What is Kubernetes Backup?

When was the last time you accidentally deleted something from your computer? Accidentally threw away an important receipt? Accidentally forgot to take your laundry out?  These mistakes happen often and aren’t necessarily the end of the world, but what do you do when disaster strikes? For container orchestration systems, this is where Kubernetes backup comes in. 

As the name suggests, Kubernetes backup is simply backing up the critical components within Kubernetes operations. These components include, but aren’t limited to, nodes, pods, control planes, workloads, and volumes. 

Kubernetes backup is extremely crucial to any Kubernetes loadout for a variety of reasons. Backing up your Kubernetes system protects said systems from disasters such as cybersecurity attacks, human errors, hardware failures, and other vulnerabilities. In the same vein, Kubernetes backup enables teams to migrate data faster and ensure high availability, creating a seamless system and application revival loop once an application fails.

With Kubernetes backup and disaster recovery approaches taking so many shapes and sizes, it’s hard to figure out what to backup, how to go about doing so, and what tools to use. Here is a guide to get you started!

Kubernetes Cloud Backup Benefits

Having a competent Kubernetes backup and restore strategy can make all the difference within your business. As mentioned in the previous section, Kubernetes backup is crucial for two sets of reasons.

Protection

Disaster can strike at a moment’s notice, and with the frailty of a computer system, can happen right under your nose. Backing up your Kubernetes assets can safeguard your business and applications from vulnerabilities like:

• Data breaches and data loss
• Failures, including control plane, cluster, and persistent volume
• Human errors in coding
• Cyberattacks

As with any system, replication and redundancy are keys to achieving a highly protected Kubernetes operation, one that works even in the midst of disaster.

Recovery

On the other side of disaster is recovery, another aspect that Kubernetes backup enables. Backing up important Kubernetes databases, configs, and more ensure that your applications are still operational despite failure. To preserve and restore business continuity, developers should be looking into backup tactics that safeguard the most important aspects of Kubernetes, while protecting valuable data in the process.

Backing up Kubernetes databases is also double-dipping, protecting your systems while ensuring data privacy and compliance with regulation.

What Should You Backup?

Kubernetes consists of tons of moving parts, adding complexity to the system itself. That being said, what parts of Kubernetes are worth backing up?

Etcd Database

In Kubernetes, etcd is a distributed open source key-value store database, whose primary purpose is to house all of the cluster data within Kubernetes. This data includes configuration data, state data, metadata, secrets, and ConfigMaps. Because etcd is highly consistent and distributed across different machines, it has become a core component in the Kubernetes ecosystem- storing many of Kubernetes’ important data and making the system more fault tolerant. 

Failure within etcd can be catastrophic, with regular snapshots of this becoming mandatory in many Kubernetes operations.

Application and Cluster Configurations

Configuring your application and clusters takes tons of time and effort, don’t lose that when something goes awry. 

Backing up these configurations captures the state of your application and the metadata of the tool used to deploy it, letting you jump right back in once disaster is resolved.

Persistent Volumes

In one of our older blogs, we note that Kubernetes pods are ephemeral, or are built to temporarily last until their function is executed. Once their function is complete or node/pod becomes corrupt, that pod and its data is discarded for good. Persistent volumes bypass this.

Persistent volumes store application data that lives past the lifespan of its pod, ensuring that data is resilient and safeguarded. With persistent volumes, companies are able to make the most of their data without having to worry about an expiration date. This also encourages data scaling and adapting from data, marking its importance in the backup process.

ConfigMaps and Secrets

ConfigMap is an API object used to store data in key-value pairs, storing this data for other objects to use in non Kubernetes environment-specific configurations. Similarly, secrets are objects that contain small amounts of confidential information, such as passwords or tokens. Secrets solely so this sensitive information isn’t accessible via application code.

Both of these Kubernetes components store important information and should be backed up regularly.

Workloads

Workloads represent applications running within a cluster across various different states and configurations. Much of these workloads allow you to quickly redeploy apps seamlessly, with the backup of these workloads reducing service disruption threats.

Configuration-Specific Elements

Configuring Kubernetes and integrating the perfect solutions for your loadout can be a pain, don’t lose that to disaster!

