Catalogic Launches SaaS Platform to Protect Kubernetes Clusters
Catalogic Software today unfurled CloudCasa, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform built using Kubernetes that IT organizations can employ to backup and recover Kubernetes clusters.
CloudCasa is now available as a public beta. Company COO Sathya Sankaran says because CloudCasa is based on Kubernetes, the service can scale up and down to meet data protection requirements on demand by making more IT infrastructure resources available instantly as required.
CloudCasa supports via a lightweight agent for a wide range of Kubernetes distributions, including Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Red Hat OpenShift and VMware Tanzu. That approach enables IT teams to centralize the management of backup and recovery across IT teams who have opted to embrace different distributions of Kubernetes, says Sankaran.
Catalogic is also looking to disrupt data protection economics by allowing IT teams to take unlimited snapshots of data via the Container Storage Interface (CSI) and to back up cluster metadata and container resources for free. There are no limits to the number of clusters or worker nodes, but maximum retention of that data is for only 30 days. All backup data is encrypted both when stored and in transit. More premium offerings will be added to the service once it becomes generally available.
As more stateful applications are deployed, the backup and recovery of Kubernetes clusters is becoming a more pressing concern as more data is stored on a cluster. Many of those clusters are now also starting to increase in size, which can create a significant single point of failure. Catalogic has been making available snapshots and copy data management tools that span multiple storage platforms for several years, but with the advent of Kubernetes is now transitioning to a subscription service model.
Sankaran says CloudCasa was designed for DevOps teams that need a simple way to automate backup and recovery workflows in mind. DevOps teams can either incorporate CloudCasa into their DevOps workflows or access it via a graphical user interface (GUI) depending on the use case.
Regardless of who manages the data protection process, it’s apparent DevOps teams want a way to not only automate the management of backup and recovery processes but also quickly recover snapshots of data. Historically, data protection platform providers have required IT organizations to pay extra to license dedicated tools to capture those snapshots. As data protection continues to morph into a service, however, it’s becoming clear that many previous add-on capabilities are now becoming core features of a service. That services approach in many cases also eliminates the need for IT teams to configure, deploy and manage dedicated backup and recovery appliances.
It may be a while before most organizations fully transition to data protection-as-a-service offerings. However, with the rise of Kubernetes, there may soon be a lot of organizations that have never backed up their data any other way.
