Filestore now offers asynchronous replication for your instances.
A source instance can be continuously and asynchronously replicated to a standby instance in a location of your choice.
To select customers, Filestore offers instance replication support for instances created in the following service tiers:
- Zonal
- Regional
- Enterprise
Instance replication compared to other data recovery options
The following sections cover the advantages of instance replication compared to snapshots and backups.
Snapshots
Snapshots are resources that consume capacity within the instance and allow you to revert the current state of your instance data to a previous, specific point in time. Users can also elect to revert to a previous version of a specific file.
Snapshots don't replicate any data or consume capacity until the data on the instance is modified. All snapshots of an instance share in-common data, meaning that the instance preserves only the differences between the snapshots.
While snapshots do offer cost efficiency when compared to other Filestore data recovery operations, available instance capacity continuously decreases as file modifications are made.
Reverting an instance to a previous state is destructive, as it deletes the latest version of instance data, and should be used carefully.
Backups
Backups are external resources that reside outside of the instance, consuming their own separate capacity. The first backup is a complete copy of instance data, with each subsequent backup only consuming the data necessary to track incremental and differential changes since the previous backup. Internally, a backup chain's history is tracked using snapshots, which consume capacity on the source instance.
Instance replication
Instance replication pairs a source instance with a replica instance, a separate resource in a secondary location that continuously monitors any changes made to the source and asynchronously replicates those changes to the replica instance within a target recovery point objective (RPO) of approximately 30 minutes.
This process relies on snapshots and similarly consumes capacity. As snapshots become obsolete, they are deleted to free up instance capacity in both instances.
The replica instance is a continuously updated, complete copy of the source instance. Most copies are scheduled every five to ten minutes. Metrics are available indicating the timestamp of the last full instance copy. For more information, see Monitoring.
Instance pair roles
When instance replication is enabled, each instance in the pair is assigned a role:
ACTIVEThe source instance.