Protecting Amazon EKS with HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery

[StorageExperts]

Let’s get technical and take a closer look at protecting Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) with HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery.

–By Saad Jafri, Principal Technical Product Manager, HPE Storage

Agile, resilient data protection is key to always-on availability for data and applications in today’s dynamic hybrid cloud environments. While every organization has its own set of requirements, almost all focus on cost efficiency, simplicity, performance, scalability, and future-readiness when architecting a data protection strategy and evaluating new technologies. You need a data protection solution that brings continuous innovation – and one that adapts to your needs in our constantly evolving world.

Here’s where HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery comes in

With HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery comes the simplicity of the cloud experience while seamlessly protecting on-prem and cloud-native workloads. Delivered as a service, it leverages global protection policies to consistently protect workloads across hybrid cloud. We’re constantly speaking with our customers to learn how we can enhance the product to fit their needs. We recently introduced a number of new features to HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery, including protection of Microsoft SQL Server and Amazon Relational Database Service.

What’s new now

Today, I am going take a closer look on with HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery. This enables data protection of cloud-native Kubernetes applications that run on Amazon EKS clusters. 

What makes this important

Solution highlights include:

• Agentless – No agents needed on the target cluster. All workflows are managed by Data Services Cloud Console (DSCC).
• Ease of use – The backup admin doesn’t have to be a Kubernetes expert. No complex installs scripts or commands for scheduling/running backups.
• Enables DevOps backup – This helps achieve backup and recovery of applications running in Amazon EKS development and production cluster sandboxes.

Now for a deeper technical dive

Let’s take a look at how it works.

First, you log into the Data Services Cloud Console from within the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform. Then you click on HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery tile. From there, you’ll be brought to the HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery service.

You will notice that on the top of the dashboard, there is a tile called Protection. This will show the protection status of Amazon EKS applications (including other assets) when hovering the number beside it.

To protect cloud native Kubernetes applications running on AWS EKS clusters, the first step will be to add your AWS account or refresh the account if one is already added for EKS Clusters to be auto discovered.

Once the Amazon EKS clusters are discovered and displayed in the Amazon EKS clusters listing view, you can create an AWS Protection Policy to include AWS Snapshot and/or HPE Cloud Protection Store schedule, retention, and immutability.  This policy will be applied to protect the namespace running cloud native Kubernetes applications on the AWS EKS cluster

.The Protection Policy created can now be applied to the unprotected application/namespace running withing the Amazon EKS cluster by selecting the application and clicking the Protect button as shown above.  Once the Protection Policy is applied, the application/namespace is protected as shown in the Protection Status column name of the policy applied in the Policy column. The backup starts based on the schedule specified in the Protection Policy.

In the backup lineage view, you can see the different Recovery Points based on the backup schedule. There are three different types of backups created:

1. AWS Snapshots are orchestrated within your AWS environment and kept based on the retention schedule specified in Protection Policy.
2. Staging Snapshots are AWS snapshots created in your environment based on the schedule specified in Protection Policy for HPE Cloud Protection Store. Once the initial full backup is done to HPE Cloud Protection Store, only 1-2 staging snapshots are maintained at any given time.  Staging snapshots are used to compare blocks from previous snapshots and only the changed blocks are copied after the initial full.
3. HPE Cloud Protection Store is HPE managed S3 bucket where backups are securely and efficiently copied to from Staging Snapshot. Data is deduplicated and compressed using HPE StoreOnce Catalyst protocol to achieve storage space savings efficiencies. Backup copies are maintained here based on the retention schedule. Backup copies can also be made immutable here to guard against ransomware based on the option selected in Protection Policy.

Recovery of the application/namespace can be achieved with just a few clicks using any one of these recovery points under AWS Snapshot, Staging Snapshot and HPE Cloud Protection Store.

See how easy it is

HPE is committed to empowering you with the most efficient, cost-effective, and user-friendly backup and recovery solutions.

In a few simple steps you can use the Cost Estimator Tool to estimate cost savings of HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery when compared to other solutions.

Ready to give it a try?

You can experience the benefits of HPE GreenLake for Backup and Recovery – including all features and support – with this 90-day free evaluation.

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Meet Saad Jafri, Principal Technical Product Manager, HPE Storage

Saad is HPE Storage Technical Product Manager over GreenLake for Backup and Recovery in Cloud Data Services. Connect with Saad on LinkedIn.

Storage Experts
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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