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KubeVirt Disaster Recovery Guide

This page documents KubeVirt-specific configuration, caveats, and post-restore procedures for HostedCluster disaster recovery.

For the general backup and restore procedures, see:

KubeVirt-Specific Considerations

  • No pause required: Backup of a KubeVirt HostedCluster can be performed on a running cluster without pausing it.
  • VMs are recreated: KubeVirt VMs used as worker nodes are not backed up. They are automatically recreated as new VMs after restore.
  • Boot image PVCs excluded: The boot images for KubeVirt VMs are stored in large PVCs. These are excluded from the backup to reduce backup time and storage size.

OADP DPA Configuration for KubeVirt

KubeVirt environments typically use MinIO or another S3-compatible storage:

apiVersion: oadp.openshift.io/v1alpha1
kind: DataProtectionApplication
metadata:
  name: dpa-instance
  namespace: openshift-adp
spec:
  backupLocations:
    - name: default
      velero:
        config:
          region: minio
          profile: "default"
          s3ForcePathStyle: 'true'
          s3Url: 'http://<MINIO_ENDPOINT>:<PORT>'
        credential:
          key: cloud
          name: cloud-credentials
        default: true
        objectStorage:
          bucket: example-oadp
          prefix: backup-objects
        provider: aws
  snapshotLocations:
    - velero:
        provider: aws
        config:
          region: region-one
          profile: "default"
        credential:
          key: cloud
          name: cloud-credentials
  configuration:
    nodeAgent:
      enable: true
      uploaderType: kopia
    velero:
      defaultPlugins:
        - openshift
        - aws
        - kubevirt
        - csi
        - hypershift
      resourceTimeout: 2h

KubeVirt-Specific Backup Resources

When creating a Velero Backup for a KubeVirt HostedCluster, include the following KubeVirt-specific resources:

- kubevirtcluster
- kubevirtmachinetemplate
- datavolume

Boot Image PVC Filtering

The boot image PVCs for KubeVirt VMs are very large and unnecessary for backup (VMs are recreated). Filter them out using a label selector:

labelSelector:
  matchExpressions:
  - key: 'hypershift.openshift.io/is-kubevirt-rhcos'
    operator: 'DoesNotExist'

Additional Backup Options

# Preserve NodePort assignments during restore
preserveNodePorts: true

Restore Caveats

  • Data Plane PVCs: PVCs for hosted cluster workloads (non-boot-image) are included in the backup and will be restored.

For supportability details per platform and scenario, see the Supportability Matrix.