Why Kasten? A Deep Dive into Kubernetes-native Data Management

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If you are familiar with Kubernetes and its architecture, you’ve definitely heard about Kasten.

As enterprises increasingly adopt Kubernetes (K8s) for their microservices architecture, the need for robust data management solutions become very needed. Kasten by Veeam is a leader in Kubernetes-native data management. It addresses this need by providing comprehensive solutions for backup, disaster recovery, and application mobility. In this blog, I will provide an in-depth technical exploration of how Kasten works, focusing on its architecture, components, and core functionalities.

Question: Kubernetes is designed for resiliency and scalability, why do I need a backup for Kubernetes anyway?

This is the first question came to my mind when I first heard about Kubernetes backup in general. But indeed, even though Kubernetes is designed for resiliency and scalability, having a backup strategy in place is important for several reasons:

Testing and Development: Backups allow you to create isolated environments for testing and development purposes. This lets you experiment with changes without affecting your production environment.

Data Protection: Kubernetes stores critical data like application configurations, persistent volumes, and stateful sets. Backups ensure this data is protected in case of incidents like accidental deletion, application errors, or infrastructure failures.

Disaster Recovery: If a disaster like a hardware failure or a major outage disrupts your cluster, backups enable you to restore your data and applications quickly, minimizing downtime and ensuring business continuity.

Compliance: Many industries and regulations require organizations to have a disaster recovery plan to safeguard sensitive data. Backups are a vital part of such a plan.

I can quote from K10 master, Michael Cade, and his blog about Kubernetes backup best practices:

Kubernetes is application-centric, so a Kubernetes-native backup is essential. Attempting to use traditional backup methods puts you at risk of data loss or corruption, because legacy solutions fail to capture the application as a whole — including all stateful and stateless components. A full application capture, including all components, resources, filters and labels is a necessary step to ensuring a reliable backup.

K10 overview

As I said, K10 is a data management platform that offers an easy-to-use, secure, and scalable system for backing up, restoring, and recovering Kubernetes applications. K10 focuses on the applications themselves and integrates seamlessly with various databases (both relational and NoSQL), Kubernetes flavors (managed or self-managed), and almost all cloud environments. K10 is both customizable and policy-driven, with a built-in Kubernetes API for control. It also boasts features like full data consistency, automatic application discovery, multi-cloud mobility, and a user-friendly web interface.

K10 – data management platform (source: kasten.io)

K10 architecture

A high-level overview as below:

Workflow

Discovery: Kasten automatically discovers applications and their associated data within the Kubernetes cluster. Backup:

Kasten creates consistent snapshots of application data and Kubernetes objects.
It leverages native storage snapshots when available for efficiency.
Application-aware hooks ensure data consistency for databases and stateful applications.

Catalog:

Backup metadata is stored in the Catalog for easy searching and management.
The Catalog tracks relationships between applications, volumes, and backups.

Restore:

Kasten can restore entire applications or specific components.
It handles namespace mapping and resource transformations during restores.

Disaster Recovery:

Kasten supports cross-cluster and cross-cloud disaster recovery.
It can replicate data and application configurations to remote locations.

Application Mobility:

Kasten facilitates moving applications between clusters or cloud providers.
It handles necessary transformations to ensure compatibility in the new environment.
Hint: To enhance DR readiness, K10 integrates with various storage providers, including public cloud object storage like Amazon S3. This allows you to store backups off-site, ensuring data protection even in disaster scenarios. K10’s policy framework enables you to configure backup copy jobs that automatically transfer backups to these off-site locations.

Snapshot Management

Kasten K10 primarily relies on snapshots for backups. It integrates with your underlying storage system’s snapshotting functionality, ensuring compatibility with various storage options (block, file, object). Snapshots offer several advantages:

Minimal Impact: They capture the state of your data at a specific point in time with minimal disruption to running workloads.
Efficiency: Snapshots leverage existing storage capabilities, optimizing resource utilization.
Fast Recovery: Restoring from snapshots allows for quick retrieval of application data.

K10 empowers you to define comprehensive backup policies. These policies determine what resources (namespaces, deployments, etc.) to include, the frequency of backups, and retention schedules. Policies enable granular control over your backup strategy.

K10 Editions (Free and Enterprise)

K10 is available in two editions. The default Starter edition, provided at no charge and intended for evaluation or for use in small non-production clusters, is functionally the same as the Enterprise edition but limited from a support and scale perspective. Customers choosing to upgrade to the Enterprise edition can obtain a license key from Kasten or install from cloud marketplaces. See the product page for a comparison of the editions.

Conclusion

Kasten K10 provides a comprehensive solution for safeguarding your Kubernetes applications. Its Kubernetes-native architecture, robust backup and snapshot management, and disaster recovery capabilities make it a compelling choice for organizations seeking to ensure application resilience in a dynamic containerized environment.

By understanding the technical underpinnings of K10, you can effectively leverage its functionalities to protect your critical Kubernetes deployments.

Further Exploration:

For a deeper understanding, consider exploring the following resources: