Velero

What Is Velero

Velero gives you tools to back up and restore your Kubernetes cluster resources and persistent volumes. You can run Velero with a cloud provider or on-premises.

Installation

Environment Info

• GKE 1.22
• Kustomize 3.10.0

CLI Tool

Reference: Basic Install

I'm using MacOS with below command

brew install velero

Cloud Provider

I'm using GCP as example.

• Manually
• Terraform - Recommend

cd gcp_resource/sre-mgmt-dev
terraform init
terraform plan 
terraform apply

Deployment

• Deploy with kustomize. Modify kustomize_install/base folder these files: backupstoragelocation.yaml and serviceaccount.yaml per your requeset then execute:

kustomize build kustomize_install/velero/sre-mgmt-dev > ~/deploy.yaml
kubectl apply -f ~/deploy.yaml

• (Optional) Deploy with Helm manually, try Terraform Helm Provider if you want.

Backup

Schedule API

Velero have a Schedule resource that uses cron format to continuously backup the cluster at the specified time. My Velero deployment kustomize yaml includes a schedule that backups the cluster hourly. To create additional schedules; either create additional YAML files or use the velero schedule create command.

# Create a backup every 6 hours.
$ velero create schedule NAME --schedule="0 */6 * * *"

# Create a backup every 6 hours with the @every notation.
$ velero create schedule NAME --schedule="@every 6h"

# Create a daily backup of the web namespace.
$ velero create schedule NAME --schedule="@every 24h" --include-namespaces web

# Create a weekly backup, each living for 90 days (2160 hours).
$ velero create schedule NAME --schedule="@every 168h" --ttl 2160h0m0s

# Schedule help
$ velero create schedule --help

Backup API

Having a Schedule will create the Backup resource at the scheduled time. Backups can be created using YAML or velero backup create command.

# Create a backup containing all resources.
$ velero backup create backup1

# Create a backup including only the nginx namespace.
$ velero backup create nginx-backup --include-namespaces nginx

# Create a backup excluding the velero and default namespaces.
$ velero backup create backup2 --exclude-namespaces velero,default

# Create a backup based on a schedule named daily-backup.
$ velero backup create --from-schedule daily-backup

# View the YAML for a backup that doesn't snapshot volumes
$ velero backup create backup3 --snapshot-volumes=false

# Backup help
$ velero backup create --help

Disaster Recovery (DR)

Restoring specific resources

$ velero backup get  # pick the backup to restore from

# selector is lables in cluster resource
$ velero restore create RESTORE_NAME --from-backup BACKUP_NAME --selector key1=value1,key2=value2

Restoring namespaces

$ velero backup get  # pick the backup to restore from

$ velero restore create RESTORE_NAME --from-backup BACKUP_NAME --include-namespaces namespace1,namespace2

Complete cluster restore

$ velero backup get  # pick the backup to restore from

$ velero restore create RESTORE_NAME --from-backup BACKUP_NAME