Create and use cloud snapshots

This document will show you how to create cloud snapshots of Portworx volumes and how you can clone those snapshots to use them in pods.

Pre-requisites

Installing STORK

This requires that you already have STORK installed and running on your Kubernetes cluster. If you fetched the Portworx specs from the Portworx Spec Generator in PX-Central and used the default options, STORK is already installed.

PX Version

Cloud snapshots using below method is supported in Portworx version 1.4 and above. Cloud snapshots (for aggregated volumes) using below method is supported in Portworx version 2.0 and above.

Configuring cloud secrets

To create cloud snapshots, one needs to setup secrets with Portworx which will get used to connect and authenticate with the configured cloud provider.

Follow instructions on the pxctl credentials page to setup secrets.

Creating cloud snapshots

With cloud snapshots, you can either snapshot individual PVCs one by one or snapshot a group of PVCs.

Creating PVCs from cloud snapshots

When you install STORK, it also creates a storage class called stork-snapshot-sc. This storage class can be used to create PVCs from snapshots.

To create a PVC from a snapshot, you would add the snapshot.alpha.kubernetes.io/snapshot annotation to refer to the snapshot name.

If the snapshot exists in another namespace, the snapshot namespace should be specified with stork/snapshot-source-namespace annotation in the PVC.

Note that the storageClassName needs to be the Stork StorageClass stork-snapshot-sc as in the example below.

For the above snapshot, the spec would like this:

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: mysql-snap-clone
  annotations:
    snapshot.alpha.kubernetes.io/snapshot: mysql-snapshot
spec:
  accessModes:
     - ReadWriteOnce
  storageClassName: stork-snapshot-sc
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 2Gi

Once you apply the above spec, you will see a PVC created by STORK. This PVC will be backed by a Portworx volume clone of the snapshot created above.

kubectl get pvc

NAMESPACE   NAME                                   STATUS    VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS                AGE
default     mysql-data                             Bound     pvc-f782bf5c-20e7-11e8-931d-0214683e8447   2Gi        RWO            px-mysql-sc                 2d
default     mysql-snap-clone                       Bound     pvc-05d3ce48-2280-11e8-98cc-0214683e8447   2Gi        RWO            stork-snapshot-sc           2s

References

To create PVCs from existing snapshots, read Creating PVCs from cloud snapshots.
To create PVCs from group snapshots, read Creating PVCs from group snapshots.

Cloud backups for single PVCs

Snapshot single PVCs