backup-restore-operator

Chainguard Container for backup-restore-operator

A Backup and Restore Operator that provides the ability to back up and restore the Rancher application running on any Kubernetes cluster.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/backup-restore-operator:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

The Chainguard backup-restore-operator image is compatible with rancher/backup-restore-operator. The image provides the same API and functionality as the upstream operator, with enhanced security through a minimal attack surface and daily security updates.

Getting Started

The backup-restore-operator is deployed using the Rancher Helm charts. The operator installs into the cattle-resources-system namespace and creates Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) for Backup, Restore, and ResourceSet resources.

Installation

First, add the Rancher Helm repository:

helm repo add rancher-charts https://charts.rancher.io
helm repo update

Create a values file to use the Chainguard image:

cat > values.yaml <<EOF
image:
  repository: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/backup-restore-operator
  tag: latest
EOF

Install the CRD chart first (this is required):

helm install --wait \
  --create-namespace -n cattle-resources-system \
  rancher-backup-crd rancher-charts/rancher-backup-crd

Install the operator chart with your values file:

helm install --wait \
  -n cattle-resources-system \
  -f values.yaml \
  rancher-backup rancher-charts/rancher-backup

Verification

Verify the operator is running:

kubectl get pods -n cattle-resources-system

You should see output similar to:

NAME                             READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
rancher-backup-xxxxx-xxxxx       1/1     Running   0          1m

Creating a Backup

To create a basic backup of your Kubernetes resources, create a Backup resource:

cat > backup.yaml <<EOF
apiVersion: resources.cattle.io/v1
kind: Backup
metadata:
  name: default-backup
spec:
  resourceSetName: rancher-resource-set-full
EOF

kubectl apply -f backup.yaml

The operator creates two ResourceSets by default: rancher-resource-set-full includes all secrets needed for complete restore, while rancher-resource-set-basic excludes secrets for enhanced security. Choose based on your backup requirements.

Check the backup status:

kubectl get backup default-backup -o yaml

Configuration

The operator supports various backup storage locations. For production use, configure an S3-compatible storage backend. Create a values file with S3 configuration:

cat > values.yaml <<EOF
image:
  repository: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/backup-restore-operator
  tag: latest

persistence:
  enabled: true
  storageClass: default

s3:
  enabled: true
  credentialSecretName: s3-creds
  credentialSecretNamespace: cattle-resources-system
  bucketName: rancher-backups
  region: us-east-1
  endpoint: s3.amazonaws.com
EOF

This configuration enables persistent storage for backup metadata and sets S3 as the backup target, which is essential for disaster recovery scenarios.

For comprehensive configuration options, including encryption, retention policies, and advanced scheduling, refer to the upstream documentation.

Documentation and Resources

• Rancher Backup Restore Operator GitHub
• Rancher Backup and Restore Documentation
• Helm Charts Repository

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.