Cluster Backup Wizard

The Cluster Backup Wizard allows to create and run backup jobs for Kubernetes clusters.

Defining backup jobs for clusters

  1. In Step 1 of the Add new backup pane, enter the following fields:

    Backup name

    A name of your backup job.

    Cluster

    The cluster to protect.

    Add Tags (optional)

    Key-value pairs that you can use arbitrarily to manage backup jobs in CloudCasa.

    Click Next.

  2. Enter the following values:

    Cluster

    Select either one of Full Cluster or Select Namespaces. If you choose Select Namespaces, enter the namespaces to protect.

    Select labels (optional)

    Enter key-value pairs to specify the labels for the object that you want to protect in the cluster.

    Include Persistent Volumes

    Enable this option to protect the Kubernetes Persistent Volumes in the cluster.

    Enable App Hooks

    Enable App Hooks for the cluster so that you can run your own shell commands before or after every backup job. See App Hooks for more details.

    Snapshot only or Snapshot and copy

    Tip

    In CloudCasa, there are two data protection methods:

    Backups

    Copying data in a cluster to external storage, that is, either CloudCasa Storage or My Storage such as your own Amazon S3 storage. For more information about CloudCasa Storage, see Service Plans and Settings; or, for My Storage which is your own cloud storage, see Storage.

    Snapshots

    Create a snapshot in the same storage.

    If you selected Snapshot and Copy, you will see the following advanced options if you click on the arrow:

    Destination storage for copy

    Select either one of the following options:

    Inherit from cluster preferences

    Use the default destination for the cluster that you specified in the Clusters page.

    CloudCasa Storage

    Use the CloudCasa Storage. Select the provider from Amazon S3 (AWS) or Microsoft Azure Blob storage (azure) and the region of the data center. See Service Plans to upgrade the Service Plan and expand the capacity of CloudCasa Storage for your organization.

    My Storage

    Select one of the user-defined object storage endpoints that you registered in the Storage page.

    Tip

    You can edit the cluster backup job later to change the destination storage service provider or its region. If you do so with a backup job for PV copies, the next job will make a full backup in the new destination storage.

    Concurrent streams

    Select a number of the data transfer streams between your cluster data and the destination storage during the backup job, between 1 stream and 16 streams. The default number is 2 streams.

    Max speed per stream

    Specify the maximum bandwidth for the data transfer between your cluster data and the destination storage during the backup job in MB per second. Or, leave this field blank so as not to limit the bandwidth. The default value is blank for “Unlimited”.

    Data mover pod timeout

    Time that the agent waits for the data mover pod to start once snapshot PVCs are bound. This should only need to be changed in special cases, for example when backing up Longhorn volumes using snapshots.

    Copy from live Longhorn PVs

    By default CloudCasa copy backups read from snapshots, but mounting a Longhorn snapshot can take a long time due to Longhorn’s copy activity. If you enable this option, CloudCasa will read directly from the live Longhorn PVs instead, making backups run faster and use less resources at the expense of crash consistency. When enabling this option, you should consider using app hooks in order to obtain application consistent backups.

  3. If you enabled App Hooks in the previous step, select the pre-backup App Hooks, post-backup App Hooks, or both. Click Next.

    See also

    For more information about App Hooks, see App Hooks.

  4. Select a policy for the backup. Policies define schedules and retention periods for your backups as well as retention options such as SafeLock. You can see your policies under Configuration/Policies. If you need to define a new policy you can click Add policy + at the top right. If you don’t select a policy, your backup won’t be scheduled automatically, but can be run manually on an ad-hoc basis. Click Next to proceed.

    See also

    For more information about policies, see Policies.

  5. Review the summary of the backup and verify that the settings are correct. If you didn’t select a policy, you’ll be given the option to select Run now to immediately start an ad-hoc backup. Note that you can separately specify a retention period for this ad-hoc run. When you’re done, click Create.

Your new backup job is defined! If you selected the “Run now” option, it will start to execute immediately. If not, you can run it manually in the Dashboard or the Protection/Cluster Backups page. We recommend always doing a test run of newly defined backup jobs.