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Use Oracle Cloud as a Backup Storage Provider for Velero

Introduction

Velero is a tool used to backup and migrate Kubernetes applications. Here are the steps to use Oracle Cloud Object Storage as a destination for Velero backups.

Download Velero
Create A Customer Secret Key
Create An Oracle Object Storage Bucket
Install Velero
Clean Up
Examples
Additional Reading

Download Velero

Download the latest release of Velero to your development environment. This includes the velero CLI utility and example Kubernetes manifest files. For example:
```
wget https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/velero/releases/download/v1.0.0/velero-v1.0.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz
```
We strongly recommend that you use an official release of Velero. The tarballs for each release contain the velero command-line client. The code in the main branch of the Velero repository is under active development and is not guaranteed to be stable!
Untar the release in your /usr/bin directory: tar -xzvf <RELEASE-TARBALL-NAME>.tar.gz

You may choose to rename the directory velero for the sake of simplicity: mv velero-v1.0.0-linux-amd64 velero
Add it to your PATH: export PATH=/usr/local/bin/velero:$PATH
Run velero to confirm the CLI has been installed correctly. You should see an output like this:

$ velero
Velero is a tool for managing disaster recovery, specifically for Kubernetes
cluster resources. It provides a simple, configurable, and operationally robust
way to back up your application state and associated data.

If you're familiar with kubectl, Velero supports a similar model, allowing you to
execute commands such as 'velero get backup' and 'velero create schedule'. The same
operations can also be performed as 'velero backup get' and 'velero schedule create'.

Usage:
  velero [command]

Create A Customer Secret Key

Oracle Object Storage provides an API to enable interoperability with Amazon S3. To use this Amazon S3 Compatibility API, you need to generate the signing key required to authenticate with Amazon S3. This special signing key is an Access Key/Secret Key pair. Follow these steps to create a Customer Secret Key. Refer to this link for more information about Working with Customer Secret Keys.

Create a Velero credentials file with your Customer Secret Key:

$ vi credentials-velero 
   
[default]
aws_access_key_id=bae031188893d1eb83719648790ac850b76c9441
aws_secret_access_key=MmY9heKrWiNVCSZQ2Mf5XTJ6Ys93Bw2d2D6NMSTXZlk=

Create An Oracle Object Storage Bucket

Create an Oracle Cloud Object Storage bucket called velero in the root compartment of your Oracle Cloud tenancy. Refer to this page for more information about creating a bucket with Object Storage.

Install Velero

You will need the following information to install Velero into your Kubernetes cluster with Oracle Object Storage as the Backup Storage provider:

velero install \
    --provider [provider name] \
    --bucket [bucket name] \
    --prefix [tenancy name] \
    --use-volume-snapshots=false \
    --secret-file [secret file location] \
    --backup-location-config region=[region],s3ForcePathStyle="true",s3Url=[storage API endpoint]

--provider Because we are using the S3-compatible API, we will use aws as our provider.
--bucket The name of the bucket created in Oracle Object Storage - in our case this is named velero.
--prefix The name of your Oracle Cloud tenancy - in our case this is named oracle-cloudnative.
--use-volume-snapshots=false Velero does not currently have a volume snapshot plugin for Oracle Cloud creating volume snapshots is disabled.
--secret-file The path to your credentials-velero file.
--backup-location-config The path to your Oracle Object Storage bucket. This consists of your region which corresponds to your Oracle Cloud region name ( List of Oracle Cloud Regions) and the s3Url, the S3-compatible API endpoint for Oracle Object Storage based on your region: https://oracle-cloudnative.compat.objectstorage.[region name].oraclecloud.com

For example:

velero install \
    --provider aws \
    --bucket velero \
    --prefix oracle-cloudnative \
    --use-volume-snapshots=false \
    --secret-file /Users/mboxell/bin/velero/credentials-velero \
    --backup-location-config region=us-phoenix-1,s3ForcePathStyle="true",s3Url=https://oracle-cloudnative.compat.objectstorage.us-phoenix-1.oraclecloud.com

This will create a velero namespace in your cluster along with a number of CRDs, a ClusterRoleBinding, ServiceAccount, Secret, and Deployment for Velero. If your pod fails to successfully provision, you can troubleshoot your installation by running: kubectl logs [velero pod name].

