We originally offered PVC backups and restores of file system and block modes that were hosted on container storage interface (CSI) API storage providers supporting PVC snapshots of PVC volumes provisioned on block storage, such as disk.csi.azure.com, rbd.csi.ceph.com, and the like. We now added support for PVC backups and restores of file mode for CSI providers supporting PVC snapshot capabilities on volumes provisioned on NFS and other non-block based storage such as file.csi.azure.com, cephfs.csi.ceph.com, and the like. The result is mixed-mode support of file-based and block-based storage of the same data present in the same name space. In architecting this enhancement we've made multi-streaming possible at the same time.
Expanding NetBackup's storage support to include supporting file mode also allows it to have more advanced storage functionality such as parallel streaming during restores. K8s persistent volume (PVs) storage units with multiple physical disks can now be both be backed up (as previously) and restored with multiple streams.
This expanded support also means K8s administrators can now use any CSI-based storage configuration required by a namespace. NetBackup can then automatically recognize what storage configuration is in use and protect it with a snapshot or backup from snapshot. This is true whether file-based only storage, block-based only storage, or a mix of file- and block-based storage is used within a single namespace. K8s administrators are free to select the best practices storage type for each namespace workload without worrying about data protection. NetBackup can automatically sense and protect whichever storage type they choose.
