Implementing a robust CloudStack backup strategy is essential for ensuring data reliability and achieving effective data redundancy across your cloud infrastructure. Data protection is a key aspect of managing cloud environments, ensuring the recoverability of workloads for both service providers and enterprises. Apache CloudStack, a leading open-source cloud orchestration platform, offers a flexible Backup and Recovery (B&R) framework that integrates seamlessly with several powerful backup solutions.

This framework enables organisations to streamline backup operations within CloudStack, ensuring secure and reliable data protection for critical workloads. The platform integrates with a range of backup providers to meet diverse business needs, including:

Veeam Backup and Replication: An enterprise-grade solution offering advanced features such as incremental and agentless backups, ideal for robust data protection.

Dell NetWorker: A scalable backup system designed to support the complex requirements of large-scale enterprises.

BackROLL: A budget-friendly option that leverages snapshot-based backups for efficient and reliable data recovery.

NAS Backup Plugin: A cost-effective and straightforward solution tailored for small-to-medium-sized organisations.

In this blog, we’ll explore the backup options available in CloudStack, with a focus on:

• Their characteristics and capabilities.
• The use cases they support.
• How they empower organisations to ensure data resilience.

Whether you’re seeking an enterprise-grade solution or a budget-friendly option, CloudStack provides the flexibility to implement the right backup strategy for your cloud infrastructure. Let’s dive into the features and benefits these providers bring to the table.

 

CloudStack Backup Options Overview

Apache CloudStack’s Backup and Recovery (B&R) framework provides a standardised and flexible way to integrate third-party backup solutions into the platform. This framework simplifies backup management for Administrators while giving Users a reliable method to protect their workloads.

 

How the Backup and Recovery Framework Works

The B&R framework serves as an abstraction layer, enabling seamless communication between CloudStack and supported backup providers. Through this structure, Administrators can configure, schedule, and manage backups directly from the CloudStack UI or API, ensuring minimal disruption to cloud operations.

 

Key Features of the CloudStack Backup Framework

• Extensibility

The plugin-based architecture of the B&R framework allows CloudStack to integrate with various backup providers without requiring extensive reconfiguration or platform updates. This design ensures that organisations can adopt new backup solutions as their needs evolve, catering to a wide range of environments, from small-scale operations to large enterprise deployments.

 

• API-Driven Integration

CloudStack offers a comprehensive API for backup management, enabling automation of tasks such as creating backups, listing available backups, and restoring data. This capability is particularly useful for DevOps teams looking to integrate backup operations into CI/CD pipelines or for enterprises needing to enforce backup policies programmatically across their infrastructure.

 

• Unified Management

By managing backups alongside Instances and Volumes, CloudStack provides Administrators with a centralised view of their environment. This integration reduces the complexity of handling multiple tools and platforms, allowing for more efficient monitoring and troubleshooting of backup operations.

 

• Flexibility in Backup Types

Depending on the chosen provider, CloudStack supports various backup methods:

• • Full Backups: Comprehensive data protection by capturing all data at a specific point in time.
  • Incremental Backups: Efficient storage utilisation by saving only the changes made since the previous backup.
  • Snapshot-Based Backups: Quick and lightweight backups ideal for capturing the state of a system or volume with minimal performance impact.

 

• Simplified Backup Management

Administrators can configure and manage backups directly through the CloudStack UI or APIs, removing the need for external tools. This simplification reduces administrative overhead and allows service providers to offer backup services more efficiently to their customers.

 

• Improved Data Resilience

By integrating backup options directly into the CloudStack ecosystem, Users and Administrators can trust that their critical workloads are protected. Recovery processes are streamlined, ensuring minimal downtime and data loss in the event of failures or accidental deletions.

 

• Provider Diversity

CloudStack supports a range of backup solutions, including enterprise-grade systems like Veeam and Dell NetWorker, cost-effective options like BackROLL, and straightforward plugins like the NAS Backup Plugin. This diversity empowers Administrators to choose a provider that best matches their operational needs, performance requirements, and budget.

 

Detailed Breakdown of Backup Providers

Veeam

A comprehensive backup and recovery solution that integrates with Apache CloudStack to provide reliable data protection for VMware environments.

Key Features

• Supports both SLA-based and ad-hoc backups.
• Utilises template backup jobs due to API limitations.
• Requires pre-configured backup job templates for each Backup Offering.

Supported Hypervisors

VMware

Best Use Cases

Environments utilising VMware hypervisors are seeking integrated backup solutions within CloudStack.

