HYCU for Kubernetes

Data Protection Challenges

Container adoption is accelerating and so too is the requirement to properly protect container environments and the data in them. ESG research indicates that, while many organizations recognize the growing importance of containers relative to other vital application platforms, apparent misconceptions in terms of data protection can compromise their ability to protect containerized workloads.

HYCU for Kubernetes

The HYCU Suite provides application-level protection for containers managed by Kubernetes across a multi-cloud environment.

It is an elastically scalable, backup-as-a-service (BaaS) offering that delivers a unified one-click approach to protect data sources with a comprehensive and consistent level of recovery, regardless of data sources, that leaves no application unprotected. Figure 1 shows the HYCU Dashboard, including Applications, Instances, Buckets, Policies, Targets, Tools, Events, and Reports.

Figure 1. HYCU for Kubernetes Dashboard

The key HYCU for Kubernetes benefits include:

• Automated app discovery: HYCU can identify and manage container-based workloads from a single UI.
• Policy-based protection: HYCU implements a “set once and forget” model that promotes DevOps-style operations.
• SLAs on an app level: HYCU provides the flexibility to specify policy-based SLAs for container-based workloads regardless of their location.
• Granular and flexible recovery: HYCU can recover an entire application from individual persistent disks to individual
  YAML files.
• Recovery validation: HYCU leverages public cloud multi-regions and locations to spin up applications for recovery.
• Cloning and DR: HYCU supports test/dev and DR with cross-project and cross-region cloning.

ESG Demo Highlights

ESG performed a detailed evaluation of the HYCU for Kubernetes solution by participating in an interactive demo hosted by HYCU subject matter experts. The evaluation focused on highlighting the solution’s backup-as-a-service data protection and recovery features and capabilities.

Multi-cloud Data Protection

HYCU for Kubernetes is delivered as a service to users. The user simply subscribes, selects the plan, and hits the “go” button to get started. The HYCU web user interface includes an intuitive dashboard, which provides an at‑a‑glance overview of the data protection status in the environment, substantiated with relevant statistics. It also enables users to monitor all data protection activities and quickly identify areas that require attention. The user interface also enables users to easily access the area of interest by simply clicking the corresponding widget title described below.

Figure 2. Application Protection Details

Key HYCU management components include:

• Applications: Shows percentage of protected applications and exact number of protected/unprotected applications.
• Instances: Shows percentage of protected instances and exact number of protected/unprotected instances.
• Buckets: Shows data protection information at the storage level.
• Policies: Shows percentage of policies that are compliant and exact number of compliant/non‑compliant policies.
• Targets: Shows number of existing targets, individual storage capacity, and joint storage capacity utilization.
• Tasks: Shows number of tasks in the protected environment for the last 48 hours.
• Events: Shows number of events in the protected environment for the last 48 hours.

HYCU Protégé provides multi-cloud data protection for multi-tenant environments, as shown in Figure 3. HYCU Protégé is designed to be easy to use. It includes dynamic provisioning both on-premises and in the cloud, and it can be deployed without impacting production systems. There is no need to manually install hypervisors or agents.

Figure 3. HYCU Protégé Multi-cloud Data Protection for Multi-tenant Environments

The solution provides the following features and capabilities:

• Automatically discovers and configures applications.
• Supports distributed applications with shared storage.
• Enables users to protect instance data with fast and reliable backup and restore operations.
• Enables users to protect data in buckets with fast and reliable backup and restore operations.
• Granular restores of individual files or folders inside the bucket.
• Enables automatic assignment of policies to instances or Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) applications.
• Allows users to define either a bucket or a snapshot as a target—a location for storing data.

First Impressions

Container adoption is accelerating in the modern hybrid and multi-cloud application environment and so too is the requirement to properly protect container environments and the data in them. While many recognize the growing importance of containers relative to other vital application platforms, apparent misconceptions in terms of data protection can compromise their ability to protect containerized workloads. In addition, respondents to an ESG research survey identified managing backup/recovery of container-based application across multiple public cloud services and hybrid clouds as two of their biggest challenges related to managing backup/disaster recovery for container environments.

ESG’s first impression is that the HYCU for Kubernetes backup-as-a-service solution was designed to provide a fully managed data protection for containers.

HYCU’s mission is to make data protection as simple and cost-effective as possible; to improve business agility; and to deliver a unified security, reliability, performance, and user experience. HYCU seamlessly handles the many hidden tasks to help minimize the effort associated with backup management. In so doing,

HYCU helps free organizations to focus on increasing productivity and driving down costs.

Organizations looking to centralize and improve operational efficiencies and disaster recovery in a more coherent and consistent fashion would be smart to include HYCU in their list of solutions to evaluate.