Documentation for version v1.0.0 is no longer actively maintained. The version you are currently viewing is a static snapshot. For up-to-date documentation, see the latest version.

Run Velero on AWS

To set up Velero on AWS, you:

Download an official release of Velero
Create your S3 bucket
Create an AWS IAM user for Velero
Install the server

If you do not have the aws CLI locally installed, follow the user guide to set it up.

Download Velero

Download the latest official release’s tarball for your client platform.

We strongly recommend that you use an official release of Velero. The tarballs for each release contain the velero command-line client. The code in the main branch of the Velero repository is under active development and is not guaranteed to be stable!
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.

Create S3 bucket

Velero requires an object storage bucket to store backups in, preferably unique to a single Kubernetes cluster (see the FAQ for more details). Create an S3 bucket, replacing placeholders appropriately:

BUCKET=<YOUR_BUCKET>
REGION=<YOUR_REGION>
aws s3api create-bucket \
    --bucket $BUCKET \
    --region $REGION \
    --create-bucket-configuration LocationConstraint=$REGION

NOTE: us-east-1 does not support a LocationConstraint. If your region is us-east-1, omit the bucket configuration:

aws s3api create-bucket \
    --bucket $BUCKET \
    --region us-east-1

Create IAM user

For more information, see the AWS documentation on IAM users.

Create the IAM user:
```
aws iam create-user --user-name velero
```
If you’ll be using Velero to backup multiple clusters with multiple S3 buckets, it may be desirable to create a unique username per cluster rather than the default velero.

Attach policies to give velero the necessary permissions:

cat > velero-policy.json <<EOF
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "ec2:DescribeVolumes",
                "ec2:DescribeSnapshots",
                "ec2:CreateTags",
                "ec2:CreateVolume",
                "ec2:CreateSnapshot",
                "ec2:DeleteSnapshot"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:DeleteObject",
                "s3:PutObject",
                "s3:AbortMultipartUpload",
                "s3:ListMultipartUploadParts"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::${BUCKET}/*"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:ListBucket"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::${BUCKET}"
            ]
        }
    ]
}
EOF

aws iam put-user-policy \
  --user-name velero \
  --policy-name velero \
  --policy-document file://velero-policy.json

Create an access key for the user:

aws iam create-access-key --user-name velero

The result should look like:

{
  "AccessKey": {
        "UserName": "velero",
        "Status": "Active",
        "CreateDate": "2017-07-31T22:24:41.576Z",
        "SecretAccessKey": <AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY>,
        "AccessKeyId": <AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID>
  }
}

Create a Velero-specific credentials file (credentials-velero) in your local directory:
```
[default]
aws_access_key_id=<AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID>
aws_secret_access_key=<AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY>
```
where the access key id and secret are the values returned from the create-access-key request.

Install and start Velero

Install Velero, including all prerequisites, into the cluster and start the deployment. This will create a namespace called velero, and place a deployment named velero in it.

velero install \
    --provider aws \
    --bucket $BUCKET \
    --secret-file ./credentials-velero \
    --backup-location-config region=$REGION \
    --snapshot-location-config region=$REGION

Additionally, you can specify --use-restic to enable restic support, and --wait to wait for the deployment to be ready.

(Optional) Specify additional configurable parameters for the --backup-location-config flag.

(Optional) Specify additional configurable parameters for the --snapshot-location-config flag.

For more complex installation needs, use either the Helm chart, or add --dry-run -o yaml options for generating the YAML representation for the installation.

Setting AWS_CLUSTER_NAME (Optional)

If you have multiple clusters and you want to support migration of resources between them, you can use kubectl edit deploy/velero -n velero to edit your deployment:

Add the environment variable AWS_CLUSTER_NAME under spec.template.spec.env, with the current cluster’s name. When restoring backup, it will make Velero (and cluster it’s running on) claim ownership of AWS volumes created from snapshots taken on different cluster. The best way to get the current cluster’s name is to either check it with used deployment tool or to read it directly from the EC2 instances tags.

The following listing shows how to get the cluster’s nodes EC2 Tags. First, get the nodes external IDs (EC2 IDs):

kubectl get nodes -o jsonpath='{.items[*].spec.externalID}'

Copy one of the returned IDs <ID> and use it with the aws CLI tool to search for one of the following:

The kubernetes.io/cluster/<AWS_CLUSTER_NAME> tag of the value owned. The <AWS_CLUSTER_NAME> is then your cluster’s name:
```
aws ec2 describe-tags --filters "Name=resource-id,Values=<ID>" "Name=value,Values=owned"
```
If the first output returns nothing, then check for the legacy Tag KubernetesCluster of the value <AWS_CLUSTER_NAME>:
```
aws ec2 describe-tags --filters "Name=resource-id,Values=<ID>" "Name=key,Values=KubernetesCluster"
```

ALTERNATIVE: Setup permissions using kube2iam

Kube2iam is a Kubernetes application that allows managing AWS IAM permissions for pod via annotations rather than operating on API keys.

This path assumes you have kube2iam already running in your Kubernetes cluster. If that is not the case, please install it first, following the docs here: https://github.com/jtblin/kube2iam

It can be set up for Velero by creating a role that will have required permissions, and later by adding the permissions annotation on the velero deployment to define which role it should use internally.

Create a Trust Policy document to allow the role being used for EC2 management & assume kube2iam role:

cat > velero-trust-policy.json <<EOF
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "Service": "ec2.amazonaws.com"
            },
            "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::<AWS_ACCOUNT_ID>:role/<ROLE_CREATED_WHEN_INITIALIZING_KUBE2IAM>"
            },
            "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
        }
    ]
}
EOF

Create the IAM role:

aws iam create-role --role-name velero --assume-role-policy-document file://./velero-trust-policy.json