Velero 1.4: Portable Backups at Scale

Introduction

Velero 1.4, released on June 4, 2020, elevates Kubernetes backup and restore for stateful workloads. The release streamlines hook automation, embraces CSI snapshots, and broadens multi-cloud support.

Smarter Backup Workflows

• BackupItemAction plugins let operators inject custom logic for specific Kubernetes resources, ensuring secrets, configmaps, and CRDs are captured with business logic intact.
• Restore Hooks trigger init containers, Jobs, or scripts after restore events, perfect for rotating passwords or reseeding caches.
• New metrics in Prometheus format expose backup duration, warnings, and object counts for real-time observability.

CSI Snapshot Integration

• Velero’s CSI Snapshot controller now automates quiesce, snapshot, and restore workflows for block storage drivers that implement the CSI spec.
• Supports Azure Disk, Amazon EBS, GCE PD, and vSphere CNS snapshot drivers out of the box.
• Fallback Restic paths remain available, keeping hybrid storage strategies straightforward.

Multi-Cloud & Multi-Cluster Reach

1. Plugin Ecosystem: Official plugins now cover IBM Cloud, Alicloud, and generic S3-compatible targets.
2. Namespaces Exclusion Lists: Fine-grained filtering ensures platform namespaces (e.g., kube-system) aren’t accidentally captured.
3. Velero CLI UX: velero schedule get --output json powers automation pipelines, while velero backup logs --details improves triage.

Getting Started

velero install --provider aws --plugins velero/velero-plugin-for-aws:v1.1.0 \
  --use-restic --features=EnableCSI
velero backup create nightly --include-namespaces production --snapshot-volumes

Restore with hooks enabled:

velero restore create nightly-restore --from-backup nightly \
  --restore-hook post-hook.yaml

Summary

Velero 1.4 empowers platform engineers to codify recovery workflows, ensuring that Kubernetes state stays resilient even across clouds.