Backup For GKE – Part 2 – Backup & Restore Plan

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is a powerful tool for running containerized applications. But what happens if your GKE cluster crashes? Or if your application data is corrupted? Backup for GKE is a new feature that can help you protect your GKE clusters and applications.

In part two of this series, we will demonstrate how to create a backup plan for your GKE stateful workloads.

Why are Backups for GKE plans useful?

Backup plans are a useful tool for managing & maintaining GKE environments. They can be used for disaster recovery, compliance and audit, CI/CD pipelines, cloning workloads, and upgrade scenarios.

• Disaster recovery: Backup plans can be used to restore GKE clusters in the event of a disaster. This can be done by restoring the cluster from a backup or by creating a new cluster from a backup.
• Compliance and audit: Backup plans can be used to meet compliance and audit requirements. This can be done by storing backups in a secure location or by providing access to backups to authorized users.
• CI/CD pipelines: Backup plans can be used in CI/CD pipelines to create and restore GKE clusters. This can be done by using the backup plan to create a new cluster or by using the backup plan to restore a cluster to a specific point in time.
• Cloning workloads: Backup plans can be used to clone workloads. This can be done by using the backup plan to create a new cluster or by using the backup plan to restore a cluster to a specific point in time.
• Upgrade scenarios: Backup plans can be used in upgrade scenarios. This can be done by using the backup plan to create a new cluster or by using the backup plan to restore a cluster to a specific point in time.

With the above in mind, let’s walk through how to set up a backup plan. The steps below take you through setting up a GKE Autopilot cluster, enabling backups, deploying an example StatefulSet and creating a backup plan.

Setting up Backup for GKE[1]

Prerequisites – In my case, I made a VPC named gke-vpc, subnet gke-vpc and an automatic subnet

• Project Created – name gke-backup[2]
• VPC(gke-vpc), subnet(gke-vpc) and firewall rules[3]

GKE-Autopilot Creation[4]

gcloud container --project "gke-backup" clusters create-auto "gke-autopilot" --region "us-central1" --release-channel "regular" --network "projects/gke-backup/global/networks/gke-vpc" --subnetwork "projects/gke-backup/regions/us-central1/subnetworks/gke-vpc" --cluster-ipv4-cidr "/17" --services-ipv4-cidr "/22"

Enable Backups[5]

gcloud services enable gkebackup.googleapis.com

gcloud container clusters update gke-autopilot \
   --project=gke-backup  \
   --region=us-central1 \
   --update-addons=BackupRestore=ENABLED

Stateful set[6]

Deploy the below statefulset yaml to your cluster.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
 name: nginx
 labels:
   app: nginx
spec:
 ports:
 - port: 80
   name: web
 clusterIP: None
 selector:
   app: nginx
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: StatefulSet
metadata:
 name: web
spec:
 serviceName: "nginx"
 replicas: 2
 selector:
   matchLabels:
     app: nginx
 template:
   metadata:
     labels:
       app: nginx
   spec:
     containers:
     - name: nginx
       image: registry.k8s.io/nginx-slim:0.8
       ports:
       - containerPort: 80
         name: web
       volumeMounts:
       - name: www
         mountPath: /usr/share/nginx/html
 volumeClaimTemplates:
 - metadata:
     name: www
   spec:
     accessModes: [ "ReadWriteOnce" ]
     resources:
       requests:
         storage: 1Gi

If in terminal, run below commands:

• touch statefulset.yaml
• vi statefulset.yaml
• copy/paste
• enter :wq
• kubectl create -f statefulset.yaml

Backup Plan[7]

gcloud beta container backup-restore backup-plans create stateful-plan \
    --project=gke-backup \
    --location=us-central1 \
    --cluster=projects/gke-backup/locations/us-        
    central1/clusters/gke-autopilot \
    --all-namespaces \
    --backup-retain-days=5 \
    --cron-schedule="0 * * * *" \
    --include-volume-data

gcloud beta container backup-restore backups create example-backup \
    --project=gke-backup \
    --location=us-central1 \
    --backup-plan=stateful-plan \
    --wait-for-completion

Setting up Backup for GKE

Restore plans can be used to restore a cluster to a specific point in time, or to a specific version of GKE. This can be helpful if you need to recover from a data loss or if you need to roll back to a previous version of GKE.

Restore plans can also be used to restore a cluster to a different environment such as a different region. This can be helpful if you need to move your cluster to a new environment or if you need to follow new regulations.

Overall, GKE restore plans are a useful tool for managing clusters. They can help you to automate the process of restoring a cluster, restoring a cluster to a specific point in time or version, or restoring a cluster to a different environment.

The below takes you through setting up creating a restore plan and running it.

Creating your Restore Plan[8]

gcloud beta container backup-restore restore-plans create example-restore \
    --project=gke-backup \
    --location=us-central1 \
    --backup-plan=projects/gke-backup/locations/us-
    central1/backupPlans/stateful-plan \
    --cluster=projects/gke-backup/locations/us-
    central1/clusters/gke-autopilot \
    --namespaced-resource-restore-mode=delete-and-
    restore \
    --all-namespaces

Restoring your GKE backup[9]

gcloud beta container backup-restore restores create example-restore \
    --project=gke-backup \
    --location=us-central1 \
    --restore-plan=example-restore \      
--backup=projects/gke-backup/locations/us-central1/backupPlans/stateful-plan/backups/example-backup

There you have it! You now have a backup-plan for your stateful cluster in the default namespace. Next, get started with GKE Network Policies this quick tutorial.

Reference:

By: Spencer Patrick Bischof (Customer Engineer) and Hakim Graia (Customer Engineer)
Originally published at: Google Cloud Blog