Backup and Restore

Catallaxy uses Velero for cluster backup and restore in it’s example. However you can extend catallaxy to use whatever k8s backup strategy you want. For local development, backups are stored in SeaweedFS (S3-compatible). For production, Velero supports AWS S3, GCP Cloud Storage, and Azure Blob Storage.

Enabling Backups

Enable Velero and a storage backend on the cluster that holds your stateful workloads:

# aspects/backups.nix
{ ... }:
{
  components.seaweedfs.enable = true;

  components.velero = {
    enable = true;
    local.enable = true; # SeaweedFS-backed storage for local dev
    schedules.daily = {
      schedule = "0 2 * * *";
      ttl = "168h"; # 7 days
    };
  };
}

Deploy with cata lab up or cata lab apply. Velero will start taking scheduled backups automatically.

Cloud Storage (Production)

For production, point Velero at a real S3 bucket:

components.velero = {
  enable = true;
  backupStorageLocation = {
    provider = "aws";
    bucket = "my-velero-backups";
    s3 = {
      region = "us-east-1";
    };
  };
};

Using Velero

Backups are managed directly via the velero CLI or through lab ops commands.

On-Demand Backup

# Via ops commands (if configured in your lab)
cata lab ops backup create

# Or directly via velero CLI
velero backup create my-backup --include-namespaces forgejo,kanidm

List and Inspect

velero backup get
velero backup describe my-backup
velero backup logs my-backup

Restore

velero restore create --from-backup my-backup
velero restore create --from-backup my-backup --include-namespaces forgejo

Schedules

velero schedule get
velero schedule trigger daily

Cross-Cluster Migration

Migrate workloads between clusters by backing up on one and restoring on another. Both clusters must have Velero configured with access to the same backup storage location.

# On source cluster
velero backup create migration-backup

# On target cluster
velero restore create --from-backup migration-backup

Management Cluster Pivot

For environments with cloud management clusters, catallaxy handles the pivot automatically during lab up when a cluster self-provisions (declares itself in its own Crossplane kubernetesClusters). The planner generates bootstrap → pivot → destroy steps. See Bootstrap & Pivot for details.