Documentation for version v1.0.0 is no longer actively maintained.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 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 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 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 a 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.

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 gcp \
    --bucket $BUCKET \
    --secret-file ./credentials-velero

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

(Optional) Specify --snapshot-location-config snapshotLocation=<YOUR_LOCATION> to keep snapshots in a specific availability zone. See the VolumeSnapshotLocation definition for details.

(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.

Documentation