Backup Restoration between different Clusters using Tanzu Mission Control (TMC)

VMware released a new feature in Tanzu Mission Control (TMC) that helps to restore backup of one k8s cluster to another cluster. You can read about release note here.

In this blog post, I will walk you through the step by steps process to backup an application from one cluster and restore it to another cluster using TMC cross cluster restore feature.

Below is the high level architecture of my environment, here is what I have already in place:

• Two Kubernetes clusters (in this case they are an AKS clusters)
• Both AKS Clusters are attached to TMC and part of same TMC Cluster group

• Target location is created to store the backup, In this case, target location is an AWS S3 bucket
• Data protection is enabled on both AKS Clusters.
• Nginx pod is running on first cluster

High Level Architecture of my demo environment

Let’s run through the steps to backup and restore.

Backup Applications running on AKS Cluster 1 default namespace

• Select AKS Cluster 1 and navigate to Data Protection tab

• Click Create Backup and fill the required details. In this case, we will be backing up an nginx application running on a default namespace

• Click Next and select backup storage location.

• Click Next and select a backup schedule. For a simplicity, I am going ahead with Now

• Click Next and select Retention period.

• Click Next

• Click Create and monitor the backup progress till completion. Once completed, it will list under Backups

Restore Applications running on AKS Cluster 1 in a default namespace to AKS Cluster 2

• Connect to AKS Cluster 2 and validate to ensure that there is no application running on a default namespace.

❯ kubectl get po
No resources found in default namespace.

• Now, Let’s restore AKS Cluster 1 backup to AKS cluster 2
• Select AKS Cluster 2 from TMC console and click on Data Protection tab.

• Click on Restore From Another Cluster option

• Select AKS Cluster 1 from the list and then select the backup name.

• Click Next and select Restore the entire backup

• Once you click on Next, Enter a name and click on Restore

• Wait for restore completion.

• Once complete, validate the pod running on a default namespace.

❯ k get po
NAME    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
nginx   1/1     Running   0          3s

• Notice the nginx pod, its restored to AKS Cluster 2.

For more information about Data Protection feature of TMC, refer the official documentation

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Tanzu-Mission-Control/services/tanzumc-concepts/GUID-C16557BC-EB1B-4414-8E63-28AD92E0CAE5.html

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