GKE Backup & Disaster Recovery

Protects stateful GKE workloads using Backup for GKE.

CLI Reference

# Enable GKE Backup addon (Slow cluster-level update)
gcloud container clusters update <CLUSTER_NAME> --enable-gke-backup --region <REGION> --quiet

# Create Backup Plan
gcloud container backup-restore backup-plans create <PLAN_NAME> \
  --cluster=<CLUSTER_NAME> --location=<REGION> \
  --retention-days=<DAYS> --cron-schedule="<CRON>" --all-namespaces --quiet

# Trigger Manual Backup
gcloud container backup-restore backups create <BACKUP_NAME> \
  --backup-plan=<PLAN_NAME> --location=<REGION> --quiet

# Create Restore Plan
gcloud container backup-restore restore-plans create <RESTORE_PLAN_NAME> \
  --cluster=<TARGET_CLUSTER_NAME> --location=<REGION> --backup-plan=<SOURCE_BACKUP_PLAN_NAME> \
  --cluster-resource-conflict-policy=USE_EXISTING_VERSION --namespaced-resource-restore-mode=FAIL_ON_CONFLICT --quiet

# Execute Restore
gcloud container backup-restore restores create <RESTORE_NAME> \
  --restore-plan=<RESTORE_PLAN_NAME> --backup=<BACKUP_NAME> --location=<REGION> --quiet

Best Practices

1. CMEK Encryption: Encrypt backup plans using Customer-Managed Encryption Keys: --backup-encryption-key=<KEY>.
2. Scope: Prefer backing up specific namespaces rather than the entire cluster: --included-namespaces=<ns1>,<ns2>.

Troubleshooting & Common Pitfalls (CRITICAL)

[!IMPORTANT] Slow Operations: Enabling GKE Backup (--enable-gke-backup) triggers a slow Google Cloud control plane cluster update that takes several minutes. * Rule: Do not run a terminal loop waiting for the GKE Backup addon to become active. * Action: Provide the command to enable the addon, explain that the operation will proceed in the background, and immediately proceed to write the backup plan configs. Do not block.