Google Cloud Data Portability and Switching Procedures
Google Cloud is dedicated to offering customers transparent and flexible methods for managing and moving their data. This page outlines the procedures, methods and formats available for switching and porting data to and from Google Cloud services, along with relevant technical specifications and limitations. (This page does not apply to Google Workspace. Google Workspace customers should refer to the Google Workspace Admin Help Center for information about how to move their data.)
1. Transitioning to Google Cloud: Your Guide to Data Management and Analytics
For customers considering a switch to Google Cloud services, our platform is designed to provide powerful, flexible, and secure solutions for managing and analyzing your data and workloads. Google Cloud offers a comprehensive suite of services and tools to facilitate seamless migration and robust operation once you're on board.
For more information, follow the links below:
2. Transitioning from Google Cloud: Your Guide to Switching and Portability Procedures
Google Cloud provides various mechanisms to facilitate data movement. These mechanisms are primarily implemented through user interface frontends (e.g., Cloud Console), publicly accessible and documented APIs (e.g., OnePlatform APIs), and client libraries (SDKs).
Google Cloud Exit Program
For customers planning to migrate all Google Cloud workloads and data to another cloud provider or an on-premises data center and subsequently terminate their Google Cloud agreement, a free data transfer program is available. This program covers data residing in Google Cloud data storage and data management products, including BigQuery, Cloud Bigtable, Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, Datastore, Filestore, Spanner, and Persistent Disk. The process involves submitting an Exit Notice form, initiating the migration within the defined "Initiation Period" and informing Google by submitting a Completion Notice when the migration has been successfully completed. See the Steps to exit Google Cloud with free data transfer and, for customers with billing addresses in the European Economic Area, the EU Data Act Terms in the General Service Terms here. In either case, the Exit Notice must be submitted prior to the termination of the Google Cloud agreement.
General Guidelines
- Data Residency Considerations: Some exports, such as those from Security Command Center, are subject to data residency controls and must be configured within the same Security Command Center location as selected via those controls. This feature helps customers with their data residency commitments.
- VPC Service Controls Impact: Projects protected by VPC Service Controls might encounter restrictions or require specific configurations or manual processes for certain exports, such as Compute Engine images or Cloud Billing data.
- Time-Based Limitations: Compute Engine image exports that leverage Cloud Build are limited to a maximum session duration of 24 hours; larger images may necessitate manual export. Cloud Asset Inventory prevents new export requests to the same destination if a prior request initiated less than 15 minutes previously is still active.
- Data Consistency for Security Command Center Exports: Due to the application of filters, snapshots of findings exported from Security Command Center to BigQuery may not always precisely reflect the absolute latest state of findings within Security Command Center. This can lead to discrepancies in counts of active findings.