Kubernetes has become the bedrock for deploying and managing cloud-native applications and traditional virtual machines (VMs). As organizations rely on Kubernetes to support their mission-critical workloads, the need for robust data protection, enhanced security, and seamless scalability has never been more critical.
Kubernetes offers unparalleled flexibility, but this also introduces new risks. The threat of ransomware attacks continues to loom large, with a dramatic 49% of respondents to Veeam’s 2024 Ransomware Trends Report attesting they were attacked between one and three times that year. To navigate this landscape, businesses require a comprehensive solution and trusted partner to safeguard their data and enable them to confidently build, deploy, and run their cloud-native applications and VMs on Kubernetes.
Grab your favorite beverage and join us as we unveil our most powerful Veeam Kasten release yet! Veeam Kasten for Kubernetes v7.5 promises to be a groundbreaking release designed to empower organizations with unmatched cloud-native data resilience. This version builds on Kasten’s long-standing leadership in Kubernetes data protection by introducing significant advancements in:
- Enterprise-scale resilience: Deliver the performance, control, and ease of use required for even the most demanding Kubernetes environments.
- Expanded security and compliance: Instill confidence by elevating security measures and simplifying compliance with industry regulations.
- Modern virtualization: Provide unified data protection for VMs on Kubernetes and streamline operations in hybrid cloud environments.
Enterprise-scale Resilience: Scaling New Heights in Performance and Efficiency
In Kubernetes-native data protection, scale means effortlessly handling increasing workloads and data volumes without sacrificing performance or reliability. This includes support for large-scale data sets, automation with DevOps tooling, and the ability to protect diverse workloads without getting locked into a particular infrastructure vendor or deployment model.
Unmatched data scaling: Kasten enables you to protect large-scale application volumes — including millions of small files — to ensure efficient operations even when dealing with massive datasets. As the application diversity in Kubernetes environments increases, these dramatic performance improvements ensure that our customers can reduce their backup and restore times to maintain continuous protection. For example, when tested against Kasten v6.5, this new version realized a 3x performance improvement in backup time for volumes containing 10 million small (e.g., 4KB) files and a 25% change rate.
Optimized resource utilization: Kubernetes environments demand granular resource management to optimize performance and cost-efficiency for diverse application types when performing data protection functions. Applications such as AI- and analytics-centric workloads that produce large numbers of files or those with aggressive change rates can benefit from having additional compute resources for data mover operations during backup or restore. However, increasing your data mover resource requests so they can apply to all applications cluster-wide is not optimal and can negatively impact your Pod scheduling. Kasten v7.5 introduces new custom resources that enable administrators to:
- Specify granular CPU and memory requests
- Set limits for each type of temporary worker Pod that’s dynamically provisioned during data protection operations
- Apply these resource consumption “profiles” on a per-namespace or per-policy basis to provide the flexibility you need to ensure efficient resource usage while delivering the performance that’s required to protect even your most challenging applications.
Boosted efficiency with deep storage integrations: In addition to expanding storage integrations in Azure environments to leverage changed block tracking (CBT), Kasten is actively contributing to standardize this in Kubernetes itself as well. With CBT, Kastencan significantly reduce the compute resources required to export block data, which enables highly efficient incremental block mode backups. This is particularly relevant for modern virtualization use cases, where block mode volumes are required to support live VM migration with SAN storage. Now these benefits also extend to filesystem volumes to enhance overall data protection and efficiency.
Kasten continues to refine and expand capabilities that are relevant to users who deploy clusters at-scale by leveraging GitOps tools, now with support for automated Kasten disaster recovery (DR) configuration. This is the built-in policy used to protect your local catalog of available backups. Kasten v7.5 empowers you to confidently adopt and migrate to updated Kubernetes versions and ensure your resilience strategy remains robust and up to date. Additionally, you can now gain critical insights into your data protection operations directly from OpenShift’s console with quick access to the Kasten dashboard, which provides a centralized view for streamlined management and monitoring.
Expanded Security and Compliance: Fortifying Your Cloud-native Environment
Building upon its strong foundation in security, Kasten v7.5 introduces new features and enhancements designed to bolster your protection against emerging threats and streamline compliance with industry regulations.
