Open source Velero has become the backup standard in the Kubernetes world. Let's see why switching to a closed-source solution like Kasten no longer makes any sense!
Velero is the open source Kubernetes backup solution that is widely used by the community. Kasten is a commercial alternative to Velero that was recently acquired by the popular backup company Veeam.
Let us examine why folks choose one over the other and whether an alternative approach is more suitable to the Kubernetes community. There are many commercial solutions available to users that are like Kasten and many of the factors examined here will apply to them as well
Velero has several benefits that Kasten does not. These benefits are why Velero is the default choice for many, and they move to a commercial alternative only when Velero doesn’t meet one of their specific requirements.
Enjoy a centralized GUI and multi-cluster management for Velero, with live support! And best of all, CloudCasas for Velero is priced to be 20-25% of Kasten's per worker node pricing. There is no need to move away from Velero to address any of your issues with Velero.
Velero is a single cluster solution. You must define and manage settings and policies at a cluster level and replicate them on each cluster. This results in a lot of management overhead and potential configuration drift.
Kasten was originally built as a single cluster solution as well. It added a multi-cluster manager to its architecture in version K10 v3.0. Since it was a band-aid, Kasten’s multi-cluster manager acts more or less as a configuration distributor rather than as a manager. This poor man’s implementation allows you to templatize settings and configs but doesn’t really prevent drifts.
Our Recommendation: If you are considering switching because you need multi-cluster management, we recommend taking a look at CloudCasa for Velero– specifically designed to offer multi-cluster management on top of Velero. You don’t need to switch or migrate away and there is no lock-in. You can adopt the multi-cluster management layer fast, with no disruption or downtime.
For a first-time user, Velero can be daunting. Backup isn’t a task that gets assigned to the most seasoned developer/DevOps engineer in a team and they are faced with a ton of documentation to read to get their first backup/restore going.
Kasten has a pleasant interface and guides user through a setup much more intuitively. It’s easier to administer.
Our Recommendation: If you’d like to stick to open source Velero with all its strong benefits, but yearn for simplicity, CloudCasa offers an equally pleasant interface and guides a user through the setup just as well. Even better, CloudCasa for Velero is a SaaS portal with no infrastructure and setup burden that comes with Kasten.
Given that it is a single cluster solution, you must distribute cloud credentials across multiple clusters. This creates a large attack surface for an organization.
Kasten often has the same issues since it is distributing them locally through its multi-cluster manager.
Our Recommendation: A better solution in this case is to move to keyless authentication methods such as AWS IRSA, Azure Service Principals and GCP’s workload identities. CloudCasa for Velero makes these super easy to configure for Velero users.
RESTIC is the default open-source data mover in Velero and it admittedly works best for specific type of PVs with an average number of files that are closer to an average file size. It doesn’t do a great job if you have too many files or if your files are too large. It compresses, but doesn’t deduplicate. Many issues raised by Velero users relate more to Restic than Velero itself.
Kasten utilizes Kopia, which is demonstrably better than Restic. Kopia is an open source project that was built and maintained by a Googler that is now being supported by Veeam.
Our Recommendation: In v1.10, Velero now provides the option of using Kopia as the data mover instead of Velero. The integration has worked so well so far that Velero is already planning to deprecate Restic. If you are seeing issues with the reliability and performance of Velero backups/restores, you would do well to consider moving to Kopia data mover first. You can move one cluster at a time to minimize any perceived risk.
Since Velero is a single cluster solution with no centralized catalog, it can be difficult to maintain compliance and audit activities.
Kasten presents better tools to manage these enterprise needs.
Our Recommendation: These factors have again been resolved with a Velero complementary service like CloudCasa. You can have your cake and eat it too without needing to migrate to an alternative solution like Kasten.
Velero is great at restoring back to the same cluster. Velero can also do a good job restoring back to another cluster that is very similar to the source cluster. Velero does have advanced recovery capabilities such as storage class mappings, node port mappings, restore order preferences etc.
Kasten has some improvements on Velero, but also has its own shortcomings. It’s main improvement is that it has guided recoveries. You don’t want to be reading manuals when you are facing downtime.
Our Recommendation: Both solutions has pros and cons, but guided recovery on Velero recovery points can be accomplished with an open-source compatible service such as CloudCasa. In fact, CloudCasa can power even more advanced recoveries into Cloud than Kasten can. CloudCasa can create an entire cluster on the fly, allowing you to define size, memory, auto-scaling, VPC/VNet, Security Groups, Cluster Add-Ons and more as a recovery template.
Velero support is only included with a big bundle of Tanzu Enterprise licenses. This is rarely accessible to most users of Velero. But, the thought of no support when you are down rightfully scares you. Community Support in Velero is pretty good, but there is no guarantee of response and the more time consuming a request is – there are fewer takers for your challenge.
Kasten is supported by a large support team at Veeam, but it is not clear how many at Veeam focus on Kubernetes and have the expertise to help. They also have 30,000 channel partners – but it is reasonably safe to assume most don’t carry the expertise to help with Kubernetes.
Our Recommendation: This is a tough one. Some support is better than no support and Kasten has a leg up on Velero. That said, Velero code base is open and has been around. Orgs like CloudCasa have used Velero for a few years now and can help and guide you with our expertise. You can find us active in Velero Slack and a lot more responsive in the CloudCasa LiveChat.
Velero is free, and Kasten is EXPENSIVE. Both need to be managed.
Our Recommendation: If you are looking for solutions to the items above, CloudCasa for Velero addresses all of these gaps, by simplying overlaying on top of your existing Velero installation. Best of all, you’ll find our pricing to be in the range of 20-25% of Kasten per worker node – since we overlay on top of open source Velero as the foundation. It makes switching away from Velero to a proprietary solution like Kasten a non-starter.
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