In today's cloud environment, large regulated organizations can face multi-layered risks to operational continuity: severe technical outages, evolving regulatory landscapes such as the EU Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) mandates, and macroeconomic pressures.
This guide provides a blueprint for a "sovereign standby" architecture that helps organizations to address those challenges. In this example, the core retail banking application runs primarily on Google Cloud to leverage public cloud scale and global infrastructure. Simultaneously, a synchronized, near-real-time mirror environment is maintained on Cloud de Confiance by S3NS.
If primary global cloud connectivity is severed, organizations can invoke a planned failover protocol. All live production traffic can be diverted to Cloud de Confiance by S3NS, enabling core banking operations to run isolated without losing data or dropping customer sessions.
You can deploy this example by following the accompanying reference implementation with Terraform, with a choice of two PostgreSQL-compatible database options depending on your needs and preferences: AlloyDB Omni or Cloud SQL. The example focuses on identity federation and data synchronization. Additional DNS setup and application configuration is required for a production deployment.
Target audience
Although this example uses a banking app, this solution is designed for cloud architects, platform engineers, and executive leaders in any regulated industries. It serves the following stakeholders:
- Lead cloud security architects / Heads of Identity and Access Management who enforce federated identity and security policies across administrative boundaries using Workforce Identity Federation and identity providers, ensuring user access persists seamlessly between universes without duplicated identities.
- Lead SREs / Platform architects who configure automated cross-universe database replication, set up Storage Transfer Service for background asset sync, and maintain GitOps templates to ensure complete infrastructure parity.
- Directors of core operations who monitor global operational health, track Recovery Time Objectives and Recovery Point Objectives, and hold ultimate authority to trigger the failover during disruptions.
Core capabilities
- Multi-universe database synchronization: Real-time cross-universe database replication supporting both Cloud SQL and AlloyDB Omni between Google Cloud and Cloud de Confiance by S3NS.
- Infrastructure and storage parity: Automated GitOps deployment templates and Storage Transfer Service agents maintain identical containerized banking microservices and Cloud Storage bucket assets across environments.
- Federated workforce identity: Single sign-on and role-based access control across independent administrative domains using Workforce Identity Federation and an external identity provider.
- Deterministic sovereign database failover: One-step database promotion transitions the read-only replica on Cloud de Confiance by S3NS into an independent standalone primary during an outage.
- Bi-directional secure network bridge: Encrypted HA VPN connectivity and Private Service Connect endpoints linking cross-universe Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters and databases.
Architecture
This architecture connects a primary Google Cloud production universe with a Cloud de Confiance by S3NS standby universe by using an encrypted HA VPN bridge. The solution synchronizes data and microservices continuously to ensure zero data loss and immediate failover readiness.
Components
| Component | Tech | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Microservices | GKE | Identical "Bank of Anthos" containerized banking applications running in the two universes. |
| Database | AlloyDB Omni (provided by Google Cloud) or Cloud SQL |
High-performance PostgreSQL ledger using Write Ahead Log (WAL) streaming for cross-universe transaction synchronization or Managed PostgreSQL database using pglogical replication for transaction ledger mirroring. |
| Storage and sync | Cloud Storage Storage Transfer Service running in Google Cloud |
Secure object storage repositories and automated background transfer agent for assets and backups. |
| Networking | HA VPN and Private Service Connect | Encrypted cross-universe network bridge and Private Service Connect outbound endpoints. |
| Identity | Workforce Identity Federation and an external identity provider | Federated identity provider integration enabling unified single sign-on across universes. |
| Orchestration | Terraform & Helm | Automated infrastructure provisioning scripts and Kubernetes Helm chart packaging. |
Reference implementation
A reference implementation of this solution with Terraform is provided in GitHub. Note that this is designed solely as a reference architecture to demonstrate technical capabilities and cross-universe federation principles. It is not audited, hardened, or secured for production deployment. The Bank of Anthos sample application uses default JSON Web Token (JWT) secrets, fixed demonstration passwords, and public ingress endpoints for testing convenience.
For prerequisites and deployment instructions, see Sovereign Multi-Universe Federation with Bank of Anthos.