Integration

• Requires the creation of dummy VM tags in vCenter to facilitate template job creation.
• Involves a combination of API and PowerShell commands for operations.
• Tested with Veeam Backup and Recovery versions 11 and 12 on Windows Server 2019.

For detailed installation and configuration instructions, please refer to the official CloudStack documentation.

 

 

Dell NetWorker

A centralised backup and recovery platform designed to handle large-scale environments with complex data protection requirements.

Key Features

• Centralised management of backups across large-scale deployments.
• Comprehensive scheduling and retention policies.
• Integration with CloudStack through the Networker plugin, facilitating seamless backup and recovery operations.

Supported Hypervisors

KVM

Best Use Cases

Enterprises managing diverse and large workloads requiring robust backup solutions.

Integration

• The plugin is developed and tested against DELL EMC Networker version 19.4.0.6, with a minimum supported version of 9.2.
• Administrators should ensure proper DNS resolution, synchronised time zones, and system clocks across KVM hypervisors, CloudStack Management Servers, and the DELL EMC Networker Server.
• For each KVM cluster, a relevant dummy client must be created in DELL EMC Networker to facilitate backup and restore operations.
• Manual backups initiated from the command line are automatically registered in CloudStack when using the appropriate client scripts and parameters.
• Backups expired or removed from the DELL EMC Networker side are automatically unregistered in CloudStack.

For detailed installation and configuration instructions, please refer to the official CloudStack documentation.

 

BackROLL

BackROLL is a modern, containerised, and open-source backup solution designed specifically for KVM guests. It allows Administrators to define logical KVM pools and backup policies to efficiently manage and protect Instances. Learn more about BackROLL here.

Key Features

• Agentless backups with no downtime, ensuring minimal disruption to services.
• A user-friendly web interface for managing and monitoring backups, as well as initiating restore tasks.
• Fully containerised deployment, requiring minimal maintenance.
• Integration with Apache CloudStack, enabling seamless backup and recovery operations within the cloud orchestration platform.

Supported Hypervisors

KVM

Best Use Cases

Organisations utilising KVM hypervisors seek an open-source, containerised backup solution with seamless CloudStack integration.

Integration

• BackROLL integrates with CloudStack through a dedicated plugin, allowing for streamlined backup and recovery processes within the CloudStack environment.
• The solution requires Docker and Docker Compose for deployment, along with an OpenID provider for authentication.
• Administrators can define backup policies and storage configurations via the BackROLL web interface, facilitating tailored backup strategies.

For detailed installation and configuration instructions, please refer to the official BackROLL documentation.

 

NAS Backup and Recovery Plugin

A simple and affordable plugin that enables backup and recovery operations for KVM instances to shared storage (NAS). It utilises libvirt’s push backup mode to perform full instance backups in Qcow2 format.

Key Features

• Supports full Instance backups using libvirt’s push backup mode.
• Requires libvirt-7.2.0 and QEMU-4.2 or higher versions on KVM hosts.
• Currently supports NFS as the backup repository type.
• Allows Administrators to define backup repositories and Backup Offerings within CloudStack.

Supported Hypervisors

KVM

Best Use Cases

Small-to-medium businesses seeking a straightforward and cost-effective backup solution for KVM instances within CloudStack.

Integration

• Administrators must enable the Backup and Recovery framework and set the backup provider plugin to ‘nas’ in CloudStack’s Global or Zone settings.
• Backup repositories (NAS) need to be added and configured within CloudStack, specifying parameters such as type (e.g., NFS), address, and mount options.
• Backup offerings are created by selecting the desired backup repository and associating it with Instances to perform backup and recovery operations.
• The plugin has been tested with EL8, EL9, Ubuntu 22.04, and 24.04. Older KVM distributions may not work due to libvirt/QEMU version requirements.

For detailed installation and configuration instructions, please refer to the official CloudStack documentation.

 

CloudStack Backup and Restore Capabilities

Apache CloudStack’s Backup and Recovery (B&R) framework provides a flexible approach to integrating various backup providers. With support for Veeam, Dell NetWorker, BackROLL, and the NAS Backup Plugin, CloudStack accommodates organisations’ diverse needs, from enterprise-grade solutions to cost-effective options for smaller deployments.

This versatility allows organisations to tailor their backup strategies to operational requirements while streamlining management through CloudStack’s centralised UI and API. CloudStack enables organisations to maintain resilience and focus on their core goals by ensuring reliable data protection and efficient recovery processes.