Docker containers are taking off as an efficient way to develop and deploy applications. Gartner expects that in 2018 over 50% of new workloads will be deployed into containers in at least one stage of the application life cycle. Years ago, most containers were designed to be transient or short-lived because the containerized application did not create or modify data that would be needed later. However, as containers have gained in popularity an increasing number of containerized applications are designed to create and modify persistent data. This evolution in container usage is leading to questions about data integrity and highlighting the need for mature backup and recovery processes to support these containerized applications in a production environment.
Veritas is proud to announce the industry’s first Docker-certified backup and recovery solution for containers, based on Veritas NetBackup. We have developed a containerized NetBackup client that can be deployed as a container and utilized to protect persistent application data. Customers using NetBackup version 8.1 or later can download the containerized client today and immediately put it to good use.
Do you need to back up all of your containers? Not necessarily. It depends on how the applications within the containers were designed and if they create or modify persistent data. Discuss this topic with your developers to understand which containers may need to be protected and which ones can be safely excluded from backup processes. With a fully tested and certified data protection solution for Docker containers, developers may now freely explore new ways to implement containers using persistent data.
For maximum flexibility, our solution offers three different ways to protect containers which are described in detail in the white paper linked below. Using Kubernetes container orchestration, the NetBackup container client can be automatically deployed alongside application containers within a single Kubernetes pod, or deployed independently and used to protect a shared or dump volume. Standard NetBackup policies can then be activated to reliably protect persistent container data.
To learn more about this new NetBackup capability, read the white paper here.
Customers using NetBackup version 8.1 or later can immediately download and use this NetBackup client to protect their containerized application data. It is downloadable from Veritas or from the Docker Store here:
Download the NetBackup container client from the Docker Store
Lastly, if you happen to be at DockerCon Europe in Barcelona this week, please stop by Veritas booth #B5 and chat with our product experts. This is a rare opportunity to speak directly with the engineers who built this solution. They would love to talk to you and answer any specific questions you may have about protecting your container data.