Considerations for Backing Up and Restoring TKG Service Clusters and Workloads

This topic provides you with considerations for backing up and restoring workloads running on TKG Service clusters.

Backing Up and Restoring TKG Service Clusters

To backup and restore TKG clusters, you backup the Supervisor database. Doing so lets you restore vSphere Namespaces objects and TKG cluster node VMs.

You enable Supervisor backup and restore using the vCenter Server backup feature available through the vCenter Server Management Interface. For details, refer to the backup restore publication for the vSphere IaaS control plane.

Note: You can use Supervisor backup only to restore TKG cluster node VMs. You cannot use Supervisor backup to restore workloads deployed on TKG clusters. You must backup workloads separately, then restore them after the cluster is restored.

Backing Up and Restoring Workloads Running on TKG Service Clusters

The table summarizes the options for backing up and restoring stateless and stateful workloads running on TKG clusters.

Note: Backing up and restoring a Kubernetes cluster using standalone Velero gives you portability. This means if you want to be able to restore cluster workloads to a Kubernetes cluster not provisioned by TKG Service, consider use standalone Velero.

Scenario	Tool	Comments
Back up stateless and stateful workloads on a TKG cluster on Supervisor and restore to a TKG cluster on Supervisor.	Velero Plugin for vSphere See Backup and Restore Workloads Using Velero Plugin for vSphere.	Both Kubernetes metadata and persistent volumes can be backed up and restored. Velero snapshotting is used for persistent volumes with stateful applications. Requires that the Velero Plugin for vSphere is also installed and configured on Supervisor.
Back up stateless and stateful workloads on a TKG cluster on Supervisor and restore to a conformant Kubernetes cluster.	Standalone Velero and Restic See Backup and Restore TKG Cluster Workloads on Supervisor Using Standalone Velero with Restic .	Both Kubernetes metadata and persistent volumes can be backed up and restored. Restic is used for persistent volumes with stateful applications. Use this approach if you require portability.
Back up stateless and stateful workloads on a TKG cluster on Supervisor and restore to a conformant Kubernetes cluster.	Standalone Velero with CSI snapshotting See Backup and Restore Using Velero with CSI Snapshot	Requires vSphere 8.0 U2+ and TKr v1.26+ for vSphere 8.0.

Scenario

Tool

Comments

Back up stateless and stateful workloads on a TKG cluster on Supervisor and restore to a TKG cluster on Supervisor.

Velero Plugin for vSphere

See Backup and Restore Workloads Using Velero Plugin for vSphere.

Both Kubernetes metadata and persistent volumes can be backed up and restored.

Velero snapshotting is used for persistent volumes with stateful applications.

Requires that the Velero Plugin for vSphere is also installed and configured on Supervisor.

Back up stateless and stateful workloads on a TKG cluster on Supervisor and restore to a conformant Kubernetes cluster.

Standalone Velero and Restic

See Backup and Restore TKG Cluster Workloads on Supervisor Using Standalone Velero with Restic

Both Kubernetes metadata and persistent volumes can be backed up and restored.

Restic is used for persistent volumes with stateful applications.

Use this approach if you require portability.

Back up stateless and stateful workloads on a TKG cluster on Supervisor and restore to a conformant Kubernetes cluster.

Standalone Velero with CSI snapshotting

See Backup and Restore Using Velero with CSI Snapshot

Requires vSphere 8.0 U2+ and TKr v1.26+ for vSphere 8.0.