Google Cloud Storage Backup and Recovery
Built for cloud teams
Recover Google Cloud Storage data to any point in time, without managing backup infrastructure. Air-gapped, immutable, and API-first from day one.
Storage tier
Restore type
Cross-region
Cross-project
01 · Why Clumio for Google Cloud Storage
Why pick Clumio for Google Cloud Storage
Native GCS tools and most backup vendors protect at the bucket level (all of it or none of it), and they bill you for full-bucket restores even when you only need a sliver. Four capabilities in Clumio’s GCS protection flip that pattern today.
GRANULAR BACKUP
Back up only what you need
Recover at object, prefix, or bucket granularity (mirroring the backup options). When you only need a slice of the data, skipping full-bucket rehydration helps reduce both RTO and cost.
GRANULAR RESTORE
Restore only what’s broken
Recover at object, prefix, or bucket granularity (mirroring the backup options). When you only need a slice of the data, skipping full-bucket rehydration helps reduce both RTO and cost.
CONTINUOUS RPO
Near-zero data loss
Continuous backup pulls effective RPO down to ~15 minutes on active buckets, compared to the hours-to-a-day floors of scheduled-only tools. Restore to any timestamp.
LONG-TERM TIER
Low-cost archive tier
SecureVault Archive supports compliance and multi-year retention on Clumio’s low-cost archive storage tier. Longer restore times (12–48 hours) help keep long-term backup storage affordable.
New to Clumio?
Set up your GCP project first
This page assumes a GCP project and at least one protection group. If you haven’t done that yet, the Getting Started guide walks you through sign-up, account connection, and your first backup in under 15 minutes.
02 · Backup
How to back up Google Cloud Storage
Group your GCS buckets into a protection group, then apply a policy that defines tier and frequency. Buckets are organized into protection groups; policies attach to the group, not the bucket.
Create a backup policy
A policy defines frequency, retention, backup window, and tier. Standard tier has a one-month minimum retention; Archive tier has a 12-month minimum, with early-deletion charges below that.
Pick the right RPO, from daily down to ~15 minutes
The policy schedule sets the floor (e.g., daily). For tighter RPO, enable Continuous backup on individual buckets. Effective RPO drops to ~15 minutes on active buckets, and you can restore to any timestamp within the continuous backup window.
Continuous backup can be toggled on unprotected buckets, but nothing is captured until that bucket is in a protection group with a valid policy and the seed backup finishes. Point-in-time restore requires continuous backup.
Choose a tier (SecureVault Standard or Archive)
SecureVault Standard
Air-gapped secondary copy in Clumio’s vault. Fast restore. Use for ransomware recovery and short-to-mid-term retention.
SecureVault Archive
Lower-cost long-term tier for compliance/archival use. No thaw required before restore. Minimum retention is 12 months; early-deletion charges apply below that.
Region (same-region only, for now)
Cloud Storage backups are stored in the same GCP region as the source bucket. Cross-region backup is on the roadmap; cross-region durability is not configurable at policy time today.
Pick your backup granularity
Granularity is defined when you build the protection group’s Advanced options: filter by Storage Class (e.g. Standard only, exclude Coldline/Archive), choose all versions or latest version at backup time, and include or exclude one or more Prefixes. Use a trailing slash to include everything under a prefix (e.g. dblogs/ ); exclude sub-prefixes as needed. This is how you carve up a large bucket without backing up content you don’t need.
03 · Restore
How to restore Google Cloud Storage
WHEN Pick the recovery point
An exact timestamp from continuous capture, or a discrete backup point from the calendar.
Pick any timestamp within the continuous backup window. Clumio assembles the bucket state from the continuous capture chain. Requires Continuous backup enabled on the bucket.
Pick a specific backup from the protection group’s calendar. Each dot is one captured point. Partial backups display as half-dots so you can avoid incomplete points.
WHAT Pick the granularity
From single objects up to whole buckets, with the same workflow.
Restore one (or many) specific object names, optionally pinned to a specific generation. Use Global Search to filter across the protection group when you don’t already know the names.
Restore everything under a prefix. Use a trailing slash (e.g. dblogs/ ) to include all descendants; pair with exclude filters to leave sub-prefixes behind.
Restore one or more entire buckets, up to 50 buckets in a single batched operation from a protection-group calendar point.
WHERE Pick the destination
Back into the source bucket, or into a different one.
Restore objects directly into the source bucket. If the bucket has Object Versioning enabled, restored objects are written as new generations so live data is not destroyed. Backtrack-style snapshot rollback isn’t yet available for GCS.
Restore to a different bucket in the same project or a different GCP project.
05 · Common questions
Frequently asked questions
Questions from engineers setting up Google Cloud Storage protection or troubleshooting restores.
How long does the initial seed backup take for a Google Cloud Storage bucket?
Depends on object count and total size. There’s no hard cap on bucket size (Clumio runs at exabyte scale) and the crawl is parallelized, but huge buckets (billions of objects, petabytes) can still take hours to days for the first seed. Subsequent backups are incremental-forever and finish in minutes at typical change rates. You can monitor seed progress in the console under Protection groups.
Is there a minimum retention period, and how do early-deletion charges work?
Yes. SecureVault Standard has a one-month minimum retention. SecureVault Archive has a 12-month minimum retention; deleting Archive backups before that triggers an early-deletion charge from Clumio. The takeaway: only put data on Archive if you’re committed to keeping it for at least a year. For shorter horizons, stay on Standard; the Archive savings only show up across multi-year retention.
How long does a restore from the Archive tier take?
Unlike Archive on AWS, GCS Archive does not require a thaw period before restore. Restore time scales with object count and size, similar to a Standard-tier restore but from colder storage. Standard is still faster for time-sensitive recovery; a common pattern is Standard for the last 30–90 days and Archive for long-tail compliance retention.
Can I restore GCS objects to a different Google Cloud project?
Yes. Cross-project restore is supported. Pick the target project during restore setup. The project must have a Clumio connector installed and trust established. No dependency on the source project being healthy, which makes this useful for ransomware recovery scenarios.
What’s the RPO if I enable Continuous backup?
Effective RPO is ~15 minutes on buckets with Continuous backup enabled. You can restore to any timestamp within the continuous backup window.
Will a Clumio restore create a new bucket or restore into an existing one?
Always into an existing bucket. Clumio doesn’t create new GCS buckets during restore. In-place restores write objects back into the source bucket (using Object Versioning, when enabled, so live data isn’t destroyed). Out-of-place restores land in a target bucket you’ve already provisioned, in the same project or a different GCP project. Pre-create the destination bucket before kicking off the restore.
Are objects in the Coldline and Archive storage classes backed up?
Standard SecureVault backups can include most GCS storage classes; you control which ones via the storage-class filter in the protection group’s Advanced options. Archive-class objects are excluded from Clumio backups, so move those objects out of Archive before relying on Clumio for protection. Coldline is supported but plan for slower read times during the seed backup.
06 · Related resources
Go deeper
Blog posts and reference material for teams building on Clumio Google Cloud Storage protection.
Blog
How the Move to Clumio Delivered 66.7% Savings on AWS Backups
Cost and operational patterns from moving off native cloud snapshots — directly applicable to GCS backup cost optimization and eliminating versioning sprawl.
Blog
Automating AWS Data Protection with Terraform and Clumio
How to wire protection policies and account connections from Terraform — the same IaC patterns apply to Clumio’s support for GCS.
Whitepaper
Secure, Immutable, Air-Gapped Data Protection with Clumio
Technical deep-dive into the vault architecture — per-customer isolation and why the air-gap model outperforms account-resident backup for ransomware recovery.