Creating a Full Cluster Application Group for Kubernetes

You can create a full cluster application group that protects your entire Kubernetes cluster using namespace-centric protection. A full cluster application group automatically discovers and protects all namespaces, applications, PersistentVolumeClaims, and non-namespaced (cluster-scoped) resources/objects.

Go to the Add Application Group Dialog Box

1. From the navigation pane, go to Protect > Kubernetes.

   The Overview page appears.

2. Go to the Applications tab.

3. In the upper-right area of the page, click Add application group.

   The Add Application Group page of the configuration wizard appears.

Select the Cluster and Backup Plan

1. From the Cluster list, select the cluster to create the application group for.

2. Click Next.

   The Plan page of the configuration wizard appears.

3. Select the backup plan to back up the cluster and applications.

   If you don't already have a backup plan that you can use, to create one, click the add button and specify the details in the Create backup plan dialog box.

4. Click Next.

   The Add Application Group page of the configuration wizard appears.

5. In Application group name, enter a descriptive name for the application group.

Select the Resources to Back Up

1. Click Add, and then select Applications.

   The Add Kubernetes applications dialog box appears.

2. Select only the cluster.

3. Click Done.

   Important

   Do not click the Preview button. In some cases, clicking the button generates an error message. This is a known issue.

Select Resources to Exclude from Backups

To exclude applications, do the following:

1. Move the Exclude items toggle key to the right.

2. From the Exclude list, select Applications.

   The Add exclusions dialog box appears.

3. From the Exclude list, select one of the following options to filter the resources or objects that you want to exclude:

   • Applications: To select the cluster, each namespace, and Pods, DaemonSets, Deployments, StatefulSets, and Helm-deployed applications within the namespace. You can also browse and select resources by Labels or Volumes within the namespace.

     If a namespace does not contain any API resources or objects that have labels, the namespace is displayed as empty.

   • Label selectors: To exclude resources or objects associated with the label selector. Supported format is key=value [-n <namespace> | --all-namespaces]. For example, usage=prod -n dev. You can define label selector to filter applications, namespaces and volumes.

   Important

   • If you select individual applications, labels, or PersistentVolumeClaims, new API resources or objects within the namespace are not backed up.

   • You can search only for namespaces and applications. Applications are supported API resources or objects (such as Secrets, ConfigMaps, Namespaces, and StorageClasses) that can be listed, created, or re-created using the Kubernetes API server. The search function does not support wildcards and does not find PersistentVolumeClaim names or labels names or label values.

Create the Application Group

1. Click Submit.

   The application group properties page appears.

2. To run an on-demand backup of the application group, in the upper-right area of the page, click Back up.

   Important

   If you need to access the applications or volumes in system namespaces (such as those that begin with kube- and openshift-), you can display the system namespaces in Commvault by using the bK8sShowSystemNamespaces entity setting.