Feature Update May 2026

Our last CloudCasa feature update was only about a month ago, but today we’re excited to announce a new release that introduces features that have been in the works for quite some time. This update is all about CloudCasa DR, our updated and now greatly nore capable storage-based low-RTO/low-RPO disaster recover feature set.

“But wait,” you say. “Hasn’t CloudCasa been doing disaster recovery from day one? What’s so new about that?” Well it has, of course, but not this sort of disaster recovery. CloudCasa had plenty of DR features previously, including standard recovery, which allows you to recover whole clusters or specific applications on demand, “full stack” recovery, which allows you to automatically spin up clusters in the cloud to restore to, and replication jobs, which allow you to periodically replicate one cluster to another using a scheduled backup/restore process.

But CloudCasa DR is a different sort of beast. It provides a DR solution for top-tier applications with very low RTOs and RPOs (think seconds or minutes instead of hours), using reliable, efficient, storage-based volume replication that you likely already have. It builds on the “CloudCasa DR for Storage” feature that we introduced last October, but goes much further in functionality. It also (spoiler alert) adds support for HPE Alletra storage arrays to our previous support for Longhorn/SUSE Storage.

Read on for more details!

New CloudCasa DR features

This release introduces a slew of new features related to CloudCasa DR, our updated low-RTO/RPO disaster recovery feature set. It allows you to quickly fail workloads over to a (typically remote) standby cluster in the event of a disaster, using an up-to-the-second replication scheme. This is facilitated by volume replication performed externally to CloudCasa, at the storage layer.

The most obvious manifestation of this new functionality is the addition of a new DR tab in the UI. This provides access to a set of new pages: DR Clusters, DR Storage Systems, DR Plans, and DR Recovery Jobs. These pages allow you to access and control the features of CloudCasa DR.

Change highlights:

  • Supported storage systems must now be configured in CloudCasa on the DR Storage Systems page. This allows CloudCasa to communicate directly with storage arrays to perform discovery and failover tasks.

  • DR Plans are used to describe the workload(s) that will be protected. You must now create at least one DR Plan for each cluster that you wish to protect with CloudCasa DR.

  • A new DR Recovery job type has been added to handle failover/failback actions. These can be defined in advance and run later, when you want to quickly perform a failover action.

  • CloudCasa DR now supports both software-based (i.e. Longhorn) and hardware-based (see below) volume replication.

  • Resource updates are now captured continuously, and so are kept synced with volume replication.

  • Note that we have shortened the name of this feature set from “CloudCasa DR for Storage” to simply “CloudCasa DR”.

In brief, using CloudCasa DR requires the following steps:

  • Enable the CloudCasa DR option for appropriate clusters on the Add/Edit Clusters page.

  • Configure supported storage systems on the DR/Storage Systems page.

  • Create DR plans for your clusters on the DR/Plans page.

  • Create and run DR recovery jobs to perform failover/failback in the DR/Recovery Jobs page.

See also

For a full description of configuring CloudCasa DR, see the CloudCasa DR Setup Guide.

CloudCasa DR support for HPE Alletra

With this release, CloudCasa DR support has been added for **HPE Alletra** storage arrays. At release time, Alletra 9000 and MP B10000 series arrays have already been certified as compatible through Catalogic’s partnership with HPE.

Stay tuned for support for additional storage systems in the near future!

CloudCasa DR support for Longhorn/SUSE Storage updated

CloudCasa DR support for Longhorn/SUSE Storage has been updated so that it aligns with the new HPE Alletra array support. CloudCasa DR will now work in the same way no matter which supported storage system you are using. Most importantly, Kubernetes resource updates are now kept synced with volume replication.

If you had previously enabled CloudCasa DR for Storage and were using Restore jobs to implement Longhorn-based DR failover, you should now define your Storage Systems in CloudCasa and move to using DR Plans and DR Recovery Jobs instead. Feel free to contact CloudCasa support for assistance.

Improved YAML editing for advanced agent configuration

When setting advanced agent installation parameters (Advanced options -> Customize agent installation parameters) in the Add/Edit Cluster wizard, you can now select YAML Editor to edit the YAML directly, or select Guided YAML Editor to start a wizard that prompts you with choices. The guided editor is a more user-friendly option for users who are less familiar with the available options and syntax. Additional syntax checking has also been added to the standard YAML Editor option.

Miscellaneous

  • The Clusters/Disaster Recovery page has been removed. The functionality there has been moved to the new DR tab.

  • A new agent component called “dragent” has been added to the CloudCasa agent in the cloudcasa-io namespace. Its job is to monitor and record Kubernetes resources related to DR workloads. It will only run if a DR Plan has been created for the cluster.

  • The option to enable CloudCasa DR features for a cluster in the Add/Edit Cluster wizard has been renamed to Enable CloudCasa DR.

  • A new DR Dashboard button has been added to the cluster dashboard page to allow quick switching to the new DR dashboard view.

Kubernetes agent updates

In this update, we’ve again made several changes to our Kubernetes agent to add features, improve performance, and fix bugs. Some new product features will not work with older versions of the agent. However, manual updates shouldn’t normally be necessary because of the automatic agent update feature. If you have automatic updates disabled for any of your agents, you should update them manually as soon as possible.

Notes

With some browsers, you may need to restart, hit Control-F5, and/or clear the cache to make sure you have the latest version of the CloudCasa web app when first logging in after the update. You can also try selectively removing cookies and site data for cloudcasa.io if you encounter any odd behavior.

As always, we want to hear your feedback on new features! You can contact us by sending email to support@cloudcasa.io.