Integration with Veeam Backup Repositories for Kasten K10: Considerations and Limitations

Kasten K10 supports the ability to protect data on Kubernetes clusters running in a wide range of environments. While the primary method for fast protection and recovery is to take snapshots of the persistent volume, K10 also provides the ability to schedule the export of these snapshots as restore points to external locations to provide for safe, long-term backup outside of the cluster. These restore points can then be used to restore back to the existing environment, or imported and restored to a new environment.

Starting with K10 4.5.6, it is possible to use a Veeam repository as an export/import location for storing block-based backups of persistent volume images in cases where the persistent volumes are allocated via the vSphere CSI. 

This document describes the detailed system requirements as well as important considerations and limitations of this solution.

For additional information, please review: Integration with Veeam Backup Repositories for Kasten K10 Guide

• The Kubernetes environment must run on vSphere 6.7U3 or later and make use of the vSphere CSI driver for provisioning persistent volumes.
• The K10 version must be version 4.5.6 or later.
• The target Veeam server must be running version 11a with CP P20211211 or later.
• The K10 instance must be able to communicate with the Veeam Backup server and repository (see the user guide for required ports).

• While K10 will store the persistent volume's images in the Veeam Backup repository, it still requires a primary location to store any file-based data and metadata. This location can be any additional storage type supported by K10 (object storage or NFS).
• As K10 allows retention actions for any restore point at any time, image backups stored in a Veeam Backup repository are always created as synthetic full backups so that each restore point is its own independent chain. Due to this, it is highly recommended that K10 image backups are targeted only to repositories that support spaceless synthetic operations (e.g., ReFS or XFS) or utilize deduplication (e.g., Data Domain with DDboost or StoreOnce with Catalyst). While other repositories will work, it will require the resources to perform synthetics after each export and sufficient space for an entire full for each restore point.