In this post, I’m going to walk through the process of installing and using Velero v1.1 to back up a Kubernetes application that includes persistent data stored in persisentvolumes
. I will then simulate a DR scenario by completely deleting the application and using Velero to restore the application to the cluster, including the persistent data.
Meet Velero!! ⛵
Velero is a backup and recovery solution built specifically to assist in the backup (and migration) of Kubernetes applications, including their persistent storage volumes. You can even use Velero to back up an entire Kubernetes cluster for restore and/or migration! Velero address various use cases, including but not limited to:
- Taking backups of your cluster to allow for restore in case of infrastructure loss/corruption
- Migration of cluster resources to other clusters
- Replication of production cluster/applications to dev and test clusters
Velero is essentially comprised of two components:
- A server that runs as a set of resources with your Kubernetes cluster
- A command-line client that runs locally
Velero also supports the back up and restore of Kubernetes volumes using restic, an open source backup tool. Velero will need to utilize a S3 API-compatible storage server to store these volumes. To satisfy this requirement, I will also deploy a Minio server in my Kubernetes cluster so Velero is able to store my Kubernetes volume backups. Minio is a light weight, easy to deploy S3 object store that you can run on premises. In a production environment, you’d want to deploy your S3 compatible storage solution in another cluster or environment to prevent from total data loss in case of infrastructure failure.
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