Velero

Velero is an open-source tool that provides safe backup, restore, disaster recovery, and migration capabilities for Kubernetes cluster resources and persistent volumes. As a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) sandbox project originally created by Heptio (acquired by VMware), Velero has become the de facto standard for Kubernetes data protection and cluster portability. The tool enables administrators to back up entire clusters or filtered subsets using namespaces and label selectors, schedule automatic recurring backups, and configure pre/post-backup hooks for custom operations such as quiescing databases or flushing application state. For disaster recovery, Velero significantly reduces time-to-recovery in cases of infrastructure loss, data corruption, or service outages by providing point-in-time snapshots and restorable backups. For data migration, it enables cluster portability by seamlessly transferring Kubernetes resources and persistent volumes between clusters, supporting multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud strategies. Velero supports snapshot-based backups for persistent volumes using cloud provider-native snapshot APIs for AWS EBS, Azure Managed Disks, Google Persistent Disks, and other CSI-compatible storage drivers, as well as file-system-based backup using Restic or Kopia for volumes that do not support snapshots. The extensible plugin architecture allows integration with over 30 storage providers and cloud platforms. Velero stores backups in object storage (S3, GCS, Azure Blob, MinIO) for durable off-cluster backup storage, with configurable retention policies and encryption. The current version, v1.18, continues to evolve with community-driven features including volume snapshot data movement, item-level progress reporting, and improved multi-cluster support.