Kubernetes is very straightforward for deploying and managing stateless applications. Consequently, proper backups of the Kubernetes environment have often been postponed or neglected. Today, however, more and more applications running on Kubernetes are stateful, making backup and recovery solutions for these systems critical. Neglecting backup is risky: as applications become more complex and need to preserve their states, the challenges of recovering a setup increase. Therefore, platform engineers need a comprehensive backup solution for Kubernetes.

CloudCasa is a SaaS offering that provides data protection, recovery, and migration for Kubernetes. It provides a best-in-class solution for multi-cluster, multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud Kubernetes environments.

Caption: The CloudCasa dashboard, where it all comes together

The CloudCasa service comes in two variants: The CloudCasa Pro service provides centralised backup services for large, complex, multi-cluster, multi-cloud, and hybrid cloud environments. The recently introduced CloudCasa for Velero service brings similar enterprise features to existing installations of Velero, the popular open source Kubernetes backup solution. These features include centralised management and monitoring, alerts, job history, guided recovery, RBAC, and commercial support. Taking advantage of these leading-edge Kubernetes backup capabilities is now easier than ever, as Catalogic has released a CloudCasa charm.

Why use the CloudCasa charm?

The charm for CloudCasa is a Kubernetes operator created with the Charm SDK for Juju. Juju is an open source orchestration engine for software operators that enables the deployment, integration and lifecycle management of applications at any scale, on any infrastructure. An application can be a database, a web server, a dashboard or, in this case, backup software.

As a SaaS offering, an important part of CloudCasa’s value proposition is easy set-up and configuration, and minimal time to first backup. The only software component that customers need to install is the CloudCasa agent, so the engineering team is always looking for ways to make installation and upgrade of the agent easier for customers. They also wanted a native integration for Canonical’s Kubernetes platform. Juju was the perfect fit, and the charm makes consuming CloudCasa seamless for users.

“We’re excited that, working with our partners at Canonical, we were able to quickly implement the CloudCasa charm, providing convenient installation and management of our agent and consistent operations for customers using the Juju framework,” said Bob Adair, Head of Product Management at CloudCasa. ”As Kubernetes becomes more prevalent in the enterprise and the applications running on it become stateful and more complex, DevOps, SRE, and platform engineering teams need to think seriously about adequately protecting and managing these critical environments. This is where both CloudCasa and charms come in.”

How to install CloudCasa using the Charm

The CloudCasa charm can be installed directly from Charmhub using just a few simple Juju commands. The charm is available on charmhub.io. To get started with an existing cluster and an installation of Juju execute:

$ juju deploy cloudcasa

Then as the bare minimum of configurations, you set the cluster id:

$ juju config cloudcasa clusterid=<clusterid>

The CloudCasa application provides a way to trigger the installation of the charm. Users can access the Add and Edit Cluster wizards in the CloudCasa UI directly. 

Caption: Select the charm when configuring a K8s cluster in the Add Cluster wizard

About CloudCasa by Catalogic

CloudCasa by Catalogic is a Kubernetes backup-as-a-service providing innovative multi-cloud data protection, migration, and disaster recovery for Kubernetes applications and cloud data services. CloudCasa enables multi-cluster and multi-cloud application resiliency and mobility with granular or cluster-level recovery, across accounts, regions and even across clouds. CloudCasa is fully compatible and complementary to Velero, the open-source Kubernetes backup tool that has been downloaded over 100 million times. Signup for CloudCasa for Velero.

Read more

• Learn about CloudCasa for Velero
• Learn about Juju
• Learn about the Charm SDK
• Learn about Charmed Kubernetes

More questions about operators, Juju and charms?

Contact Canonical

(Photo by Taylor Vick on Unsplash)

A Kubernetes operator is an application-specific software extension automating application management and operations tasks on Kubernetes. Kubernetes is the open source, industry-standard platform for deploying, managing and scaling containerized applications – and applications on Kubernetes are easier with operators.

Operators take a real-world operations team’s knowledge, wisdom, and expertise, and codify it into a computer program that helps operating complex server applications like databases, messaging systems, or web applications. Operators provide implementations for operating applications that are testable and thus more reliable at runtime.

While operators are equally applicable to application and infrastructure operations on other platforms, today they are mainly associated with Kubernetes. Kubernetes provides many functions for operating applications out-of-the-box, with operational tasks, including scaling, upgrading, or configuring applications, covered already. However, these tasks become complex and are repetitive, in particular with stateful applications, such as database servers. Kubernetes operators extend the functionality of the Kubernetes platform with automation to cover all the complex and repetitive commands and tasks.

Why are Kubernetes operators important?

Today’s IT can choose between operating applications on its own or taking a hosted service from public cloud providers. Users expect at least the same service level from hosting and operating applications in-house as from these providers. Consequently, site reliability engineers and DevOps teams use Kubernetes operators to reach public cloud providers’ performance and reliability levels. For them, operators are popular because they automate repetitive tasks and help to reduce the complexity of operations on the powerful but sophisticated Kubernetes platform.

Read our White Paper: A guide to Kubernetes Operators

How does a Kubernetes operator work? 

