Centralized backup management

END-TO-END DESIGN
CONTENT STRATEGY
SAAS UX
Jan 2024 - Feb 2025
Table of Contents

Overview

Background
Google Cloud Backup and DR Service (GCBDR) is a managed backup and recovery service for security, compliance, and data protection use cases. GCBR was established following Google's acquisition of Actifio, a backup and disaster recovery company providing a mature backup product known as Actifio GO. Following its rebrand to Google Cloud Backup and DR a few years later, the product was integrated into Google Cloud's platform.

I was brought onto this project after a major shift in the product strategy that focused on simplifying the setup and monitoring experience, improving integration with other Google Cloud services, and improving security through isolated backup storage (Backup Vault)

This project is launched and publicly available. GCBDR was established as a centralized backup solution that directly integrates with other services. For MVP, we focused on the Compute Engine service (GCE).

This yielded a 300% increase in GCBDR adoption, primarily from net-new users.
Role
UX Designer

I worked alongside 2 UX Designers on the end-to-end design for 10 user journeys. Throughout the process, I collaborated with a globally distributed frontend, backend, and product managers from the GCBDR and GCE teams.
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Key contributions
I was responsible for driving the end-to-end experience of how users discover, use, and manage GCBDR backups within GCE.

Motivation

With the rebrand and integration of Actifio GO as GCBDR, customers continued facing a disjointed experience when managing backups in GCBDR. To protect a Google Cloud resource (such as a Compute Engine VM), they had to configure backup policies in an external console (the legacy Actifio interface), then switch to the Google Cloud console to manage their resources. Managing resources and their backups in two different interfaces meant maintaining mental models of two systems, which was a significant pain point for users.

For net-new users, this process was time-consuming and frequently resulted in misconfigured policies. Research revealed that this disconnect was a primary barrier to product adoption, and was a key factor for the strategic product shift toward tighter integration with Google Cloud services.

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From a UX standpoint, the legacy Actifio console looked and felt isolated from other Google Cloud services which made it difficult to position as a fully integrated Google Cloud product.

Diagram showing primary user workflow with three steps: create a backup vault with secure storage and retention settings, create a backup plan defining resources and backup frequency, and configure backups by attaching plans to resources for data storage.

Opportunity

Following this strategic shift, our team focused on providing enterprise customers with a centralized solution for protecting their cloud workloads. The platform should enable users to configure, manage, and monitor backups all from one place. Users create backup plans that define which resources (such as VMs, databases, and applications) to protect and at what frequency.

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My contributions focused on the first step and the third step of this key workflow

Challenge

Integrating GCBDR into Compute Engine's existing workflow presented competing UX challenges. We needed to introduce a comprehensive backup solution into an interface that already offered native protection options, while avoiding disruption to established user workflows. This meant that the design had to clearly differentiate backup options and guide users to make informed decisions between backup options without adding cognitive load.

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An additional layer of challenge came from GCBDR's complex setup prerequisites (backup plans, backup vaults, and backup schedules). These prerequisites add friction at a critical point in users' VM creation process which contradicts the intention of allowing users to seamlessly adopt GCBDR's comprehensive backups.

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Solution

We designed an end-to-end experience of applying backup plans within Compute Engine user journeys. Users can create custom backup plans and backup vaults in GCBDR and then apply those when creating and managing resources from Compute Engine. When selecting a backup option in Compute Engine, users are provided with in-context guidance.

Research

Foundational research was conducted by the UXR team to understand how Compute Engine users think about protecting their Compute Engine VMs. We learned that most users are using snapshots, which are Compute Engine's built-in backup mechanism, which informed us that there had to be a clear value-add for users to adopt GCBDR as their backup mechanism.

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Key takeaways
  • Maintaining the existing workflow is preferable: Users did not want a new backup option to disrupt their workflows within Compute Engine, so the integration must be seamless.
  • Different use cases prompt different backup protection strategies: Some users might opt to use GCBDR for business-critical workloads, and Compute Engine snapshots for less risky workloads.

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UX Audit

I conducted a heuristic evaluation of the current GCBDR experience to identify usability gaps and areas for improvement. This evaluation assessed key user journeys against Jakob Nielsen's established usability heuristics and highlighted several major findings. Based on these findings, I provided recommendations for each major issue.

  • Lack of consistency and standards during backup configuration, due to multiple interfaces that each have unique names/labels.
    Recommendation: Reinforce a common language for backups across the platform
  • Gaps in error prevention makes resolving/troubleshooting specific error scenarios difficult.
    Recommendation: Conduct friction logging exercises to gather a full list of error scenarios
  • Lack of flexibility and efficiency of use during backup policy creation introduces a high learning curve to the product before users can see the value-add.
    Recommendation: Provide smart defaults where possible to reduce required user inputs

These insights informed our design approach and helped prioritize which aspects of the experience to address first.

UX Approach

Integrating GCBDR backups into Compute Engine’s interface presented a complex challenge of positioning GCBDR’s comprehensive backup solution within a service that already offers built-in protection options while maintaining a simple, intuitive experience that does not disrupt user workflows.

I worked with UX and product leads across GCBDR and Compute Engine to establish design principles for this integration. Through extensive cross-team collaboration and stakeholder alignment, we jointly defined the following principles that balanced user and business needs, while being scalable across future GCBDR integration projects.

  • Express backups as a unified portfolio: Position GCBDR as the centralized backup solution across Google Cloud
  • Default to the most secure protection: Reduce cognitive load by selecting GCBDR’s comprehensive backup option with recommended settings by default
  • Retain workflow context: Bring backup configuration directly into the Compute Engine console to reduce the need to use multiple interfaces

These principles informed solutions to the following key challenges for this project:

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Platform dependencies

Users need to set up three prerequisites before backing up VMs with GCBDR: a backup plan, backup vault, and backup rules. In the GCBDR interface, the proposed design uses a guided multi-step approach that provided a step-by-step walkthrough for configuring these prerequisites. In the Compute Engine interface, which serves different user roles and jobs-to-be-done, we proposed providing visible default configurations to inform users of what is included.

From the research, we recognized that some users just want to back up their VMs without added complexity of custom configurations. Providing visible defaults simplifies the configuration process while maintaining transparency, as opposed to hidden defaults which would reduce cognitive load.

Diagram showing GCBDR platform architecture with three Compute Engine VMs connected to a backup plan for VMs, which is linked to a backup vault; the backup plan details include name, description, plan location matching VM location, backup vault matching VM and plan location, and backup rule with time window, frequency, retention, and how often; the backup vault details include name, description, minimum retention of at least one day, and access control.
Platform dependencies between GCE and GCBDR
Differentiating backup options

We positioned GCBDR as the comprehensive, horizontal solution through content hierarchy. GCBDR is shown as the first backup option, and is selected by default while using the default backup plan configuration*. To help users choose between options, we provide in-context guidance that highlights what each protects:

  • GCBDR backup plans protect the VM, attached disks, and metadata, for full recovery and cross-region disaster recovery use cases.
  • Compute Engine snapshots protect VM storage only, for point-in-time disk recovery use cases.

This guidance appears directly in the Compute Engine interface when users are creating VMs, allowing them to make informed decisions without leaving their workflow.

User interface for creating a backup plan with region selection set to us-east4, options to choose backup vault location type between regional and multi-regional, a tooltip explaining prerequisite selection, and a dropdown listing compatible multi-region backup vaults.
Create VM page in Compute Engine
Backup vault details page showing vault name compute-prod-vault, creation and update timestamps on October 29, 2024, description as vault to store production Compute instances, status active, new Location type metadata set to Multi-region, location in US data centers, stored bytes zero, minimum backup retention one day, retention lock unlocked, and access restricted to current organization.
Changing backup plans during Compute Engine VM Creation

* Since some users might have custom configurations in GCBDR available, we enable users to change the backup plan that will protect the VM (directly from the Compute Engine interface).

Designing for technical constraints

Manual service activation

During design reviews, Engineering surfaced a major technical constraint where users must manually activate the GCBDR service before using it. This meant that having GCBDR backup plans selected by default during Compute Engine VM creation was not possible until service activation was complete. This constraint posed a high UX risk to user discoverability and enablement of GCBDR.

