CloudCasa by Catalogic Adds Self-Hosted Edition of Kubernetes Data Protection Platform
CloudCasa by Catalogic today announced it is making an edition of its data protection platform for Kubernetes environments available for self-hosted IT environments.
In addition, the company is adding single sign-on integration for the enterprise edition of its software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, along with additional onboarding and support services for organizations using open source Velero software to protect data in Kubernetes environments. Previously, CloudCasa by Catalogic extended its SaaS platform to manage both its own commercial data protection platform and instances of Velero.
Sathya Sankaran, general manager of CloudCasa by Catalogic, said that while the company remains committed to its SaaS platform, there are a growing number of larger organizations that, because of data sovereignty and privacy regulations, are not allowed to make use of any type of cloud service. The self-hosted edition also enables those organizations to protect Kubernetes data in air-gapped IT environments, he added.
Kubernetes was originally designed to run stateless applications that access data outside the cluster. However as the platform has evolved, more organizations are finding a need to process and analyze data at the point where it is created and consumed on a Kubernetes cluster. As the amount of data running on those clusters increases, protecting that data becomes a more critical requirement.
In addition, many IT organizations are also employing data protection platforms to move data between Kubernetes clusters spanning multiple cloud computing and on-premises IT environments, he adds.
It’s still relatively early days as far as the deployment of stateful applications on Kubernetes is concerned, but as more data is stored on the cluster itself, the more likely it becomes those clusters will be targeted for ransomware attacks. The only effective defense against those attacks is to make sure a pristine copy of data can be accessed in the event local data running on those clusters becomes encrypted.
Regardless of the reason for deploying a data protection platform, IT teams are starting to find themselves managing fleets of Kubernetes clusters running stateful applications. Many of those clusters are being deployed at the network edge, so finding a way to centrally manage backup and recovery for those instances of Kubernetes is a challenge.
In an ideal scenario, IT organizations would have continuous data protection processes in place to ensure data is always available versus managing backup and recovery tasks as an occasional task, noted Sankaran.
In the meantime, IT teams would be well-advised to test existing backup and recovery processes to ensure data has not been inadvertently corrupted or infected with malware as a precursor to a ransomware attack. After all, the first thing any cybercriminal will try to encrypt are the backup files that an organization is counting on to recover from a ransomware attack.
It’s not exactly clear whether DevOps teams or IT administrators will ultimately be responsible for data protection in Kubernetes environments. But if data is lost, everyone involved will be held more accountable as regulations that hold organizations more accountable for how data is managed become more stringent.