Backup and disaster recovery with Google Cloud VMware Engine and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Would you go skydiving without a backup parachute? Probably not. So don’t forget about a backup and disaster recovery plan for your data.

Business continuity planning is increasingly imperative for enterprises. Many factors are driving this change, from regulatory compliance and business policies to ransomware and cyberattacks to natural disasters and human error. All coupled with the fact that the complexity of IT environments is growing exponentially.

Businesses that aren’t prepared for potential disaster face a multitude of risks, including data loss, lost revenue, and reputational damage. All enterprises require data protection, and backup and disaster recovery (DR) ensure that business-critical applications and data can be rapidly restored in the event of a major outage.

To illustrate the magnitude of the cost of unpreparedness, a recent LogicMonitor study noted that companies with frequent outages have 16 times higher costs than those with fewer instances. When an organization is paying this much for outages, it’s difficult to catch up or allocate an appropriate budget for innovation or automation. Delving into downtime, the Ponemon Institute reports that the average cost is $8,850 per minute. This translates to just under $1.6 million for 3 hours of downtime—and that’s before considering downstream costs to customers and brand reputation, among other factors.

Cloud migration and the extension of on-premises data protection strategies to the cloud are top of mind for many organizations. In the cloud, an organization’s data protection goals remain the same as on premises and focus on preventing data loss and downtime.

Some organizations mistakenly believe that cloud providers are responsible for protecting customers’ data in the cloud but, according to the shared responsibility model, this task falls to the customer. The cloud provider secures the infrastructure and underlying services related to the cloud, while the customer maintains responsibility for securing what runs in the cloud, including all the data.

Many organizations have made significant investments in VMware tools and skillsets, including their virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and are now looking to move this environment to the cloud. Cloud-hosted VDI takes advantage of public cloud economics, scalability, and security to lower the total cost of VDI ownership.

Google Cloud VMware Engine is a solution for migrating virtual machines to the cloud. With Google Cloud VMware Engine, businesses currently running on premises VMware workloads can continue to leverage existing investments in VMware while seamlessly migrating to Google Cloud. This dedicated private cloud environment delivers the best of both worlds. Organizations can continue to use the same on-premises operational posture and technology stack. At the same time, they gain access to the additional native cloud capabilities that exist in Google Cloud.

When examining specific use cases such as backup and DR, this is where Google Cloud VMware Engine and NetApp^® Cloud Volumes ONTAP^® can add tremendous value.

For NetApp customers running ONTAP on premises, investing in NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and Google Cloud VMware Engine helps protect data, avoiding data loss and preventing downtime. Together, these solutions offer a compelling cost benefit of 20% or more compared to having an on-premises DR solution where additional data centers have to be maintained. This combination brings a suite of enterprise features together with the scale and performance of the public cloud, delivering the following major advantages.

• Unified data. Supports all Windows and Linux storage protocols delivered as Google Cloud Datastore on in-guest disk.
  
  
• Flexible storage. Data storage is scaled independently of compute. There’s no need to add compute resources for additional storage capacity.
  
  
• Enhanced security. Provides ransomware protection and recovery with antimalware integration.
  
  
• Autoscale. No overprovisioning, because storage resources are added only when they’re needed.
  
  
• Multitenancy. Centralized governance over multiple workloads.
  
  
• Data mobility. Cross-zone and cross-region data replication for protection and migration.
  
  
• Decreased storage footprint and costs. An array of storage efficiency features reduces footprint and network transfer costs.
  
  
• Disaster recovery on demand. Zero footprint DR means DR that can be spun up on demand, drastically reducing costs.
  
  
• VMware environment backup. Back up VMs to Google Cloud Storage. Air-gapped backups protect against ransomware, data loss, and cyberthreats.

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP enables your organization to protect its ONTAP data, and also to:

• Back up user data and workspace profiles.
• Recover compute and file shares in minutes.
• Run virtual machines and maintain user productivity even when the primary data center is down.

Live life a little less dangerously today and keep your applications online and your data safe using cloud-based backup and DR with NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP.

Learn more about backup and disaster recovery for VMware.

Try Cloud Volumes ONTAP today. There are no software charges for any trial under 500GB.