CloudCasa for Velero Backup Guide

CloudCasa’s integration with Velero makes managing your Velero backup jobs easy. By adding your clusters to CloudCasa, an inventory process automatically detects existing Velero installations and any Velero Custom Resources (CRs), including existing backups.

The steps below walk through the process of creating a new Velero backup definition in the CloudCasa UI. Since CloudCasa communicates with Velero continuously, backup jobs can be invoked ad hoc from the CloudCasa UI or can be run directly from Velero. CloudCasa also leverages schedules defined in Velero to ensure that your clusters are continuously protected.

We’ve put together this quick backup guide to help walk through the process of discovering existing Velero backups and creating new backup jobs through CloudCasa.

Step 1 - Create an Account

Point your favorite web browser to signup.cloudcasa.io and create an account. No payment information is required for the Free service plan. Once you’ve signed in, you can invite other people to join your organization under Configuration/Users.

Step 2 - Add your clusters running Velero

From the menu bar, go to Clusters/Overview.

Click Add cluster + to create a new cluster. Ensure you select the option to “Manage an existing Velero instance”. Once added, pick your preferred installation method to install the CloudCasa Agent to manage Velero on your cluster. Once the installation of the agent on your cluster is completed, the cluster will automatically be shown as “Active” in the portal, and an initial inventory of Velero Custom Resources (CRs) will be done.

CloudCasa will auto-detect the Velero installation on your cluster. If the cluster has more than one Velero installation, please set the velero namespace to manage under the Advanced Settings.

Step 3 - View and Manage your Existing Velero Configurations

CloudCasa will automatically inventory all Velero Custom Resources (CRs) on agent installation or restart. The cataloged CRs include Backup, BackupStorageLocation, VolumeSnapshotLocation, Restore and Schedule. Under the Clusters/Overview page, a Cluster Overview is available that provides the following for each cluster:

Dashboard - Displays the Kubernetes version, Velero version, worker node count, and graphs showing Job Success Rates, PV Protection Coverage, and PV Snapshot Coverage.
Backups Tab - List of all Backups defined on the cluster, their last run times, and a “traffic light view” showing status of the last 3 runs. You can edit these jobs, run them, delete them or restore from them.
Restores Tab - List of all Restores defined on the cluster and their last run times. You can edit these jobs, run them, or delete them.
Recovery Points Tab - List of all available recovery points created by all the Backups defined on the cluster. You can review their storage locations, run times, the number of Persistent Volumes (PVs) included, their expiration dates, sizes, and backup types. You can also kick off a restore job from any of these recovery points.
Activities Tab - List of all backup and restore activities on the cluster over the last X days.
Settings - Displays settings related to Velero, including related environment variables, server configuration set during install, and installed plugins. This is a read only list and the settings cannot be edited/updated at this time.

Step 4 - Run an Existing Velero Backup or Define a new Backup in CloudCasa

During initial cluster inventory, following the cluster registration, CloudCasa will identify any existing Velero Custom Resources (CRs). This includes any Backups, Restores, Recovery Points, Activities, or Special Settings in the Velero instance. Existing backup jobs can be viewed by selecting the cluster under Clusters/Overview and then clicking on the Backups tab at the bottom of the screen.

You can manually run any of these existing backup jobs by hovering over the “Actions” icon on the far right, and then selecting “Run now”.

To create a new Backup job for your Velero clusters in CloudCasa, go to the Dashboard or Clusters/Backups page and click the “Define backup” button. Proceed Through the next steps to define a new backup.

Step 5 - Define a new Backup

The “Define Backup” button will open a wizard to define a new backup job for your cluster. First, select the Velero cluster that you would like to back up. Click “Next”.

Step 6 - Backup Job Definition - Selections

Next, the “Selections” step allows you to define what resources will be included in the backup. You can protect the entire cluster, or you can choose to exclude specific namespaces. If you do not need to protect the entire cluster, but only certain namespaces, you can select “Select namespaces” and choose individual namespaces to be included in the backup job. You also have the option to select resource types or labels to define a backup at a more granular level. Finally, you will specify a backup type: Snapshot or Filesystem Backup or choose to follow pod annotations during runtime. Once Selections are made, click “Next”.

Step 7 - Backup Job Definition - Velero Settings

In this step in the backup Job creation, you have the option to specify some Velero-specific settings. First, specify if the backup should include cluster scope resources. Then you have the ability to define the backup storage location (BSL), as well as locations for snapshots. Next, provide the cron spec to assign a schedule to this Velero backup job. Finally, specify a retention period for the backup.

Once you have defined the Velero Settings, click “Next”.

Step 8 - Backup Job Definition - App Hooks and Summary

Defining Application Hooks is another optional step in the backup process that allows you to add pre and/or post “hooks” to the backup job. App hooks are used to execute custom code at specific points in the backup process to make sure that applications like databases are in the proper state for backup.