The past decade has transformed Kubernetes from a novel platform to the undisputed leader in containerized application deployment and management. Today, Kubernetes not only underpins the surge in Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads, offering seamless support for operating in hybrid deployments and optimizing scarce GPU resources, but it has also become the go-to platform for running a diverse set of SQL, NoSQL, and vector databases. Business continuity stakes have never been higher, as Kubernetes deployments extend beyond the enterprise.
Federal and public sectors are increasingly adopting Kubernetes to solve complex challenges, making data protection, and working with trusted partners even more critical.
Veeam Kasten for Kubernetes is a leader and outperformer in the Kubernetes Data Protection space – for the fourth year running! Now we’re also the industry’s first Kubernetes-native data protection that is Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) compliant, raising the security bar even higher. With this announcement, Veeam Kasten V7.0 adds enhanced ransomware protection, expanded scale for Virtual Machines on Kubernetes, and further strengthens Veeam’s partnerships with Red Hat and Microsoft to bring complete solutions to scale, keeping your business running. Veeam Kasten V7.0 will be generally available in June.
While there are more than thirty capabilities in this Kasten V7.0 release, including scaling across millions of small files to the largest of volumes, there are two key themes that I would like to highlight in our newest and most compelling version: Cyber Resilience and Enterprise Solutions. Ready for a deep dive? Grab your favorite beverage and let’s explore what the amazing Veeam Kasten team has developed and the benefits these solutions provide to our rapidly growing worldwide customer base.
Achieving Cyber Resilience with Kasten
- FIPS Compliance: In addition to Kasten’s availability on Iron Bank (secure and hardened image registry), published Secure Bill of Materials (SBOM), support for FIPS 140-3 enabled OpenShift clusters further ensures rigorous standards compliance for federal and public sector environments. This means Kasten’s cryptographic algorithms and security protocols meet strict government requirements and Kasten images are continuously scanned and updated for any vulnerabilities. Kasten continues to innovate and remains the clear leader in Kubernetes-native data protection with deployments that include government agencies across the world who secure our borders and keep us safe.
- Expanded Ransomware Protection: Building on its existing ransomware protection muscle, Kasten takes cybersecurity a step further. It now extends its integration with Azure Blob storage to leverage its immutability features, offering an extra layer of protection against accidental or malicious deletion of backups. Additionally, Kasten identifies which restore points are available from immutable repositories, giving you clear visibility and assurance during recovery operations. To bolster early threat detection, Kasten now integrates with Azure Sentinel, providing valuable security insights and helping your cybersecurity team quickly identify and respond to potential ransomware attacks. To further reduce deployment friction, Kasten also supports easy deployment straight from the Azure Console across a wide choice of Kubernetes distributions (including Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)) via our enhanced integrations with Azure Marketplace.
Check out the short video below for a practical demo on how these new capabilities are delivering unrivaled resilience for Kubernetes in Azure environments:
- Secure Deployment at Scale: As platform teams focus on delivering secure infrastructure and services to developers, integrating data protection for cluster provisioning is critical. Kasten now provides additional deployment configuration capabilities to securely configure Dashboard authentication and join the multicluster system using Kubernetes Secrets. These advancements allow integration with a host of popular tools used to support GitOps cluster deployment, including External Secrets, Sealed Secrets, and Secrets Store CSI.
Empowering Enterprises with Veeam Kasten
As Kubernetes celebrates its tenth anniversary, customers are focused on security, cost efficiency and automation to achieve operations at scale. Born as a Kubernetes-native application, this is where Kasten shines as we bring very easy to deploy and operate solutions by working closely with cloud–native ecosystem partners. The dynamism in the ecosystem is palpable – as witnessed by more than 12,000 in-person attendees at KubeCon EU (52 percent being first time attendees), and more than 800 members as a part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Freedom of choice is a core tenet for Kasten as we help bring the best innovations across storage, databases, Kubernetes distributions from various partners. Let’s explore some of these innovations with one of our key technology partners – Red Hat.
- Protecting VMs and Cloud-Native with Kasten + Red Hat: VMs running on Kubernetes with Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization enables you to run and manage virtual machine (VM) and container workloads side-by-side on Red Hat OpenShift. In previous releases Kasten had not only added support for data protection in OpenShift Virtualization but also introduced block-mode backups in Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization without requiring the need to install any additional storage overlay software.
Now Kasten has further raised the bar by introducing support for Direct API integration between Kasten and CephRBD volume manager for blockmode exports & restores. While the integration may sound esoteric, the benefits are very compelling and include:
- Improves export and restore performance.
- Exports allocated blocks only vs full export – useful for OpenShift Virtualization backup!
- Reduces in-cluster attack surface for datamover operations.
Kasten has added support for Ceph File System (CephFS) shallow cloned volumes. Why does that matter? As the amount of data on Kubernetes grows, performance efficiency becomes paramount. Customers using Kasten, do not need to create a new volume and clone the entire snapshot data into it. As a result, the benefits, especially for read-heavy workloads, are not only significant performance improvements but also storage savings since redundant copies of data don’t need to be created. The net result: speedy backup operations at lower costs!
There is so much more to cover including enhanced support for Red Hat OpenShift ImageStream container image protection. However, let’s look at another video highlighting data protection of VMs and application mobility using Kasten with OpenShift running on AWS using Red Hat OpenShift for AWS (ROSA).
As a testament to the growing partnership and customer benefits, here is what Steve Gordon, Senior Director, Product Management for Hybrid Cloud Platforms at Red Hat had to say: “We are excited to accelerate our long-standing relationship with Veeam to further enhance support for VMs on OpenShift, enabling our joint users to more easily implement data protection measures at scale, irrespective of how they choose to run it today or in the future”
Veeam will showcase Veeam Kasten’s capabilities during Red Hat Summit, May 7-9, with live demos in Booth #302. Meet the team behind the #1 Kubernetes data protection and mobility solution, enter our “Crack the Code” contest, and get some amazing swag. Also, please stop by theCube TV studio as I talk to Stu Miniman, Red Hat Senior Director of Market Insights and Hybrid Platforms about the Veeam Red Hat partnership and how we are driving innovations together. Veeam Kasten V7.0 will be generally available in June, strengthening Veeam’s status as the leader in Kubernetes data protection and mobility.
Veeam Kasten features unparalleled operational simplicity and integrates with relational and NoSQL databases, including all major Kubernetes distributions. Try it for free today and start experiencing the full functionality and benefits of Veeam Kasten!