Backup and Restore Strategy Overview

This document provides a technical overview of the backup mechanisms implemented across Kubernetes clusters managed by our DevOps team.

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1. Persistent Volume (PV) Backup and Restore with Velero

We use Velero to orchestrate backups of Persistent Volume Claims (PVCs) in Kubernetes.

• Triggering manual backups using existing schedule
• Restoring from backups

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2. Sealed Secrets Key Backups

• To preserve the ability to decrypt sealed secrets, we automate the backup of the controller’s private key.
• Backup and Restore documentation

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3. Logical Database Backups

We use logical dumps for databases such as PostgreSQL and MongoDB to ensure portability and integrity.

PostgreSQL

• CNPG backup and restore documentation
• Zalando postgres operator backup and restore documentation

MongoDB

• The chart was renamed from mongodb-operator to mongodb-kubernetes; its README is now a migration guide (MCO to MCK) and doesn't cover backup/restore yet. Documentation pending.

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4. Checking Backup Health

The backup exporter in the kubeaid-agent chart reads object storage directly and reports whether PostgreSQL (CNPG logical and WAL), Velero, MongoDB, and Sealed Secrets backups actually landed. Check status with:

kubeaid-cli backup status

See the backup status docs for the metrics reference, JSON output (-o json), and alerting behavior.

Summary

Component	Tool/Method	Target Storage
PVCs	Velero + CSI Snapshots	Azure Blob / S3 Compatible Storage
Sealed Secret Keys	CronJob + GZIP	Azure Blob / S3 Compatible Storage
PostgreSQL / MongoDB	Logical dump scripts	Azure Blob / S3 Compatible Storage