cozystack/examples/backups/vmi/scenario-admin-prepare.md

Scenario: Cluster Administrator Configures Backups

This scenario walks through the cluster-level setup required before users can back up and restore their virtual machines. A cluster administrator creates Velero strategies and a BackupClass that binds those strategies to Cozystack application types.

Prerequisites

• A running Cozystack cluster with the backup-controller installed.
• Velero deployed in the cozy-velero namespace with a configured BackupStorageLocation (default: default).
• kubectl access with cluster-admin privileges.

Steps

1. Create Velero Strategies

./01-create-strategies.sh

This creates two cluster-scoped Velero strategy objects:

Strategy	Purpose
vminstance-strategy	Defines backup and restore templates for VMInstance applications. Includes VirtualMachine, PVCs, HelmReleases, pods (required by kubevirt-velero-plugin), and supporting resources. Uses snapshotMoveData: true for portable volume snapshots.
vmdisk-strategy	Defines backup and restore templates for standalone VMDisk applications. Covers HelmReleases, PVCs, and ConfigMaps.

Both strategies use Go templates with {{ .Application.metadata.name }}, {{ .Application.metadata.namespace }}, and {{ .Parameters.backupStorageLocationName }} so they can be reused across any application instance.

Key design details:

• orLabelSelectors scope backups to only the resources belonging to a specific application, preventing cross-contamination between VMs in the same namespace.
• The restore spec excludes datavolumes.cdi.kubevirt.io to avoid conflicts when the HelmRelease of VMDisk recreates DataVolumes after restore.
• existingResourcePolicy: update allows restoring over existing resources during in-place restore.

2. Create BackupClass

./02-create-backupclass.sh

Creates a BackupClass named velero that maps application types to their strategies:

Application Kind	Strategy	Parameters
VMInstance (apps.cozystack.io)	vminstance-strategy	backupStorageLocationName: default
VMDisk (apps.cozystack.io)	vmdisk-strategy	backupStorageLocationName: default

The backupStorageLocationName parameter can be overridden via the BACKUP_STORAGE_LOCATION environment variable if your Velero installation uses a non-default storage location.

Configuration

Variable	Default	Description
BACKUP_STORAGE_LOCATION	default	Velero BackupStorageLocation name

Result

After completing these steps the cluster is ready for users to create backups of their VMInstance and VMDisk applications by referencing the velero BackupClass. No further admin action is required for individual backup or restore operations.