When is it appropriate to use Velero instead of etcd's built in backup/restore?

Etcd's backup/restore tooling is good for recovering from data loss in a single etcd cluster. For example, it is a good idea to take a backup of etcd prior to upgrading etcd itself. For more sophisticated management of your Kubernetes cluster backups and restores, we feel that Velero is generally a better approach. It gives you the ability to throw away an unstable cluster and restore your Kubernetes resources and data into a new cluster, which you can't do easily just by backing up and restoring etcd.

Examples of cases where Velero is useful:

  • you don't have access to etcd (e.g. you're running on GKE)
  • backing up both Kubernetes resources and persistent volume state
  • cluster migrations
  • backing up a subset of your Kubernetes resources

Will Velero restore my Kubernetes resources exactly the way they were before?

Yes, with some exceptions. For example, when Velero restores pods it deletes the nodeName from the pod so that it can be scheduled onto a new node. You can see some more examples of the differences in pod_action.go

I'm using Velero in multiple clusters. Should I use the same bucket to store all of my backups?

We strongly recommend that each Velero instance use a distinct bucket/prefix combination to store backups. Having multiple Velero instances write backups to the same bucket/prefix combination can lead to numerous problems - failed backups, overwritten backups, inadvertently deleted backups, etc., all of which can be avoided by using a separate bucket + prefix per Velero instance.

It's fine to have multiple Velero instances back up to the same bucket if each instance uses its own prefix within the bucket. This can be configured in your BackupStorageLocation, by setting the spec.objectStorage.prefix field. It's also fine to use a distinct bucket for each Velero instance, and not to use prefixes at all.

Related to this, if you need to restore a backup that was created in cluster A into cluster B, you may configure cluster B with a backup storage location that points to cluster A's bucket/prefix. If you do this, you should use restore-only mode in cluster B's Velero instance (via the --restore-only flag on the velero server command specified in your Velero deployment) while it's configured to use cluster A's bucket/prefix. This will ensure no new backups are created, and no existing backups are deleted or overwritten.

Getting Started

To help you get started, see the documentation.