Stay ahead of ransomware threats: Kasten incorporates immutable restore point visibility, which allows you to easily identify which restore points are immutable and can be reliably used when making recovery decisions. In addition to existing target storage support, such as S3, Azure Blob, and Veeam Backup & Replication, Kasten v7.5 will now also support integration with object lock capabilities in Google Cloud Storage. This further enhances ransomware protection by ensuring the integrity of your backups across a broad range of storage options.
Strengthened multi-cluster security: Building upon the success of earlier Kasten releases that introduced FIPS compliance and availability on Iron Bank, this version extends FIPS support to multi-cluster management in OpenShift, which helps meet the stringent security requirements of government, health, and financial sectors as the deployments scale.
With several additional capabilities, Kasten further elevates your security posture. Kasten v7.5 leverages new annotations in OpenShift to provide precise and secure control over workload permissions to strengthen your overall security stance. Azure Identity Federation support for OpenShift further enhances security by eliminating credential risks.
Modern Virtualization: Unifying Protection for VMs and Containers
Kasten v7.5 also extends its capabilities to address the evolving needs of modern virtualization environments on Kubernetes to provide seamless protection for VMs and containerized applications.
Streamlined VM protection and mobility: Kasten v7.5 expands support for protecting and migrating VMs that run on platforms like Red Hat OpenShift and SUSE Virtualization (i.e., enterprise-ready and supported Harvester).
Enhanced support for Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization: Building upon existing support for block-mode backups for VMs in OpenShift Virtualization, Kasten v7.5 introduces features like support for VMs that are provisioned using instance type templates. This is the new default option designed to simplify VM creation and template management. Also, Kasten v7.5 strengthens the integration with Red Hat OpenShift to enable automated deployment and protection of OpenShift VMs at the edge via production-ready best practices and GitOps. This collaboration provides secure, scalable storage, key capabilities like Live Migrations, and a data protection solution for diverse workloads to protect customer applications and databases across on-premises and cloud environments. Take a look at the reference architecture here and get started today!
Introducing Kasten support for SUSE Virtualization: Kasten v7.5 extends its Kubernetes data protection capabilities to encompass SUSE Virtualization (i.e., enterprise-ready and supported Harvester), a leading open source and cloud-native virtualization platform. SUSE Virtualization offers a unified management interface for both VMs and containerized workloads, which makes it a valuable tool for organizations who are looking for a hybrid approach to application deployment. By supporting SUSE Virtualization, Kasten enables users to leverage familiar backup and DR workflows for their containerized applications alongside their VMs. Kasten v7.5’s integration with SUSE Virtualization leverages the platform’s native API to provide seamless backup and restore operations for both VM and containerized workloads to ensure data protection across your entire Kubernetes environment.
But Wait, There’s More Cooking!
I am also excited to share that NetApp and Veeam have joined forces to pioneer innovative data protection and storage solutions for the ever-expanding universe of Kubernetes data services, modern virtualization, AI, and cloud-native applications. By uniting their expertise and technologies, NetApp and Veeam aim to provide customers with the most advanced and comprehensive solutions available. This collaboration will deliver exceptional value and enable organizations to protect their critical data and applications with unparalleled reliability and efficiency – stay tuned!
As a testament to this growing partnership and its customer benefits, here is what Gagan Gulati – GM/VP, Data Services at NetApp had to say:
“NetApp is excited to build on its long-standing partnership with Veeam by extending our data management solutions to include the growing list of container and VM applications in Kubernetes environments. Veeam Kasten’s data protection expertise, coupled with NetApp storage demonstrates our shared commitment to providing organizations the most innovative solutions to scale and protect their Kubernetes workloads.”
As you come to the end of that beverage you’ve been sipping, I hope it’s clear that Kasten v7.5 will bring unparalleled operational security, scale, and simplicity to keep your business running. Kasten v7.5 is generally available now, so keep an eye out on the news and in your inboxes! To dive deeper, read about our latest release here and watch our v7.5 webinar. Try it for free today and start experiencing the full functionality and benefits of Kasten!
