with multiple application owners and shared platform teams.

DR orchestration and runbooks

The service includes disaster recovery orchestration capabilities to coordinate recovery steps rather than only restoring individual backups. This supports more repeatable recovery processes for multi-tier applications. Orchestration can reduce manual steps during an incident and improve consistency across tests and real events. It is relevant when recovery requires ordering, dependencies, and validation steps.

cons

Google Cloud-centric recovery model

The product is designed around using Google Cloud as the recovery target, which may not fit organizations that require a different cloud or a provider-neutral recovery site. Multi-cloud DR strategies can require additional tooling and processes outside the service. This can increase complexity for teams that must support heterogeneous recovery destinations. It may also influence architectural decisions toward Google Cloud-specific patterns.

Ecosystem and workload coverage varies

Supported source environments, applications, and hypervisors depend on the service’s current connectors and compatibility matrix. Organizations with niche platforms or legacy systems may need supplemental backup tools or custom procedures. This can lead to split operations across multiple products. Coverage gaps are most visible in application-consistent recovery requirements and specialized databases.

Cost and egress considerations

Total cost depends on protected capacity, snapshot/backup storage growth, and the compute/network resources required for DR testing and failover. Restores and DR events can also introduce data transfer and operational costs, especially when moving data across regions or out of Google Cloud. Budgeting can be harder when retention policies and change rates vary by workload. Organizations often need governance to prevent uncontrolled retention and test environments.

Plan & Pricing

Pricing model: Pay-as-you-go (consumption-based) Free tier/trial: Google Cloud free trial ($300 new-customer credit) and general Google Cloud free offerings apply (see notes). Product itself is billed by usage. Key SKUs / Example costs (official Google Cloud Backup and DR Service pricing page):

  • BackupDR: Storage - In GCP - Long-Term - Standard — Usage-based — Per GiB per unit time of stored data — $0.000061644 (list price).
  • BackupDR: Management - In GCP - Disk — Usage-based — Per GiB per unit time of source (front-end) capacity under protection — $0.000013699 (list price).
  • BackupDR: Management - In GCP - GCE VM — Usage-based — Per GiB per unit time of source (front-end) capacity under protection — $0.000027397 (list price).
  • VM data: Compute Engine VMs, File Systems (protection into self-managed storage) — Usage-based — Per GiB per unit time of source (front-end) capacity under protection — $0.000041096 (list price).
  • SQL Server (protection into a backup vault) — Usage-based — Per GiB per unit time of source capacity — $0.000082192 (list price).
  • Virtual copies (test data management) — Usage-based — Per GiB per unit time of total virtual cloned capacity — $0.000041096 (list price).
  • VMware Engine (node-based) — Node-based pricing (on-demand listed examples): ve1-standard-72: $0.46 per hour (example listed); ve2 node examples: ve2-mega $0.85/hr, ve2-large $0.79/hr, ve2-standard $0.73/hr, ve2-small $0.65/hr (on-demand list prices).
    Discount options: Committed use discounts (CUDs) are available for Backup and DR (varies by workload — VMware Engine and Oracle examples). CUDs provide 1- and 3-year options with significant percentage discounts (example percentages shown for VMware/Oracle CUDs on official docs). Notes / billing behavior: Pricing components include storage charges (backup vault vs self-managed storage), management charges (by resource type), inter-region transfer and multi-regional upload/download charges. Backup and DR is billed monthly based on usage. See official pricing doc for region-specific SKUs and hourly/monthly toggles.

Seller details

Google LLC
Mountain View, CA, USA
1998
Subsidiary
https://cloud.google.com/deep-learning-vm
https://x.com/googlecloud
https://www.linkedin.com/company/google/

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