This article describes how to use CloudCasa as a solution to back up AKS Arc on Azure Local workloads and how to restore to the same cluster or to a new cluster.
Prerequisites
To get started, you must have a CloudCasa account profile at https://cloudcasa.io.
Add a new cloud account to CloudCasa
First, add a new cloud account to CloudCasa. Follow these steps:
- Select the Configuration > Cloud Accounts menu, then select Add Cloud Account.
- In the Add Cloud Account menu, select Microsoft Azure as the cloud account service.
- Select the Deploy to Azure link. The Create ARM Template (Azure Resource Manager) wizard appears. Select Deploy to Azure.
- Deploy the custom CloudCasa template. You can leave the default options listed in the template. Select Review + Create.
- After you deploy the custom template through the ARM template, you see your account marked as Active. This is not always immediate and can take up to 1 hour.
- Provide your cloud account with a name and description.
- After you complete these steps, in the Cloud Accounts screen you can see the account that you created from the CloudCasa screen is shown as Active.
Register cluster with CloudCasa
When you select your cloud account you should be able to see AKS Arc clusters accessible for the Azure cloud account you registered in the previous section. You can install the CloudCasa agents on the cluster of your choice.
If AKS Arc clusters are not displayed, you can add them manually by selecting Add cluster at the top right corner and apply the CloudCasa agent configuration to your AKS Arc cluster using the YAML manifest provided by CloudCasa:
Verify that the connectivity of your cluster is Active.
Create backup policy
To define a backup schedule in CloudCasa, follow these steps:
- Ensure that your cluster shows as Active as described in the previous section.
- You can either select your cluster and then select the Define Backup job, or go to the Backups tab to define backup jobs.
- Select the cluster you want to back up.
- Select the scope of your backup: namespaces, labels, persistent volumes, snapshot only, or Back up directly from all PVs not snapshotted.
Backup execution and validation
To execute a backup job, follow these steps:
- Enter a name for the backup job.
- If you want to run the backup job immediately after it's created, select Run Now at the bottom of the screen. You must also provide a retention period for how long you want CloudCasa to retain the backup.
- Trigger an initial backup.
- Select Create & Run.
- Verify logs or status in the CloudCasa UI.
After you complete your backup job, you can perform a restore operation as needed. While performing the restore, you can define and customize parameters such as restoring to existing cluster, or to a new cluster where you can select the Kubernetes version, define cluster configuration, and more.
Restore process
To restore your backup, follow these steps:
Set up restore
- Navigate to the Clusters > Restores section of the CloudCasa menu.
- Select Define Restore in the top right section of the UI.
- Select the backed up cluster that you want to restore.
- Select the recovery point that you want to use as the point-in-time to recover your application.
- Select the namespace that you want to restore from the list of available namespaces within the cluster. Alternatively, you can select All Protected Namespaces to restore the full Kubernetes cluster.
- Select the destination cluster for recovery. You can choose to restore to your existing cluster, or create a new cluster to restore to:
- Choose the cloud account destination to which you want to restore the Kubernetes application.
- Select and input the details for the new cluster:
- Name, Resource Group, Region, and Kubernetes version.
- Credentials (Client ID and Secret).
- Networking and Node Pools.
- Other optional details as needed under Cluster Addons.
- Select Save & Restore at the bottom right after you complete all necessary input.
- Track the success of your restore job in the CloudCasa UI, or double-check the performance of your workloads using Azure CLI or the Azure portal.
- When you complete the definition of your restore/migration job, you can see your newly created cluster using the Azure portal:
You should now have a successful backup and restore, as needed.
Next steps
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