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We had to pivot our design approach, since this directly challenged our goal of reducing friction. We explored supporting in-line service activation to allow users to activate GCBDR and use GCBDR backup plans directly within the VM creation flow in Compute Engine. While this added an extra step, it was better than the alternative of requiring users to leave their Compute Engine journey, navigate to GCBDR to activate the service, and go back to Compute Engine while losing their VM configuration inputs.

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We opted to disable the backup plan selection, showing the service activation in a tooltip upon hover to maintain our principle of providing transparency. This maintains the in-context guidance to help users differentiate between backup options. The show-on-hover functionality also supports a seamless workflow for users who do not need GCBDR backup plans.

User interface for creating a backup plan with region selection set to us-east4, options to choose backup vault location type between regional and multi-regional, a tooltip explaining prerequisite selection, and a dropdown listing compatible multi-region backup vaults.
When GCBDR is not activated, backup plans are unavailable
Backup vault details page showing vault name compute-prod-vault, creation and update timestamps on October 29, 2024, description as vault to store production Compute instances, status active, new Location type metadata set to Multi-region, location in US data centers, stored bytes zero, minimum backup retention one day, retention lock unlocked, and access restricted to current organization.
In-line GCBDR activation

Final Design & Rationale

After Product and Engineering partners signed off on the initial design proposals, we turned these concepts into detailed designs. Given the complexity of designing between multiple interfaces, there were a number of errors and edge cases that we had to account for in the final design. For instance, since there are several prerequisites before a user can successfully back up their Compute Engine VMs using GCBDR, we had to design for error states at each step of the journey.

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User flow: Creating a VM

Edge case: When GCBDR is not activated

Comparison of Google Cloud Storage (GCS) and Google Cloud Backup and DR (GCBDR) user interfaces for creating, reading, updating, and deleting buckets and backup vaults.
Creating a Compute Engine VM with a backup plan, before GCBDR activation
Interface for creating a backup vault with page sections to name the vault, choose geographic data storage location, set minimum enforced retention with an option to lock retention, and define access restrictions.
In-context GCBDR activation

Golden path: Creating a VM with GCBDR backups configured by default

Concept design wireframe showing a list of three backup vaults with details such as name, description, created date, status, location, stored bytes, minimum enforced retention, and access restriction, along with a related actions section suggesting to create a backup plan.
Creating a Compute Engine VM with a backup plan, after GCBDR activation
Backup vault details page showing backup vault metadata such as creation time and vault location. Further down the page has a Permissions section explaining backup vault permissions and service agent permissions.
Creating a Compute Engine VM with a backup plan, and changing the selected backup plan
User flow: Editing settings for existing VMs
Edit a VM configuration

See the demo below for the end-to-end prototype:

Impact

GCBDR and Compute Engine's platform integration launched for General Availability in under 1 year, and became a key driver in overall GCBDR adoption:

  • Compute Engine VMs using GCBDR backup plans increased significantly, with the majority coming from net-new customers.
  • GCBDR saw 89% year-over-year growth following this integration.
  • Time to back up VMs was greatly reduced by eliminating interaction with multiple interfaces. Users could now protect VMs within their existing workflow.

The design principles established for this integration scaled to subsequent GCBDR integrations with other Google Cloud services, supporting platform-wide consistency for backups.

Takeaways

  • Get alignment on the broader goal early on in the design process, especially with cross-product collaborations. Because the GCBDR and GCE teams had multiple discussions during project kickoff to converge overall product and UX strategy, we saved a lot of time during the design process and didn't have to revisit too many key decisions that shaped the final designs.
  • Establishing scalable design principles for a horizontal product is key. Besides the benefit of maintaining a consistent design language across all integration projects, having scalable design principles can also help other service teams looking to collaborate with GCBDR to understand the product and how to integrate with it.
  • Default configurations can significantly simplify complex workflows. By defaulting users to GCBDR's backup plans with pre-configured default settings and resources, we support a seamless experience for users do not need customizations and prefer "out-of-the-box" configurations.
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