GCP Recovery

To initiate the recovery from Cloud Assembly, follow the steps below
  1. Navigate to “Cloud Assemblies” in the left navigation menu
  2. Select an assembly to recover
  3. Select the “Timeline” tab, which will list down all the timeline events for that assembly
  4. Select the latest fully protected timeline for recovery. It will open the protection details of the timeline
  5. From the “Timeline Details,” select “RECOVER” in the top right corner
  6. Enter a name for the recovery and select a recovery profile from the predefined or custom created recovery profiles. The user can choose a recovery profile to recover only the “Preemptible Nodes” during recovery
  7. Create a new recovery profile by navigating to the “SETTINGS” and “RECOVERY PROFILE” in the associated Cloud Connection
  8. Select the recovery type. The recovery type can either be “Same Region” or “Other Region(s).” Select the same region recovery option to recover to the same primary location. Choose other region recovery to recover the snapshots to the selected recovery region
  9. Choose if the recovery happens for the “Entire Assembly” or only the “Selected Resources”
  10. Select “RECOVER” to start the recovery

Recovery Scenarios

Appranix covers the following recovery scenarios during the protected resource's recovery.

Same region recovery

Using Appranix, the user can recover the entire assembly or the selected resources to the same region.

Recovery of the VPC in the same region can be achieved using anyone of these three use cases,

  • Create new VPC

    Appranix creates a new isolated VPC in the primary region and recovers all your cloud resources. The created VPC will have the same IP range (CIDR block) as the source VPC, and all the associated resources like subnets, alias IPs, and other dependencies for the VPC will be created similarly to the source VPC.

  • Same VPC

    Appranix recovers all the selected resources into the same VPC for which the protection is enabled. If the source instance already exists, Appranix will highlight saying that there is a conflicting resource and will provision the instance with a different IP address. If you want the instance to be created with the same IP address as the source, the source instance should be removed completely before triggering a recovery.

  • Use existing VPC

    By selecting this option, a pre-existing VPC in the primary region can be chosen for recovery. The VPC chosen for recovery can have a different IP value, but the number of subnets, and the number of IPs per subnet should be the same as the source VPC. Example: 172.31.0.0/16 (Source) and 10.31.0.0/16 (Destination).

NOTE: In a pre-existing VPC recovery, Appranix can map the alias IPs only if the secondary IP range's name and its range should match the source VPC.

Other region recovery

Using Appranix, the users can recover the entire assembly or the selected resources. The recovery region where the resources are to be recovered has to be chosen from the recovery regions list.

There are two use cases covered under the other region recovery,

  • Create new VPC

    Appranix creates a new isolated VPC in the selected region and recovers all your cloud resources. The created VPC will have the same IP range (CIDR block) as the source VPC, and all the associated resources like subnets, alias IPs, and other dependencies for the VPC will be created similarly to the source VPC.

  • Use existing VPC

    By selecting this option, a pre-existing VPC in the selected region can be chosen for recovery. The VPC chosen for recovery can have a different IP value, but the number of subnets, and the number of IPs per subnet should be the same as the source VPC. Example: 172.31.0.0/16 (Source) and 10.31.0.0/16 (Destination).

NOTE:

  • In a pre-existing VPC recovery, Appranix can map the alias IPs only if the secondary IP range's name and its range match the source VPC.

  • If the user has attached a certificate to the GCP Load Balancer in the primary region, it is mandatory to manually copy the certificate to other recovery regions. The certificates in both primary and recovery regions should have a tag with the key “Name.” The same value should be present in primary and recovery regions for Appranix identification. During recovery, Appranix attaches the certificates in the recovery regions automatically using these tags. This setting has to be done before protection so that the metadata information is correctly captured for the recovery to be successful.

Shared VPC recovery scenarios

Google Cloud recommends having a Shared VPC setup so that instances from multiple projects can connect through the shared VPC in a private network taking advantage of the speed and security of Google's internal network architecture. For more details regarding Google's shared VPC setup, refer here.

The main catch in this setup is that the network is set up and is owned by a host project and is shared between multiple service projects under one GCP organization.

Note: Appranix establishes cloud connection per GCP project. Hence, to support the shared VPC setup recovery, it is mandatory to have the shared VPC's host project added as a separate cloud connection in Appranix.

Click here for the steps to Configure Shared VPC Recovery Option

With Shared VPC, Appranix supports multiple recovery options:

Same region recovery
  1. Same shared VPC and same Subnet as the source instance
  2. Same shared VPC but different Subnet in the same region
  3. DR shared VPC in the same region
Other region recovery
  1. Same Shared VPC but different subnet in the other region
  2. DR Shared VPC in the other region

NOTE: "Create New VPC" is not a valid use case for a shared VPC configuration. Creating a shared VPC requires organization level permission that the Appranix service account does not acquire. You could disable seeing the create new VPC option by enabling the "Shared VPC Network Recovery" toggle button under Cloud Assembly Configuration "Recovery Options".

Custom machine type recovery

Appranix supports recovery of instances with custom machine type.

For example, an instance with a N2 custom machine type, and a custom size definition will be restored with the exact configuration in the supported recovery region. For regions or zones not supporting the N2 custom machine type, a predefined machine type with a closely matching configuration is automatically chosen from the recovery region.

Recovery simulation

Appranix provides an option to create a schedule to test the recovered application in the recovery region and ensure that the configured protection policy works well in the real recovery scenario.

By creating a recovery simulation policy, schedule the recovery to happen at the chosen frequency. Create a recovery simulation from the Cloud Assembly “Summary” or “Policies” tab. Select a recovery profile from the list of available recovery profiles. There is an option to select from the last “Successful protection only” or “Successful or Partial successful protection.” If the last timeline is a failure, the user can define to choose from the number of selected previous timelines.

Select the number of hours after which the reset has to happen. This way, the recovered resources will be reset to avoid unnecessary billing. Created recovery simulation policy can be enabled/disabled, edited, or deleted anytime.

Delete recovered resources

Appranix allows the deletion of recovered resources using the RESET option. The reset of the recovered instances can be scheduled or performed on demand. The reset helps to delete the recovered resources and roll back the GCP resources to the original state before the recovery is triggered. Resetting helps to reduce the GCP billing that can incur due to recovery testing.

  1. Recovery can be deleted by either scheduling a reset or triggering a reset immediately
  2. The reset schedule can either be set while configuring recovery or after the completion of recovery
  3. Schedule a reset by choosing the number of hours or days after which the reset has to be triggered
  4. Select the “Reset Now” option to begin reset immediately
  5. The “Recovery Details” tab has the list of recoveries with essential details of the recovery along with the status of the reset
  6. Once the reset action is triggered, the reset status changes to “Reset In Progress.” When deleted, it changes to “Reset completed”
  7. The “Recovery Logs” tab contains recovery and reset logs. It provides all the details of the execution for recovery and the reset process details

NOTE: Appranix safely fails the reset request on the recovered resources if any configuration drift is noted from the original recovered resource configuration.

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