Protecting Kubernetes-based Workloads The HYCU Way

You would be hard pressed to pick up an analyst report or media publication and not think that everyone at every organization regardless of size was using containers and Kubernetes. And, while that may have been hype, it’s becoming more the norm now than ever before.

According to leading industry analysts, Gartner alone predicts by 2025 more than 85% of global organizations will be running containerized applications in production. This is almost double what was happening in 2019. And, Evaluator Group, according to initial data from their upcoming “Spring 2021 Hybrid Cloud Study," noted 29% of enterprises are using Kubernetes in a production environment today with another 40% testing Kubernetes with plans to go to production. Krista Macomber at Evaluator Group also recently published an easy-to-digest primer on Containers Data Protection Fundamentals. It’s available as a free download. Using Kubernetes-based workloads in production is no longer hype, it’s real.

We also know that, as we are asked by more partners and customers what are the best practices for backup and recovery and data protection for Kubernetes-based workloads. We’ve been working closely with both customers and partners to deliver a solution that was tightly integrated and would be easy to deploy, manage and maintain. Does that sound familiar? It should. That’s the way we approach data protection regardless of platform, location, application or workload.

That’s why I’m excited to announce our latest technology innovation, HYCU for Kubernetes.

What is HYCU for Kubernetes?

HYCU is extending HYCU Protégé as a Service to support container-based workloads. It is the industry’s first native, as a service solution for Kubernetes workloads. It’s our newest, as a service, cloud-native solution and it gives our customers and partners a tightly integrated and application aware solution to protect, manage and recover data across virtual, physical, and now containers-based workloads.

It continues to be our firm belief that there is a better way to backup, manage, protect, and recover data, applications, databases and VMs across on-premises and public cloud IT environments.

And, that now includes Kubernetes. Quickly, HYCU for Kubernetes works in the following ways:

• Automated and instantaneous discovery of applications: Ensuring Kubernetes-based workloads are identified and managed from one single user interface.
• Assured Data Protection: With set and forget policy-based data protection, users do not need to be IT backup administrators to use. For developers, this provides ease of use and self-service capabilities to support container-based application development. Protection policies can be applied globally, across container and non-container sources.
• Ability to set different SLAs for applications within the same cluster: Ease of management and flexibility to provide policy-based SLAs for container-based workloads regardless of location.
• Granular and flexible recovery: Users can recover an entire application, individual persistent disks and configuration files.
• Ease of recovery validation with selective cross-cluster recovery: Users have the flexibility to leverage multi-regions and locations to spin up applications for recovery.
• Simplify Dev/Test and DR with cross project and cross regional cloning: Users gain an extra layer of protection from cyberattacks, erroneous or malicious deletion, and system outages.

What Makes HYCU Different?

As mentioned before, there has been an enormous amount of energy and excitement around not just using Kubernetes but protecting Kubernetes-based workloads. As we know, last year alone a number of standalone companies that had focused on protecting and recovering containers were acquired.

As the use of Kubernetes went from nascent and periodic for DEV/TEST to more systematic use and for production, data protection approaches have not kept pace with the adoption and interest to date. It can be boiled down to two reasons:

• Separate workload creating a siloed approach: Solutions would treat containers as a separate workload requiring separate infrastructure to run and support which in turn created a siloed data protection process.
• As an afterthought for legacy solutions: Solutions, not native, would be added as a plug-in or bolt-on to legacy data protection solutions. While popular, they protect the persistent storage alone and that only addresses a portion of what is required to keep the workload available.

At HYCU, we have spent the past two years evolving our Protégé platform to protect container-based workloads as seamlessly as we do for physical and virtual applications. Threre’s a reason why we say, your data, your way, yours to control. And, we can add regardless of location, application or workload.

Learn More About HYCU for Kubernetes

HYCU Protégé’s design and architecture allow for support of all platforms. Our first release announced today includes Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with other Kubernetes cloud services following shortly. It is available immediately through authorized HYCU reseller and channel partners worldwide and is available as a service directly from Google Cloud’s marketplace. For information on HYCU and HYCU Protégé for Kubernetes, you can visit https://www.hycu.com/protege/google-cloud#gke or follow us on Twitter and connect with us on LinkedIn.

I encourage you to reach out to us, especially if Kubernetes-based workloads are important to you. Even if they aren’t now, based on how we see things trending, they will be. You can reach me directly at Subbiah.sundaram@hycu.com.