Happy New Year! Close on the heels of our December update, we are back again with our first major release of 2024. It packs quite a few improvements in user experience as well as a major change to our service plans. Read on for more details.

Service plan changes

CloudCasa has historically charged for our service plans based on the amount of Persistent Volume data backed up. We felt that this was a good method, since the number of Kubernetes clusters used by customers could vary, and the size of those clusters often changed dynamically. We also included backup storage in the price, on a GB/month basis.

When we added Velero management features to CloudCasa, we also added a new CloudCasa for Velero service plan. It didn’t make sense to base charges for managing Velero instances on the amount of data backed up, so we decided to charge for Velero clusters based on the number of worker nodes in the managed clusters. Since the number of worker nodes can vary based on load, we decided it was most fair to charge based on the average number of worker nodes for the billing period.

But all of our CloudCasa service plans allowed users to manage both Pro and Velero backups. So charges ended up being based on the number of nodes for some clusters and the amount of data for others, which proved to be confusing. Also, all of our competitors have been using worker-node based pricing, and our storage-based pricing scheme made it difficult for customers to compare. Finally, since we introduced Bring Your Own Storage, many of our customers often chose to use their own storage for backups, meaning that we were effectively charging them for included storage that they weren’t using.

With this release, we are introducing all new service plans with pricing based on the average number of worker nodes in protected clusters, regardless of whether you make use of our Pro or Velero management features. We have deprecated the CloudCasa Pro-1, Pro-5, and Pro-20 plans as well as the CloudCasa for Velero plan. All of those plans will be replaced by the new CloudCasa Pro plan.

We are similarly changing the CloudCasa Free plan. The new Free plan has no limits on the amount of data protected, but it is limited to a combined total of 10 worker nodes (monthly average) in the configured clusters. Usage of CloudCasa storage is limited to 100GB/month as before, but there is now no limit for user-supplied storage. There will continue to be no limits on snapshots or RDS backups. If the node limit is exceeded, an alert will be generated and functionality will be limited.

Existing paid plan users will have the option of continuing to use their current plans or switching to one of our new plans.

Existing free plan users can continue to use the legacy free plan for the next two months. After that, they will be automatically transitioned to the new free plan. If the changed limits in the new free plan cause a problem for you, please contact CloudCasa support to discuss your requirements and we will be happy to work with you and come up with a solution that meets your needs.

Improvements in backup deletion process

Backups are deleted when their retention period expires. Also, snapshot backups that act as source for copy backups are deleted as soon as the copy backup is done (unless you de-select the option “Delete snapshot after copy” while defining the backup).

The deletion process includes removing PVC snapshots (if any were part of that backup) and deletion of objectstore contents. Several improvements have been made in this area including:

• If a backup includes PVC snapshots but the source cluster is currently not in the ACTIVE state, an alert will be generated. Users should make sure that cluster is in the ACTIVE state so that PVC snapshots can be deleted. This check will be done once a day for 5 days, at which time CloudCasa will create another alert and proceed with rest of the cleanup.

• Job activity now includes clear messages about any errors encountered during the cleanup. These include messages regarding deletion of PVC snapshots.

• In case of any errors, DELETE_BACKUP jobs will end with PARTIAL or FAILED status, similar to backup and restore jobs.

• Previously CloudCasa excluded such deletion jobs from display in the UI, but starting with this release you will always see them in the main “Activity” page. You will also see them in the Dashboard activity panel if they didn’t complete successfully.

Note that It is important to check DELETE_BACKUP jobs that completed with FAILED or PARTIAL status to see if there has been any problem in deletion of PVC snapshots. If any problems were reported, snapshots may need to be manually cleaned up.

Proxy cluster setting now available for non-isolated user storage

CloudCasa supports user object storage whether it is accessible over the Internet or not. If it is isolated (not accessible via the Internet), users need to select a proxy cluster for it that has access to the object store. This allows CloudCasa to run maintenance operations on the objectstore from that cluster. These operations include object deletion and compacting.

Starting with this release, you can also optionally configure a proxy cluster for non-isolated object stores (i.e. objectstores that are accessible from the Internet). If configured, CloudCasa will run maintenance operations for these stores from the selected cluster rather than from the CloudCasa service infrastructure as it normally would. This could potentially reduce your bandwidth or egress costs, depending on your configuration.

Note that using this setting should not be necessary in most configurations. Contact CloudCasa support if you need help determining if and how you can optimize storage maintenance traffic in your environment.

Changes in checking cluster state

Before running a cluster backup, CloudCasa checks the cluster state. If it is not ACTIVE, it now waits up to half an hour before skipping the job. Previously, CloudCasa would check the cluster state only once before skipping. This will help prevent skipped jobs in cases where the cluster is in the process of re-connecting.

Changes to cloud account creation workflow

When adding a cloud account, you are now asked to set the account name and other optional properties before proceeding with cloud-provider-specific configuration. This change will allow us to support more options for cloud providers in the future, such as Azure Government cloud.

CloudCasa for Azure

We have improved the user experience for customers purchasing CloudCasa service through the Azure Marketplace. Users who purchase through the Azure Marketplace automatically activate a special CloudCasa Pro for Azure service plan. They will now see on-screen installation instructions and other prompts specific to their service.

Remember that this purchase method is intended to be used by Azure-only customers. If you have a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environment and you wish to purchase CloudCasa through the Azure marketplace, you should contact CloudCasa sales.

Notes

With some browsers you may need to restart, hit Control-F5, and/or clear the cache to make sure you have the latest version of the CloudCasa web app when first logging in after the update. You can also try selectively removing cookies and site data for cloudcasa.io if you encounter any odd behavior.

As always, we want to hear your feedback on new features! You can contact us using the support chat feature in the CloudCasa UI, or by sending email to support@cloudcasa.io.

For previous release notes, click here.