Clean Up

To remove Velero from your environment, delete the namespace, ClusterRoleBinding, ServiceAccount, Secret, and Deployment and delete the CRDs, run:

kubectl delete namespace/velero clusterrolebinding/velero
kubectl delete crds -l component=velero

This will remove all resources created by velero install.

Examples

After creating the Velero server in your cluster, try this example:

Basic example (without PersistentVolumes)

Start the sample nginx app: kubectl apply -f examples/nginx-app/base.yaml

This will create an nginx-example namespace with a nginx-deployment deployment, and my-nginx service.

$ kubectl apply -f examples/nginx-app/base.yaml
namespace/nginx-example created
deployment.apps/nginx-deployment created
service/my-nginx created

You can see the created resources by running kubectl get all

$ kubectl get all
NAME                                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/nginx-deployment-67594d6bf6-4296p   1/1     Running   0          20s
pod/nginx-deployment-67594d6bf6-f9r5s   1/1     Running   0          20s
   
NAME               TYPE           CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)        AGE
service/my-nginx   LoadBalancer   10.96.69.166   <pending>     80:31859/TCP   21s
   
NAME                               DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/nginx-deployment   2         2         2            2           21s
   
NAME                                          DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
replicaset.apps/nginx-deployment-67594d6bf6   2         2         2       21s

Create a backup: velero backup create nginx-backup --include-namespaces nginx-example
```
$ velero backup create nginx-backup --include-namespaces nginx-example
Backup request "nginx-backup" submitted successfully.
Run `velero backup describe nginx-backup` or `velero backup logs nginx-backup` for more details.
```
At this point you can navigate to appropriate bucket, which we called velero, in the Oracle Cloud Object Storage console to see the resources backed up using Velero.
Simulate a disaster by deleting the nginx-example namespace: kubectl delete namespaces nginx-example
```
$ kubectl delete namespaces nginx-example
namespace "nginx-example" deleted
```
Wait for the namespace to be deleted. To check that the nginx deployment, service, and namespace are gone, run:
```
kubectl get deployments --namespace=nginx-example
kubectl get services --namespace=nginx-example
kubectl get namespace/nginx-example
```
This should return: No resources found.

Restore your lost resources: velero restore create --from-backup nginx-backup

$ velero restore create --from-backup nginx-backup
Restore request "nginx-backup-20190604102710" submitted successfully.
Run `velero restore describe nginx-backup-20190604102710` or `velero restore logs nginx-backup-20190604102710` for more details.

Running kubectl get namespaces will show that the nginx-example namespace has been restored along with its contents.

Run: velero restore get to view the list of restored resources. After the restore finishes, the output looks like the following:
```
$ velero restore get
NAME                          BACKUP         STATUS      WARNINGS   ERRORS   CREATED                         SELECTOR
nginx-backup-20190604104249   nginx-backup   Completed   0          0        2019-06-04 10:42:39 -0700 PDT   <none>
```
NOTE: The restore can take a few moments to finish. During this time, the STATUS column reads InProgress.

After a successful restore, the STATUS column shows Completed, and WARNINGS and ERRORS will show 0. All objects in the nginx-example namespace should be just as they were before you deleted them.

If there are errors or warnings, for instance if the STATUS column displays FAILED instead of InProgress, you can look at them in detail with velero restore describe <RESTORE_NAME>

Clean up the environment with kubectl delete -f examples/nginx-app/base.yaml

$ kubectl delete -f examples/nginx-app/base.yaml
namespace "nginx-example" deleted
deployment.apps "nginx-deployment" deleted
service "my-nginx" deleted

If you want to delete any backups you created, including data in object storage, you can run: velero backup delete BACKUP_NAME

$ velero backup delete nginx-backup
Are you sure you want to continue (Y/N)? Y
Request to delete backup "nginx-backup" submitted successfully.
The backup will be fully deleted after all associated data (disk snapshots, backup files, restores) are removed.

This asks the Velero server to delete all backup data associated with BACKUP_NAME. You need to do this for each backup you want to permanently delete. A future version of Velero will allow you to delete multiple backups by name or label selector.

Once fully removed, the backup is no longer visible when you run: velero backup get BACKUP_NAME or more generally velero backup get:

$ velero backup get nginx-backup
An error occurred: backups.velero.io "nginx-backup" not found

$ velero backup get 
NAME     STATUS      CREATED     EXPIRES     STORAGE     LOCATION        SELECTOR

Documentation