You have data running in Google Compute Engine and backup policies living in Azure. Two clouds, two identities, one big compliance headache. What you really want is a clean way to protect GCE workloads with Azure Backup without juggling API keys or duct-tape scripts.
Azure Backup Google Compute Engine integration solves exactly that. Azure Backup handles the retention, encryption, and recovery logic. Google Compute Engine delivers the underlying VM infrastructure. Together, they create a cross-cloud safety net that lets teams preserve business-critical data while staying flexible with their infrastructure choices.
At its heart, this integration links Azure Recovery Services Vault with your GCE snapshots through identity-aware automation. Instead of pulling data across the internet in plain sight, Azure’s backup agents authenticate through Google’s service accounts, use signed URLs or workload identity federation, and execute backups inside Google’s perimeter. The control plane lives in Azure, but the actual data operations happen securely within GCP.
To set it up, you create a proxy identity in Azure that corresponds to a GCP service account. Assign roles for snapshot creation, list accesses, and network permissions. The backup service in Azure registers with those credentials via OAuth or OIDC, schedules snapshots, and writes metadata back to the vault. It feels like a single system even though you are spanning two major clouds. That is the trick.
When something breaks, it is usually RBAC. Verify that your GCP service account holds compute.snapshots.create and compute.disks.get roles. Check that your Azure job agent has permission to request tokens on behalf of that account. Rotate credentials on a predictable schedule, and always prefer identity federation to static secrets.