Using Ark with Portworx

Heptio Ark is a utility for managing disaster recovery, specifically for your Kubernetes cluster resources and persistent volumes. To take snapshots of Portworx volumes through Ark you need to install and configure the Portworx plugin.

Install Ark Plugin

Run the following command to install the Portworx plugin for Ark:

ark plugin add portworx/ark-plugin:0.5

This should add an init container to your Ark deployment to install the plugin.

Configure Ark to use Portworx snapshots

Once the plugin is installed, you need to create VolumeSnapshotLocation objects for ark to use when taking volume snapshots. These specify whether you want to take local or cloud snapshots.

apiVersion: ark.heptio.com/v1
kind: VolumeSnapshotLocation
metadata:
  name: portworx-local
  namespace: heptio-ark
spec:
  provider: portworx
  config:
---
apiVersion: ark.heptio.com/v1
kind: VolumeSnapshotLocation
metadata:
  name: portworx-cloud
  namespace: heptio-ark
spec:
  provider: portworx
  config:
    type: cloud
    # Optional, required only if Portworx is configured with more than one credential
    credId: <UUID>

After applying the above specs you should see them when you list the VolumeSnapshotLocaions

kubectl get volumesnapshotlocation -n heptio-ark

NAME             AGE
portworx-cloud   54m
portworx-local   54m

Creating backups

Once the plugin has been installed and configured, everytime you take backups using Ark and include PVCs, it will also take Portworx snapshots of your volumes.

Local Backups

To backup all your apps in the default namespace and also create local snapshots of the volumes, you would use portworx-local for the snapshot location:

$ ark backup create default-ns-local-backup --include-namespaces=default --snapshot-volumes \
     --volume-snapshot-locations portworx-local
Backup request "default-ns-local-backup" submitted successfully.
Run `ark backup describe default-ns-local-backup` for more details.

Cloud Backups

To backup all your apps in the default namespace and also create cloud backups of the volumes, you would use portworx-cloud for the snapshot location:

$ ark backup create default-ns-cloud-backup --include-namespaces=default --snapshot-volumes \
     --volume-snapshot-locations portworx-cloud
Backup request "default-ns-cloud-backup" submitted successfully.
Run `ark backup describe default-ns-cloud-backup` for more details.

Listing backups

Once the specs and volumes have been backed up you should see the backup marked as Completed in ark.

$ ark get backup
NAME                      STATUS      CREATED                         EXPIRES   STORAGE LOCATION    SELECTOR
default-ns-local-backup   Completed   2018-11-11 20:10:45 +0000 UTC   29d       default             <none>
default-ns-cloud-backup   Completed   2018-11-11 20:15:45 +0000 UTC   29d       default             <none>

Restoring from backups

When restoring from backups, a clone volume will be created from the snapshot and bound to the restored PVC. To restore from the backup created above you can run the following command:

$ ark restore create --from-backup default-ns-local-backup
Restore request "default-ns-local-backup-20181111201245" submitted successfully.
Run `ark restore describe default-ns-local-backup-20181111201245` for more details.