CloudCasa Helps Overcome Day 2 Kubernetes Challenges and Integrates with the 3 Major Cloud Providers

In this episode of TFiR Let’s Talk, Swapnil Bhartiya sits down with Sathya Sankaran, COO of Catalogic and GM of CloudCasa, to discuss in-depth how CloudCasa is supporting backup for the three major cloud providers − Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)−and the data protection challenges they are addressing.

“We want our customers to choose the best cloud provider for their requirements and what we want to deliver is a uniform experience across all three cloud providers”- Sathya Sankaran, GM of CloudCasa.

According to the CNCF survey in 2021, 79% of Kubernetes users deploy or use managed or hosted Kubernetes. This indicates the applications are being born in the cloud and there is a strong interest in EKS, AKS, and GKE backup and recovery. Here are the top 6 reasons for why integrating with cloud providers matters to users of AKS, EKS, and GKE for data protection:

1. Security-first approach: Distributing cloud credentials across all the Kubernetes clusters is a poor way of designing and running a solution. CloudCasa helps customers manage credentials centrally using cloud best practices (CloudFormation, Azure Resource Manager, or Google Deployment Manager templates) instead of storing in each cluster or agent. This is a security-first approach of creating a role within the cloud provider account where customers can monitor everything and can control what can and cannot be accessed.
2. Rapid restore: In standard backup and restore solutions, only the resource data and the Persistent Volumes (PVs) are captured. However, the cluster information is not backed up. The end user is then responsible for spinning up a new cluster, setting up credentials, setting up networks, installing an agent, and configuring the backup target before the first byte of data gets transferred. This manual process is complex and error prone. With CloudCasa, users can protect how their clusters are configured in the cloud and spin up clusters from scratch with full automation making life easier for DevOps folks. Within minutes of kicking off a restore job, a user can start to restore and get smooth, fast, and high-confidence results. 
3. Any2Cloud recovery: When organizations work in dissimilar environments, for example, back up an EKS cluster and restore it on an AKS cluster, it brings a new set of challenges. Each of these cloud providers have a different number of settings that one could choose from. This is where CloudCasa comes in and helps them with the translation of cluster creation process from one cloud to another. CloudCasa can handle mapping of node ports, storage classes, sizing, and scaling information because of the direct integration with the cloud provider. 
4. Fast onboarding: Going to each cluster and doing backups can be a time-consuming process. By integrating with the cloud providers directly, CloudCasa can get a list of all the clusters in one cloud account and can automate the entire process. Users can do their first backup in under 10 minutes and can set up multiple clusters to be backed up by integrating directly with their cloud account.
5. Multiple account management: One of the challenges that some organizations are facing is that they have several cloud accounts, and they lack centralized inventory; they can lose track of clusters with no knowledge of the number of clusters running in those cloud accounts. CloudCasa provides centralized inventory and protection of all clusters in all the cloud accounts, regions, and providers.  
6. Cloud platform parity: Each of the cloud providers have their own unique quirks. They are all the same but have enough differences that can be difficult to handle with homegrown scripting solutions. CloudCasa deals with those quirks ─ such as non-CSI PVs, file storage, auto-scaling, private clusters and more ─ to support its customers and achieve platform parity across all these cloud providers.  

KubeCon Driven Announcements

Sathya explains that one of the main focuses of CloudCasa is addressing Day 2 Kubernetes challenges within the Kubernetes ecosystem, such as backup, disaster recovery, cloud mobility, and data security. For KubeCon in Valencia, the CloudCasa announcement discussed establishing cyber resilience, securing your backups, and expanding support for AKS. During that KubeCon event, he talked about how CloudCasa is doing RBAC and AKS integration. For KubeCon in Detroit, CloudCasa will be presenting GKE native integration, as well as cross-cloud and cross-cluster recovery between these platforms. CloudCasa will also have e-scooter giveaways and a $50 CloudCasa Sign-Up Promotion. 

Connect with Sathya Sankaran (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Learn more about CloudCasa by Catalogic (Twitter)  

You can try the free service plan for CloudCasa, no strings attached. If you want to see a custom demonstration or just have a chat with us, feel free to get in contact via casa@cloudcasa.io.