CloudCasa brings GUI to open source backup tool Velero
A new SaaS offering from CloudCasa by Catalogic offers adds functionality such as infrastructure monitoring tools to Velero, a popular open source Kubernetes backup tool.
CloudCasa plans to add a GUI and enterprise-grade functionality to Velero, an open-source Kubernetes backup tool that operates from a command line.
CloudCasa for Velero, the latest SaaS offering from Kubernetes backup storage provider CloudCasa by Catalogic, provides a new console to view, monitor and manage Velero backups of a customer's Kubernetes environment.
The SaaS can be used to create policy templates for protecting future clusters as well as provide guided steps for data recovery. Customers can import existing Velero backups into the service without recreating them in CloudCasa or approved storage.
CloudCasa's existing backup-as-a-service product is based on a combination of Velero and KubeDR, an application developed by CloudCasa and Catalogic for Kubernetes container storage interfaces.
CloudCasa for Velero is now generally available and offers a free tier to monitor Velero environments with up to 15 worker nodes. Additional nodes and managed support features are available starting at $199 per month. The service will be bundled into other paid CloudCasa support tiers.
DevOps teams, the primary users of open source tools such as Velero, are willing to work with command line interfaces and other tools requiring manual intervention to manage backups, according to Krista Macomber, an analyst at Evaluator Group. This changes, however, when IT ops teams become involved in backing up workloads at scale or outside smaller test environments.
"There's a little less hesitation to the DIY approach due to [DevOps] background and history," Macomber said. "These users are not afraid of scripting. But [what if] that scales to hundreds or thousands of nodes [and clusters]? Once you start to go beyond a certain number of clusters, that's when these tasks become extremely time consuming."
Visualized backups
Velero is one of the more popular Kubernetes backup services, Macomber said. It uses the Kubernetes API to capture the state of cluster resources for restoration but can require additional support software, such as the file backup tool Restic, to maintain persistent data for applications. Users also need to provide their own object storage for backups, which can be done using open source software such as MinIO.
There's a little less hesitation to the DIY approach due to [DevOps] background and history.
Krista MacomberAnalyst, Evaluator Group
Velero's popularity, even among enterprise users, comes from the attractive price point of free, according to both Macomber and CloudCasa executives. That low cost of entry enables immediate backup capabilities. But it can result in a morass of backup scheduling and duties hard for ITops teams to manage, according to Sathya Sankaran, founder and general manager at CloudCasa.
Velero users consider vendor lock-in with their software anathema to the project's goals, Sankaran said. CloudCasa for Velero aims to provide additional value to customers without locking them into CloudCasa specifically.
"We are going to build solutions that are open source friendly even if we aren't friendly [to a competitor]," Sankaran said. "We are not going to have this religious battle with the community. We are going to play very secular in this context."
CloudCasa for Velero is delivered as a SaaS, but customers of the CloudCasa service can cancel without it affecting their existing Velero infrastructure. What CloudCasa for Velero offers is a litany of SaaS features for Velero users, including alerts, job monitoring tools, guided recovery and live chat with CloudCasa support teams.
"The more [an enterprise] scales, the more you're likely to look for a commercial solution," Sankaran said.
Tim McCarthy is a journalist from the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts. He covers cloud and data storage news.
