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Creating on-demand backup for VMs in OpenShift Virtualization

Contributors kevin-hoke banum-netapp
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This section outlines how to create on-demand backup for VMs in OpenShift Virtualization.

Steps to create a backup of a VM

To create an on-demand backup of the entire VM (VM metadata and VM disks), click on the Backup tab. This creates a Backup Custom Resource (CR). A sample yaml is provided to create the Backup CR. Using this yaml, the VM and its disks in the specified namespace will be backed up. Additional parameters can be set as shown in the documentation.

A snapshot of the persistent volumes backing the disks will be created by the CSI. A backup of the VM along with the snapshot of its disks are created and stored in the backup location specified in the yaml. The backup will remain in the system for 30 days as specified in the ttl.

apiVersion: velero.io/v1
kind: Backup
metadata:
  name: backup1
  namespace: openshift-adp
spec:
  includedNamespaces:
  - virtual-machines-demo
  snapshotVolumes: true
  storageLocation: velero-demo-1 -->this is the backupStorageLocation previously created
                                    when Velero is configured.
  ttl: 720h0m0s

Once the backup completes, its Phase will show as completed.

Backup completed

You can inspect the backup in the Object storage with the help of an S3 browser application. The path of the backup shows in the configured bucket with the prefix name (velero/demobackup). You can see the contents of the backup includes the volume snapshots, logs, and other metadata of the virtual machine.

Note In StorageGrid, you can also use the S3 console that is available from the Tenant Manager to view the backup objects.

Backup Objects in S3

Creating scheduled backups for VMs in OpenShift Virtualization

To create backups on a schedule, you need to create a Schedule CR.
The schedule is simply a Cron expression allowing you to specify the time at which you want to create the backup. A sample yaml to create a Schedule CR.

apiVersion: velero.io/v1
kind: Schedule
metadata:
  name: <schedule>
  namespace: openshift-adp
spec:
  schedule: 0 7 * * *
  template:
    hooks: {}
    includedNamespaces:
    - <namespace>
    storageLocation: velero-demo-1
    defaultVolumesToFsBackup: true
    ttl: 720h0m0s

The Cron expression 0 7 * * * means a backup will be created at 7:00 every day.
The namespaces to be included in the backup and the storage location for the backup are also specified. So instead of a Backup CR, Schedule CR is used to create a backup at the specified time and frequency.

Once the schedule is created, it will be Enabled.

Schedule created

Backups will be created according to this schedule, and can be viewed from the Backup tab.

Schedule created