Protect Kubernetes applications with Veeam Kasten and HPE Morpheus Enterprise Software

[HPE_Experts]

Unlock and protect enterprise storage for Kubernetes with Veeam Kasten and HPE Morpheus Enterprise Software

Easily integrate Kubernetes clusters on HPE Alletra MP B10000 with HPE Morpheus Enterprise using the HPE CSI Driver for Kubernetes, enabling dynamic provisioning, snapshots, and hybrid cloud agility for container workloads—all protected by Veeam Kasten

The explosive growth of Kubernetes

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the tech world, you’ve probably noticed that Kubernetes is everywhere these days. Let’s dive into why this container orchestration platform is taking the industry by storm and what it means for your business. The numbers don’t lie—Kubernetes is booming! According to Gartner^® Magic Quadrant™ for Container Management, “by 2028, 95% of new AI deployments will use Kubernetes, up from less than 30% today. The container management market has grown more than 20% over the past year, with a market value of over $2.5 billion in 2024. The market is forecast to exceed $4.5 billion in constant currency by 2028, with a 17.6% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).”

For starters, organizations are reassessing their virtualization requirements due to increasing hypervisor licensing costs. And the nature of containers makes this technology a prime candidate for re-platforming. Think of containers as super-efficient moving boxes for your applications. Unlike traditional virtual machines, containers share the host’s operating system kernel, making them incredibly space efficient. Plus, you can move these boxes anywhere you want—from your local servers to any cloud platform.

But there is also an AI connection. Kubernetes is becoming the go-to platform for AI and analytics applications. Why? Because it’s great at managing the entire lifecycle of artificial intelligence / machine learning (AI/ML) models, especially when dealing with data-intensive applications that need persistent storage.

This large-scale shift to containers drives the need for a robust, enterprise-grade solution for persistent storage that integrates seamlessly into the cloud-native ecosystem. Concurrently, the complexity of managing hybrid and multi-cloud environments demands a unified control plane that can provide agility for developers while enforcing essential governance, security, protection and cost controls for the enterprise.

If you’re going all-in on containers, you need to think about protecting them from accidental deletion, corruption, or threat actors. Here are some real-world scenarios where backup and recovery become crucial:

• Recovery of stateful containerized applications from failures and disasters
• Replication to seed a new development initiative or migration between test/dev and production
• Protection before container lifecycle activities begin
• Easy consolidation of container clusters to reduce cluster sprawl

Of course, it’s not all smooth sailing when it comes to protecting containers. You’ll need to tackle challenges such as

• Implement seamless operations and policies across on-premises and cloud environments. Container deployment can span on-premises, cloud, and even multicloud environments. Backup and restore operations must reflect this flexibility.
• Backup and restore at the level of a single container configuration (and its application data). By their nature, containers are not bundled with physical servers or virtual machines. Protection must be application-centric and must collect all application subcomponents (data and metadata) to permit recovery.
• Support application consistent and logical backup for advanced data workloads. With today’s modern workloads, volume snapshots are not enough to ensure that applications and their data can be recovered effectively.
• Maintain protection granularity. Kubernetes clusters must be able to be backed up with different levels of granularity, including cluster, namespace, label selector, application, and persistent volume levels.
• Automatically restore. For managing large container environments, a complete solution must include fully automatic application restore.
• Perform data-centric tasks. Any solution must leverage industry-standard Container Storage Interface (CSI) drivers, such as the HPE CSI Driver for Kubernetes, to perform dynamic provisioning, snapshots, clones, and restores.

Before we jump into deployment, it’s worth considering the overall platform stack, but let’s start at the storage level.  HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 provides the highly available, enterprise-grade storage foundation with a disaggregated, scale-out architecture guaranteed for 100% data availability.

The HPE CSI Driver for Kubernetes serves as the critical, standards-based link between the Kubernetes orchestration layer and this high-performance storage. It enables dynamic, on-demand provisioning and advanced data management for containerized applications.

HPE Morpheus Enterprise functions as the overarching unified control plane, orchestrating the underlying hybrid cloud infrastructure—from on-premises hypervisors to public cloud services and Kubernetes clusters themselves.

Finally, Veeam Kasten provides the crucial, Kubernetes-native data protection layer, ensuring that entire application stacks are backed up and recoverable.

Take the steps to protect your container environment powered by Kubernetes with HPE and Veeam:

Step 1: Deploy your containers on HPE Alletra Storage MP

The HPE CSI Driver for Kubernetes makes it possible to use a platform-specific container storage provider (CSP) to perform data management operations such as dynamic provisioning and management of persistent storage volumes on HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, the industry’s first disaggregated, scale-out block and file storage with a 100% data availability guarantee. This platform simplifies storage management and reduces risk with an AI-driven cloud experience, disaggregated scaling, and a secure always-on architecture.

HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 also powers HPE Private Cloud Business Edition, giving enterprises ultimate simplicity for their virtualized and containerized environments with fast application performance, always‑on data resilience, and resource efficiency. With HPE Private Cloud Business Edition’s plug-in for HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, a 1:1 mapping of VM virtual disk to volume is provided on the storage array.

 Step 2: Manage your Kubernetes clusters with HPE Morpheus Enterprise

HPE Morpheus Enterprise is more than just a management tool—it’s a comprehensive Cloud Management Platform (CMP) that empowers organizations to orchestrate any workload across on-premises, private, and public cloud environments, leveraging a wide array of virtualization and container platforms. Its architecture is designed to be 100% agnostic, integrating seamlessly with existing enterprise technologies such as VMware vCenter, AWS, Azure, Ansible, Terraform, and ServiceNow, without requiring disruptive changes to your IT landscape. Morpheus delivers a unified control plane that enables self-service provisioning, lifecycle automation, robust governance, and cost management, all from a single interface.

For Kubernetes, Morpheus offers both its own CNCF-certified Kubernetes distribution—HKS—and the ability to import and centrally manage existing clusters, including those from major cloud providers like Amazon EKS, Azure AKS, and Google GKE. This flexibility ensures organizations can adopt a multi-cloud strategy while maintaining centralized control and visibility. Morpheus automates the full lifecycle of Kubernetes clusters, from initial provisioning and scaling to upgrades and decommissioning, and integrates with enterprise-grade storage and data protection solutions through standards-based interfaces like the HPE CSI Driver for Kubernetes.

Additionally, Morpheus includes an enterprise-grade KVM-based hypervisor (HVM) and Kubernetes service (HKS), supporting diverse workloads and enabling rapid, catalog-driven deployment of applications and infrastructure. With built-in role-based access control, compliance guardrails, and unified analytics, Morpheus helps IT teams enforce security and optimize costs, while empowering developers to innovate faster. The result is accelerated application delivery, reduced operational complexity, and measurable business value for organizations embracing hybrid cloud and containerized environments.

Step 3: Layer in data protection for your containers

 Veeam Kasten is a true Kubernetes-native backup solution that protects cloud-native applications and business-critical data. It automatically captures and protects an entire application stack, including custom resource definitions, configurations, and underlying data. Through dynamic policies that apply to auto-discovered applications, backups can be managed at scale. When volume-level protection is not sufficient, the workflow can be extended with a Kanister blueprint to apply application-specific operations to ensure data integrity. Veeam Kasten provides automated policies to manage the way backups are securely replicated off-site. With robust scheduled and on-demand workflows, disaster recovery is enabled for applications.

With Veeam Kasten, entire applications can be moved between clouds and on-premises for test/dev, load balancing, and upgrades. With no need for custom scripting, applications can be migrated with robust scheduled and on-demand workflows and across public or private cloud infrastructures with seamless data conversion between infrastructure formats. For better environment isolation and operational control, migration can occur between non-federated clusters.

And because Kasten itself is cloud native, it can be easily integrated with other Kubernetes tools for robust automation, observability, and policy-as-code.

HPE backup repositories can include:

• HPE Alletra Storage MP X10000 can serve as a backup repository where data is made available through the S3-compatible object storage protocol that enables low latency and high performance on both backup and restore operations.
• HPE StoreOnce is an industry-leading purpose-built backup appliance providing rapid data backup and recovery along with cost-efficient long-term retention on-premises or in the cloud for all workloads.

Ready to get started?

The container revolution is here to stay, and now’s the perfect time to jump in. With HPE and Veeam Kasten’s joint solution, you’re getting a fully tested, validated, and optimized platform that works both on-premises and in the cloud. Want to learn more?

Check out the Veeam Ready article for HPE Morpheus Enterprise, familiarize yourself on how to install an HPE Kubernetes Service cluster on your infrastructure, or if you’re more hands-on, try an interactive demo on Veeam Kasten.

Run containers managed by HPE Morpheus Enterprise and protect them with Veeam Kasten and HPE backup repositories.

GARTNER and MAGIC QUADRANT are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Meet Storage Expert blogger Parissa Mohamadi, product manager for virtualization, containers, and data management solutions, HPE

Parissa leads sales enablement and go-to-market plan for HPE virtualization, containers, and data management solutions (cloud-enabled data protection for SAP HANA, Oracle, SQL Server), including driving joint enablement and collateral development with partners such as VMware, Veeam, Commvault, and Cohesity. Connect with Parissa on LinkedIn.