Google Cloud Integration with VBR

Veeam Backup for Google Cloud architecture

A full explanation of every component in the Veeam Backup for Google Cloud architecture can be found in the Veeam Backup for Public Cloud Solutions Best Practice Guide

A full architectural overview for the integration between Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Backup for Google Cloud can be found in the Integration with Veeam Backup & Replication Guide

Google Cloud Service Account permissions

When using the Google Cloud Plug-in to integrate Veeam Backup & Replication with Veeam Backup for Google Cloud, you can either

Deploy a new Veeam Backup for Google Cloud appliance
Connect to an existing one (deployed from Google Cloud Marketplace)

In case you decide to deploy a new appliance using Veeam Backup & Replication and the Google Cloud Plug-in, you will need a Google Cloud Service Account to connect with Google Cloud and deploy the appliance. For convenience, the New Veeam Backup for Google Cloud Appliance wizard can create the Service Account automatically, but this account will have the Owner role, providing wide privileges in your Google Cloud project, which usually will be against the security policies in many companies. Instead, the recommendation is to create a Google Cloud Service Account manually with the minimum privileges required by Veeam in order to follow the least-privilege principle.

See the Veeam Help Center for the required privileges.

Veeam Backup for Google Cloud appliance Sizing

Please consider that the Veeam Backup for Google Cloud Appliance is also responsible for applying the retention policy set for every workload protected by Veeam. In some environments, with large VMs (several TBs), the process of applying the retention policy could take several hours and could even overlap the backup schedule. This could prevent backups from executing properly.

To prevent issues, follow the sizing recommendations for Veeam Backup for Google Cloud appliance available in the Veeam Backup for Public Cloud Solutions Best Practice Guide.

NOTE: It’s important to highlight that the size of the Veeam Backup for Google Cloud appliance can be changed any time after being deployed, but during the process the appliance itself must be powered-off.

Veeam Backup for Google Cloud workers Sizing

Sizing recommendations for Veeam Backup for Google Cloud workers can be found in the Veeam Backup for Public Cloud Solutions Best Practice Guide.

It’s important to highlight that the workers appliances deployed during the backup and restore operations will be created with a total disk size of at least 4TB. The main reason is, that a disk of this size or higher provides faster throughput during backup process.

Persistent disks can provide a backup speed of up to 800 MiB/s for disks with 4 TB or more. If you are running backups of multiple VMs in parallel, one worker will be created per VM to be processed, each of them with a disk of at least 4TB. Make sure to configure your disk quotas accordingly in your Google Cloud project, otherwise worker VM creation will fail, with lead the backup policy to fail too.

Integrating Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Backup for Google Cloud

You can connect multiple Veeam Backup for Google Cloud appliances to a single Veeam Backup server, but make sure the Veeam Backup server has enough resources.