Data protection

You can protect your container workloads and virtual machines by using the IBM Storage Fusion Backup & Restore services.

Application resources
The workload includes the following data:
  • PVs of the deployed workloads
  • Namespace and cluster scope resources for deployed workloads
  • Application VMs that use filesystem based PVCs are backed up and restored.
    Important: To backup application VMs, ensure that the following prerequisites are met:
    • Bare Metal cluster is available
    • OpenShift Virtualization feature is installed from the Operator Hub of OpenShift® Container Platform console.

    Support is available for VMs based on Filesystem PVCs (PersistentVolume has the volumeMode: Filesystem defined). From 2.8.0 release, the Block mode volumes (volumeMode: Block) support is available for you to experience as a technical preview.

    Recipes for VMs are not yet supported.

    For an overview of backup and restore of virtual machines, see Protecting virtual machines overview.
Note: The Backup & Restore uses Velero hooks that are present on an application or resource. This means that if your application has hooks, then they are automatically run by Velero at the time of backup or restore.
Storage locations
You can backup your Red Hat® OpenShift applications to local and object storage target locations, such as IBM Cloud®, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and any S3 Compliant object storage.
Ensure that S3 is not in the same cluster or namespace as IBM Storage Fusion Backup & Restore service. You can plan to use cluster services like MinIO or NooBaa but ensure to host them on different clusters. If your backups are in the same place as your primary data, then the data is not protected.
Important: Backup & Restore does not support OpenStack Swift of ANY version.
Backup policies
You can define how often backups are taken, where they get stored, and how long they are retained.

For more information about how to restore applications, see Quick start and explore the Backup & Restore service and Restoring an application.

For more information about OpenShift Container Platform applications, see https://docs.openshift.com/.