Running Kubernetes on VMware Tanzu gives you flexibility, scalability, and strong enterprise integration. But when it comes to protecting applications and data, many teams still rely on traditional VM backups. At first glance, it seems logical: if you back up the VM that hosts your cluster, you should be safe.
Unfortunately, that’s a dangerous assumption. VM backups capture the virtual machine state—but they don’t understand Kubernetes. In Tanzu, that gap can make the difference between a quick recovery and a major outage.
Let’s look at why VM backups are not enough for Tanzu and what you should consider instead.
1. VM Backups Protect Infrastructure, Not Applications
Virtual machine snapshots are designed to capture the operating system and disk state of a VM. What they don’t capture are the Kubernetes objects—deployments, services, secrets, and configurations—that define your Tanzu workloads.
Restoring a VM might bring the node back online, but your applications won’t automatically return to the right state. That’s because the intelligence of Kubernetes lives outside the VM image.
2. Kubernetes Is Ephemeral by Design
Kubernetes continuously manages the lifecycle of pods and containers. They are stateless and dynamic, which means VM-level restores often bring back resources that Kubernetes has already replaced or rescheduled elsewhere.
For stateless apps, that might not matter—but for stateful services like databases, a crash-consistent VM snapshot can easily lead to corruption or data loss.
3. Persistent Volumes Need Application-Aware Protection
In Tanzu, application data lives in Persistent Volumes (PVs). VM backups don’t coordinate with Kubernetes’ CSI snapshots or storage classes, which means your PVs may not be restored in sync with the application layer.
The result? Databases and stateful apps that don’t match the cluster state—often requiring manual repair. Kubernetes-native backups, in contrast, take application-consistent snapshots of both workloads and data together.
4. Namespace and Multi-Tenant Complexity
Most Tanzu clusters run multiple applications, each isolated in its own namespace. VM-level backups don’t understand that structure. You can’t selectively restore a single namespace or workload—it’s an all-or-nothing restore of the VM.
Kubernetes-native solutions let you restore at the right level of granularity: a single app, a namespace, or the entire cluster. That flexibility is crucial for large, shared environments.
5. Recovery Time and SLA Gaps
VM restores are slow, resource-heavy, and often require manual intervention before applications are actually usable again. In today’s always-on world, that doesn’t meet business SLAs.
With Kubernetes-aware backup, you can restore applications in minutes, complete with configuration and persistent data. Faster RTOs (Recovery Time Objectives) mean less downtime and happier stakeholders.
6. Compliance and Portability
Enterprises in regulated industries need auditable, portable, policy-driven backups. VM snapshots lock you into a specific hypervisor and restore workflow.
By contrast, Kubernetes-native backups work at the application layer, making it possible to:
- Migrate workloads across clusters or clouds
- Enforce backup policies per namespace or team
- Prove compliance with automated reporting
The Bottom Line
VM backups are valuable for protecting infrastructure, but they are blind to Kubernetes workloads. In Tanzu, that’s not enough. To safeguard your applications, you need a Kubernetes-native backup solution that:
- Captures cluster resources (YAML objects, namespaces, secrets)
- Backs up persistent volumes consistently
- Restores applications at the right level of granularity
- Meets compliance and portability requirements
With the right approach, you can ensure your Tanzu environment is not just resilient at the VM layer, but application-consistent, portable, and compliant.
Explore how CloudCasa protects Tanzu workloads with Kubernetes-native backup. Start a free trial or contact us for a personalized demo.