Velero 1.17: Volume Group Snapshots, Modernized fs-backup, and Windows Support

Shubham Pampattiwar
September 15, 2025

We are pleased to announce the release of Velero v1.17. This is a feature-rich release that delivers volume group snapshot support, a modernized fs-backup architecture, Windows workload backup/restore, and major scalability improvements for data movers.

Full list of changes can be found here

Release Highlights

Volume Group Snapshot Support

Velero 1.17 supports volume group snapshots, a beta feature in Kubernetes, for both CSI snapshot backup and CSI snapshot data movement. This allows snapshots to be taken from multiple volumes at the same point-in-time to achieve write order consistency, which is important for achieving better data consistency when multiple correlated volumes are backed up together.

See the documentation for details.

Modernized fs-backup

The fs-backup subsystem has been rebuilt on the micro-service architecture, bringing several benefits:

  • Feature parity: Load concurrency control, cancel, and resume on restart are now available for fs-backup.
  • Improved robustness: Running backups and restores survive node-agent restarts. Resource allocation is more granular, so the failure of one backup/restore does not impact others.
  • Steady resource usage: Node-agent pods no longer request large amounts of memory and hold it for extended periods.

See the design document for details.

Windows Cluster Support for fs-backup

Velero fs-backup now supports backing up and restoring Windows workloads. By leveraging the new micro-service architecture, data mover pods can run on Windows nodes and handle Windows volumes. Together with CSI snapshot data movement for Windows delivered in v1.16, Velero now supports Windows workload backup/restore across all scenarios.

Priority Class Support

Kubernetes priority classes are now supported across all Velero modules. Users can configure priority classes separately for Velero server, node-agent, data mover pods, and backup repository maintenance jobs.

See the design document for details.

Include/Exclude Policy for Resource Policy

Velero resource policy now supports includeExcludePolicy alongside the existing volumePolicy. This allows users to set include/exclude filters for resources in a resource policy configmap, making these filters reusable across multiple backups.

Scalability and Resiliency Improvements

Reduced Data Mover Pod Congestion

A new PrepareQueueLength setting in node-agent configuration limits how many data mover pods and volumes are created ahead of available data path quota. This prevents excessive cluster resource consumption, particularly helpful in large-scale environments. This applies to both fs-backup and CSI snapshot data movement.

See the design document for details.

Enhanced Node-Agent Restart Handling

Data movements in all phases now survive node-agent restarts and resume automatically. Orphaned data movements from scenarios like cluster node absence are canceled appropriately after restart.

Restore Node-Selection for CSI Snapshot Data Movement

CSI snapshot data movement restore now has the same node-selection capability as backup. Users can specify which nodes can or cannot run data mover pods for both backup and restore, with per-storage-class configuration for environments where a storage class is not usable by all cluster nodes.

Breaking Changes

Deprecation of Restic

Per the Velero deprecation policy, backup under the Restic path is removed in v1.17. --uploader-type=restic is no longer a valid installation configuration. Restores from previous Restic-path backups remain supported until v1.19.

Repository Maintenance Job Configuration

Repository maintenance job configurations have been moved from Velero server parameters to a repository maintenance job configmap. The following server parameters are removed: --keep-latest-maintenance-jobs, --maintenance-job-cpu-request, --maintenance-job-mem-request, --maintenance-job-cpu-limit, --maintenance-job-mem-limit.

Community Contributions

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this release:

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Documentation