Create an Azure Red Hat OpenShift 4 cluster application backup

In this article, you prepare your environment to create an Azure Red Hat OpenShift 4 cluster application backup using Velero. You learn how to do the following tasks:

If you choose to install and use the CLI locally, this tutorial requires that you're running the Azure CLI version 2.6.0 or later. To find the version, run az --version. If you need to install or upgrade, see Install Azure CLI.

Prerequisites

Install Velero

To install Velero on your system, follow the recommended process for your operating system.

Set up Azure storage account and Blob container

This step creates a resource group outside of the cluster's resource group. This resource group allows the backups to persist and can restore applications to new clusters.

AZURE_BACKUP_RESOURCE_GROUP=Velero_Backups
az group create -n $AZURE_BACKUP_RESOURCE_GROUP --location eastus

AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_ID="velero$(uuidgen | cut -d '-' -f5 | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]')"
az storage account create \
  --name $AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_ID \
  --resource-group $AZURE_BACKUP_RESOURCE_GROUP \
  --sku Standard_GRS \
  --encryption-services blob \
  --https-only true \
  --kind BlobStorage \
  --access-tier Hot

BLOB_CONTAINER=velero
az storage container create -n $BLOB_CONTAINER --public-access off --account-name $AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_ID

Set permissions for Velero

Create service principal

Velero needs permissions to do backups and restores. When you create a service principal, you're giving Velero permission to access the resource group you define in the previous step. This step gets the cluster's resource group:

export AZURE_RESOURCE_GROUP=$(az aro show --name <name of cluster> --resource-group <name of resource group> | jq -r .clusterProfile.resourceGroupId | cut -d '/' -f 5,5)

AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID=$(az account list --query '[?isDefault].id' -o tsv)

AZURE_TENANT_ID=$(az account list --query '[?isDefault].tenantId' -o tsv)

AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET=$(az ad sp create-for-rbac --name "velero" --role "Contributor" --query 'password' -o tsv \
--scopes  /subscriptions/$AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID)
AZURE_CLIENT_ID=$(az ad sp list --display-name "velero" --query '[0].appId' -o tsv)

cat << EOF  > ./credentials-velero.yaml
AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID=${AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID}
AZURE_TENANT_ID=${AZURE_TENANT_ID}
AZURE_CLIENT_ID=${AZURE_CLIENT_ID}
AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET=${AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET}
AZURE_RESOURCE_GROUP=${AZURE_RESOURCE_GROUP}
AZURE_CLOUD_NAME=AzurePublicCloud
EOF

Install Velero on Azure Red Hat OpenShift 4 cluster

You need to install Velero into its own project and the custom resource definitions necessary to do backups and restores with Velero. Make sure you're successfully signed in to an Azure Red Hat OpenShift v4 cluster.

velero install \
--provider azure \
--plugins velero/velero-plugin-for-microsoft-azure:v1.1.0 \
--bucket $BLOB_CONTAINER \
--secret-file ~/path/to/credentials-velero.yaml \
--backup-location-config resourceGroup=$AZURE_BACKUP_RESOURCE_GROUP,storageAccount=$AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_ID \
--snapshot-location-config apiTimeout=15m \
--velero-pod-cpu-limit="0" --velero-pod-mem-limit="0" \
--velero-pod-mem-request="0" --velero-pod-cpu-request="0"

Create a backup with Velero

To create an application backup with Velero, you need to include the application's namespace. If you have a nginx-example namespace and want to include all the resources in that namespace in the backup, run the following command in the terminal:

velero create backup <name of backup> --include-namespaces=nginx-example

You can check the status of the backup by running:

oc get backups -n velero <name of backup> -o yaml

A successful backup outputs phase:Completed and the objects are stored in the container in the storage account.

Create a backup with Velero to include snapshots

To create an application backup with Velero to include the persistent volumes of your application, you need to include the application's namespace and include the snapshot-volumes=true flag when you create the backup.

velero backup create <name of backup> --include-namespaces=nginx-example --snapshot-volumes=true --include-cluster-resources=true

You can check the status of the backup by running:

oc get backups -n velero <name of backup> -o yaml

A successful backup outputs phase:Completed and the objects are stored in the container in the storage account.

For more information, see Backup OpenShift resources the native way

Next steps

In this article, an Azure Red Hat OpenShift 4 cluster application was backed up. You learned how to:

Go to the next article to learn how to create an Azure Red Hat OpenShift 4 cluster application restore.

• Create a Azure Red Hat OpenShift 4 cluster application restore
• Create a Azure Red Hat OpenShift 4 cluster application restore including snapshots