Backup & Recovery¶

Backup Architecture¶

graph LR
    PVC[PersistentVolumeClaims] -->|VolSync| Kopia[Kopia Repository]
    Kopia -->|S3 API| Garage[Garage S3]
    PG[PostgreSQL WAL] -->|barman-cloud| Garage
    Git[Git Repository] -->|GitOps| State[Cluster State]

VolSync¶

VolSync replicates PersistentVolumeClaims to S3-compatible storage.

Schedule¶

Backups run daily at 2 AM by default.

Component¶

The VolSync component is at kubernetes/components/volsync/. Apply it to stateful applications:

# In your app's ks.yaml, reference the volsync component
spec:
  components:
    - name: volsync

Checking Backup Status¶

kubectl get replicationsource -A
kubectl get replicationdestination -A

PostgreSQL Backups¶

CloudNative-PG handles PostgreSQL backups independently:

WAL archiving to Garage S3 via barman-cloud plugin
Scheduled backups with configurable retention
Recovery cluster definition at kubernetes/apps/database/cloudnative-pg/recovery/

Triggering a Manual Backup¶

kubectl -n database create -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: postgresql.cnpg.io/v1
kind: Backup
metadata:
  name: manual-backup-$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M)
spec:
  cluster:
    name: postgres
  method: barmanObjectStore
EOF

Checking Backup Status¶

kubectl -n database get backups
kubectl -n database get scheduledbackups

Disaster Recovery¶

Full Cluster Recovery¶

Since the cluster is GitOps-managed, recovery involves:

Bootstrap new Talos nodes
Run task bootstrap:talos and task bootstrap:apps
Flux restores all application state from Git
VolSync restores PVC data from Garage S3
PostgreSQL recovers from WAL archives

PostgreSQL Point-in-Time Recovery¶

Use the recovery cluster definition:

kubernetes/apps/database/cloudnative-pg/recovery/cluster.yaml

What's Not in Git¶

These items require manual restoration or are ephemeral:

Active VM state (VMs restart from disk images)
In-memory caches (Dragonfly data)
Real-time metrics (Prometheus TSDB rebuilds from scrapes)

Garage S3¶

Garage provides the S3-compatible storage backend:

Self-hosted within the cluster
Stores VolSync and PostgreSQL backups
Located in kubernetes/apps/volsync-system/garage/