A fundamental concept is that for every application there is one operator which covers all the knowledge about this application in various use cases. The operator concept includes a controller which watches the state of the application. In addition, the operator implements the application-specific operational tasks and executes them depending on defined events or commands by the user. If necessary, the operator interacts with the Kubernetes platform to control resources for deployed applications as required. For a more detailed explanation of the concepts of a Kubernetes operator, see our recent series on the software operator design pattern.

Are Kubernetes operators open source?

Yes, many Kubernetes operators are open source, for example an operator for the popular database server PostgreSQL, or the operator for the event streaming platform Kafka. Different operators can be arranged to manage a composition of applications, for example, to form an observability stack, including Grafana and Prometheus. Marketplaces provide a central location in the web for finding all relevant operators belonging to an ecosystem – for these examples the marketplace is charmhub.io.

For operators, an additional type of software has emerged, also available as open source: an orchestration engine enabling the deployment, integration and lifecycle management of applications using the operators. This engine also provides the interface to interact with one or multiple operators, via a CLI, via an API, using client libraries or using Web-based dashboards. In addition, the orchestration engine usually provides an abstraction layer covering different deployment substrates, such as multiple Kubernetes clusters on public and private clouds at the same time. Canonical’s open source software Juju is an example of an orchestration engine for Kubernetes operators.

How do you create your own Kubernetes operators?

The best way to create a Kubernetes operator is using a framework. A framework provides common, mature and proven elements for every operator. Reusing these frameworks accelerates development and results in a more reliable implementation. In addition the framework may contain runtime software, managing the lifecycle of an operator. To choose the right framework, consider the following:

• Open source frameworks are often backed by large communities. Community contributions can improve the framework and also result in new operators for the ecosystem.
• Some public cloud providers also offer solutions for building operators, but not all of them offer a separate management runtime to use the same technology for local Kubernetes installations.
• A central website for available Kubernetes operators is beneficial for the community and helps identifying suitable operators in one place.
• Most frameworks support Kubernetes and containerised applications; only a few also cover virtual machines for the integration between cloud native applications and legacy workloads.
• The programming language of the framework plays a key role when it comes to popularity and potential contributors writing more Kubernetes operators. Most frameworks are implemented in Go or Python. Python is popular and well-known among engineers and IT admins.

Build Kubernetes operators easily with the Charm SDK and Juju

Canonical’s experience building private clouds and running managed applications over the past years has led to a comprehensive software development kit for operators: the Charm SDK. The Charm SDK comprises a framework and tools for building, packaging and testing Kubernetes operators. In addition, Canonical provides Juju, an open-source orchestration engine for Kubernetes operators that enables applications’ deployment, integration and lifecycle management at any scale.

Learn More about Kubernetes operators 

There is a lot to discover about Juju and the Charm SDK; please have a look at the linked resources below. You can also check out the presentations from our recent Operator Day events to learn how to build operators and see examples of operators for popular open-source applications.

• Browse our collection of charms on Charmhub.io
• Learn about Juju – our open source orchestration engine
• Learn about the Charm SDK
• See recordings of previous Operator Day event
• Design patterns and the software operator – part 1

More questions about operators, Juju and charms?

Contact Canonical

(Photo by Sivani Bandaru on Unsplash)

Operator Day, hosted by Canonical, is a series of events co-located at KubeCon and CloudNativeCon. This year, the 8th edition of Operator Day will take place online during KubeCon EU 2024 in Paris, Tuesday, 19 March 2024.

The previous Operator Day at KubeCon North America 2023 focused on how operators work and how to create them for Kubernetes and cloud-native applications using the Charm SDK for Juju. Juju is an open source orchestration engine for software operators that enables application deployment, integration and lifecycle management at any scale on any infrastructure using operators known as charms.

Whereas last year we explored the charm lifecycle in general, this year we will take a closer look at specific operators for some of your favourite open source software.

What is Operator Day?

Canonical launched Operator Day at KubeCon North America in 2020. Since then, Operator Day events have presented charms: what they are, how to use them, how to create them and how you can benefit from them. If you missed past events, you can freely access recordings on YouTube; see more on the Operator Day homepage.

What happens at Operator Day in 2024?

This March, the presentations will focus on operators for popular open source software running on Kubernetes to create cloud-native solutions, including:

• The PostgreSQL operator in action: Database servers are typical cases for automating operational tasks. See how the charm for PostgreSQL covers automation for disaster recovery and other management tasks.
• A charm for the popular MongoDB: a great example of a sophisticated workload up to enterprise-scale is MongoDB. Learn how a charm for MongoDB supports deployment, management, patching and upgrading on Kubernetes or IaaS clouds.
• Modern Relationship-based Access Control (ReBAC) with OpenFGA: A context-aware ReBAC model based on OpenFGA provides more flexibility and expressiveness – perfect for running operators. See how the open source orchestration engine Juju takes advantage of a modern, state-of-the-art, fine-grained access model.

Register at Operator Day

The 8th Operator Day is entirely virtual. You can dial in from anywhere and attend. Register at Operator Day as a co-located event at the KubeCon EU 2024 conference or directly at the event page.

Register at Operator Day at KubeCon EU 2024

Learn more

Read our introduction to Juju and Charms, the operators built for Juju:

• Browse our collection of charms on Charmhub.io
• Learn about Juju – our open source orchestration engine
• Learn about the Charm SDK
• See recordings of previous Operator Day event

More questions about operators, Juju and charms?

Contact Canonical