While these are some components of Kubernetes you should consider backing up, your approach to container orchestration is extremely personalized. Although backing up more components may require more effort, it doesn’t hurt to have more tools secured in your toolkit!

Kubernetes Backup Strategy - Which Works for You?

There are many different ways of approaching Kubernetes backup and restoration, however there are central requirements for each strategy. For the most part, Kubernetes backup and restoration strategies should cover concepts such as:

• Disaster recovery
• Data migration
• Data protection
• Backup security 
• Backup retention policies
• Restoration process

As your company scales, your approach to Kubernetes backups might expand past these requirements and need more security. That being said, some industry standard strategies for backups include:

Application Backup

Can’t decide on what components to backup? Why not backup the whole thing!

This approach requires capturing your application in all its entirety, backing up all of its components, resources, and tools needed to run this application. This backup approach is perhaps the easiest route, removing potential for human error and misconfiguration in backup’s many intricacies.

Backing up everything has its benefits; data is protected on a wider scale, migration is easier in whole, and your application can recover quicker if the whole thing is backed up.

Cluster Backup

In a similar vein to full application backup, cluster backup requires backing up everything relevant to a specific cluster. Unlike application backup, this approach gives you more granular control, letting you configure the backup process for each relevant cluster. 

This approach works well when creating new clusters, as backups can serve as reference points and even templates.

etcd Backups

One of the most crucial Kubernetes components, etcd backups sees users backing up specific databases, containing cluster states from where the etcd database originated from.

The benefits of etcd backups are unparalleled, ranging from data recovery prospects to stronger testing abilities to even more streamlined cluster management. For users partaking in managed Kubernetes, this specific backup strategy is managed by the managed Kubernetes service provider.

With each of these strategies, it’s important to note how often you should be backing up your resources. It’s best to schedule your backups to occur daily, increasing the reliability and recoverability of your Kubernetes assets with each snapshot. While this may seem wasteful in terms of storage, daily snapshots combat disaster most efficiently. 

The nature of backups themselves can also be adjusted to account for your business needs. Backups include:

• Incremental backups: capturing changes made since the last backup, typically involving smaller backup sizes
• Differential backups: capturing changes made since the last full backup, faster backup times

Whether your organization desires speeds or craves storage, there is a backup strategy that works for every need.

Kubernetes Backup Tools

Tons of different strategies exist to streamline and optimize your backup approach and make your life a whole lot easier. The same can be said for the different Kubernetes backup tools, some of which include:

Velero

Velero is an open source backup and restore tool, excelling in disaster recovery and data migration and protection. One of the leaders in backup, Velero offers different approaches to backing up your assets, including cluster backup, scheduled backups, and backup hook configuration.

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Veeam Kasten

Veeam Kasten (previously known as Kasten K10) is a data management platform built for Kubernetes data protection, offering teams backup and restore services while increasing app mobility. Mainly focusing on application backups, Veeam Kasten lets teams recover entire applications, integrating seamlessly with different clouds and infrastructures.

Portworx

Portworx is a persistent Kubernetes storage and data management platform aimed at protecting and unifying data across applications and clouds. Standout features of Portworx include data protection, disaster recovery and configuration, data security, automated capacity management, and more!

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Backup Kubernetes with Lyrid

Kubernetes backup is one of the most crucial aspects of Kubernetes, one that protects your systems while preventing cyber attacks and data breaches. Despite Kubernetes’ built-in healing features, backing up your system requires tons of strategy and effort, with different Kubernetes backup and recovery services existing to aid you.

Whether you’re looking to backup and restore Kubernetes clusters or backup Kubernetes in general, Lyrid is here to help! Through various products, namely our managed databases and managed Kubernetes, Lyrid offers a comprehensive Kubernetes experience that protects your system. Features and benefits include: 

• Cluster autoscaling for resource maxing
• Enhanced cluster visibility in a single pane of glass
• Daily automated backup of entire systems
• Strong identity access management features

And more!

Looking to backup and restore Kubernetes with Lyrid? Book a demo with one of our product specialists!