Kubernetes backups just got easier with the CloudCasa charm from Catalogic

Kubernetes is very straightforward for deploying and managing stateless applications. Consequently, proper backups of the Kubernetes environment have often been postponed or neglected. Today, however, more and more applications running on Kubernetes are stateful, making backup and recovery solutions for these systems critical. Neglecting backup is risky: as applications become more complex and need to preserve their states, the challenges of recovering a setup increase. Therefore, platform engineers need a comprehensive backup solution for Kubernetes.

CloudCasa is a SaaS offering that provides data protection, recovery, and migration for Kubernetes. It provides a best-in-class solution for multi-cluster, multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud Kubernetes environments.

Caption: The CloudCasa dashboard, where it all comes together

The CloudCasa service comes in two variants: The CloudCasa Pro service provides centralised backup services for large, complex, multi-cluster, multi-cloud, and hybrid cloud environments. The recently introduced CloudCasa for Velero service brings similar enterprise features to existing installations of Velero, the popular open source Kubernetes backup solution. These features include centralised management and monitoring, alerts, job history, guided recovery, RBAC, and commercial support. Taking advantage of these leading-edge Kubernetes backup capabilities is now easier than ever, as Catalogic has released a CloudCasa charm.

Why use the CloudCasa charm?

The charm for CloudCasa is a Kubernetes operator created with the Charm SDK for Juju. Juju is an open source orchestration engine for software operators that enables the deployment, integration and lifecycle management of applications at any scale, on any infrastructure. An application can be a database, a web server, a dashboard or, in this case, backup software.

As a SaaS offering, an important part of CloudCasa’s value proposition is easy set-up and configuration, and minimal time to first backup. The only software component that customers need to install is the CloudCasa agent, so the engineering team is always looking for ways to make installation and upgrade of the agent easier for customers. They also wanted a native integration for Canonical’s Kubernetes platform. Juju was the perfect fit, and the charm makes consuming CloudCasa seamless for users.

“We’re excited that, working with our partners at Canonical, we were able to quickly implement the CloudCasa charm, providing convenient installation and management of our agent and consistent operations for customers using the Juju framework,” said Bob Adair, Head of Product Management at CloudCasa. ”As Kubernetes becomes more prevalent in the enterprise and the applications running on it become stateful and more complex, DevOps, SRE, and platform engineering teams need to think seriously about adequately protecting and managing these critical environments. This is where both CloudCasa and charms come in.”

How to install CloudCasa using the Charm

The CloudCasa charm can be installed directly from Charmhub using just a few simple Juju commands. The charm is available on charmhub.io. To get started with an existing cluster and an installation of Juju execute:

$ juju deploy cloudcasa

Then as the bare minimum of configurations, you set the cluster id:

$ juju config cloudcasa clusterid=

The CloudCasa application provides a way to trigger the installation of the charm. Users can access the Add and Edit Cluster wizards in the CloudCasa UI directly. 

Caption: Select the charm when configuring a K8s cluster in the Add Cluster wizard

About CloudCasa by Catalogic

CloudCasa by Catalogic is a Kubernetes backup-as-a-service providing innovative multi-cloud data protection, migration, and disaster recovery for Kubernetes applications and cloud data services. CloudCasa enables multi-cluster and multi-cloud application resiliency and mobility with granular or cluster-level recovery, across accounts, regions and even across clouds. CloudCasa is fully compatible and complementary to Velero, the open-source Kubernetes backup tool that has been downloaded over 100 million times. Signup for CloudCasa for Velero.

Read more

• Learn about CloudCasa for Velero
• Learn about Juju
• Learn about the Charm SDK
• Learn about Charmed Kubernetes

More questions about operators, Juju and charms?

Contact Canonical

(Photo by Taylor Vick on Unsplash)