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Run Velero on GCP

You can run Kubernetes on Google Cloud Platform in either:

Kubernetes on Google Compute Engine virtual machines
Google Kubernetes Engine

If you do not have the gcloud and gsutil CLIs locally installed, follow the user guide to set them up.

Download Velero

Download the latest release’s tarball for your client platform.
Extract the tarball:
```
tar -xvf <RELEASE-TARBALL-NAME>.tar.gz -C /dir/to/extract/to 
```
We’ll refer to the directory you extracted to as the “Velero directory” in subsequent steps.
Move the velero binary from the Velero directory to somewhere in your PATH.

We strongly recommend that you use an official release of Velero. The tarballs for each release contain the velero command-line client and version-specific sample YAML files for deploying Velero to your cluster. The code and sample YAML files in the main branch of the Velero repository are under active development and are not guaranteed to be stable. Use them at your own risk!

Create GCS bucket

Velero requires an object storage bucket in which to store backups, preferably unique to a single Kubernetes cluster (see the FAQ for more details). Create a GCS bucket, replacing the <YOUR_BUCKET> placeholder with the name of your bucket:

BUCKET=<YOUR_BUCKET>

gsutil mb gs://$BUCKET/

Create service account

To integrate Velero with GCP, create an Velero-specific Service Account:

View your current config settings:
```
gcloud config list
```
Store the project value from the results in the environment variable $PROJECT_ID.
```
PROJECT_ID=$(gcloud config get-value project)
```
Create a service account:
```
gcloud iam service-accounts create velero \
    --display-name "Velero service account"
```
If you’ll be using Velero to backup multiple clusters with multiple GCS buckets, it may be desirable to create a unique username per cluster rather than the default velero.

Then list all accounts and find the velero account you just created:
```
gcloud iam service-accounts list
```
Set the $SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL variable to match its email value.
```
SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL=$(gcloud iam service-accounts list \
  --filter="displayName:Velero service account" \
  --format 'value(email)')
```

Attach policies to give velero the necessary permissions to function:


ROLE_PERMISSIONS=(
    compute.disks.get
    compute.disks.create
    compute.disks.createSnapshot
    compute.snapshots.get
    compute.snapshots.create
    compute.snapshots.useReadOnly
    compute.snapshots.delete
    compute.zones.get
)

gcloud iam roles create velero.server \
    --project $PROJECT_ID \
    --title "Velero Server" \
    --permissions "$(IFS=","; echo "${ROLE_PERMISSIONS[*]}")"    

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding $PROJECT_ID \
    --member serviceAccount:$SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL \
    --role projects/$PROJECT_ID/roles/velero.server

gsutil iam ch serviceAccount:$SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL:objectAdmin gs://${BUCKET}

Create a service account key, specifying an output file (credentials-velero) in your local directory:

gcloud iam service-accounts keys create credentials-velero \
    --iam-account $SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL

Credentials and configuration

If you run Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), make sure that your current IAM user is a cluster-admin. This role is required to create RBAC objects. See the GKE documentation for more information.

In the Velero directory (i.e. where you extracted the release tarball), run the following to first set up namespaces, RBAC, and other scaffolding. To run in a custom namespace, make sure that you have edited the YAML files to specify the namespace. See Run in custom namespace.

kubectl apply -f config/common/00-prereqs.yaml

Create a Secret. In the directory of the credentials file you just created, run:

kubectl create secret generic cloud-credentials \
    --namespace velero \
    --from-file cloud=credentials-velero

Note: If you use a custom namespace, replace velero with the name of the custom namespace

Specify the following values in the example files:

In file config/gcp/05-backupstoragelocation.yaml:
- Replace <YOUR_BUCKET>. See the BackupStorageLocation definition for details.
(Optional) If you run the nginx example, in file config/nginx-app/with-pv.yaml:
- Replace <YOUR_STORAGE_CLASS_NAME> with standard. This is GCP’s default StorageClass name.
(Optional, use only if you need to specify multiple volume snapshot locations) In config/gcp/10-deployment.yaml:
- Uncomment the --default-volume-snapshot-locations and replace provider locations with the values for your environment.

Start the server

In the root of your Velero directory, run:

kubectl apply -f config/gcp/05-backupstoragelocation.yaml
kubectl apply -f config/gcp/06-volumesnapshotlocation.yaml
kubectl apply -f config/gcp/10-deployment.yaml

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