Virtual Machines backups

Portworx Backup now enables you to backup and restore KubeVirt Virtual Machines (VMs) running on Kubernetes clusters in an enterprise environment. Furthermore, this feature allows you to backup and restore VMs migrated from VMware environments and VMs running on OpenShift Virtualization. Portworx Backup detects these VMs to provide end to end data protection for VMs, VM disks, resource configuration, and network configuration data.

KubeVirt is Virtual Machine management add-on to provide a unified platform for VM workloads in the Kubernetes environment and allows VMs to run parallel with containers on Kubernetes, OpenShift, and other environments. With KubeVirt, you can run VM workloads and Kubernetes native workloads without requiring additional management tools or dedicated pipelines.

Prerequisites

Make sure that:

• KubeVirt v1.0.0 or below and its dependent modules are installed on all managed Kubernetes clusters, source and destination clusters

• qemu-guest-agent is installed on all the VMs to add KubeVirt specific pre-exec and post-exec rules

• Stork version 24.1.0 and above is installed on all application clusters

Following table lists out the the backup and restore workflows along with the scenarios supported by Portworx Backup as part of this feature:

Resource types	Support
Clusters	Backup and restore on OCP, EKS, GKE, and Kubernetes Vanilla clusters
Backup locations	Backup and restore of VMs on S3 compliant object store and NFS backup locations
Cloud accounts	All the cloud accounts that Portworx Backup currently supports
Pre-exec and post-exec rules	Freeze/thaw (unfreeze) rules for crash consistent backups
Backup types	Manual and scheduled backups
Backups and restores	Data volumes with VolumeMode set to block and file system Portworx Enterprise backed data volumes Non-Portworx Enterprise backed data volumes that support CSI snapshots Cross-region and cross-cloud backups and restores

note

Portworx Backup does not support 3-2-1 backup strategy for volumes with VolumeMode configured to block.

Backup and restore workflows supported by Portworx Backup for the VM resources is outlined in the following table:

VM resources	Support
PVCs (CSI-based and non-CSI based)	Yes
Hotplug volumes	Yes (Supports hotplug volumes with persist enabled)
Kubernetes secrets (used as startup scripts, networkDataSecretRef)	Yes (Manual selection of these resources are required during creation of backup)
NetworkAttachmentDefinition	Yes
Network Policy	No
Service object
Data volumes (DV)	No (Supports backup and restores of PVCs associated with data volumes only)
Data volume template (serves as a template to create data volume for a VM)	No (Supports backup and restores of PVCs associated with data volume templates only)
VirtualMachineInstancetype VirtualMachinePreference	Yes
VirtualMachineInstancePreset Virtual Machine Templates	No

note

• Portworx Backup does not support backup and restore of VM instances configured with multiple network interfaces and VMs created with virtualMachineInstance without VirtualMachine object.

• Portworx Backup creates a backup of VM resources with auto selection of all the resources with few exceptions outlined in the table above. Dependent VirtualMachine resources that are not part of VirtualMachine configuration will not be auto selected. For example, Network Policy, Service, and so on.

• If you intend to use CLI, you can use the existing namespace based backup approach by adding freeze/thaw rules explicitly as pre/post exec rules.

To back up and restore your KubeVirt VMs (or namespaces that contains your VMs):

1. Login to Portworx Backup web console.

2. From the home page, add a cloud account.

3. Configure a backup location.

4. Add the required type of cluster.

5. Create pre-exec and post-exec backup rules or use built-in (or default rules) available in Portworx Backup. To create pre-exec and post-exec backup rules for file-system backups, refer Backup Rules for file-system consistent backups.

6. Create a VM backup.

7. Restore from a VM backup.

note

Portworx Backup creates backups of VMs regardless of its state. The VMs restored from backup always come back to running state, even if the VM was stopped during the backup creation process.