#persistentstorage

Kubernetes has become a foundational platform for deploying containerized applications. But as more stateful workloads enter the cluster — like databases and shared storage systems — ensuring data protection becomes critical.

This no-code guide explores how to back up and restore Kubernetes block and file volumes, the differences between storage types, and best practices for business continuity and disaster recovery.

📌 What Is Kubernetes Volume Backup & Restore?

In Kubernetes, Persistent Volumes (PVs) store data used by pods. These volumes come in two main types:

Block Storage: Raw devices formatted by applications (e.g., for databases).

File Storage: File systems shared between pods (e.g., for media files or documents).

Backup and restore in this context means protecting this stored data from loss, corruption, or accidental deletion — and recovering it when needed.

Block vs 📂 File Storage: What's the Difference?

FeatureBlock StorageFile StorageUse CaseDatabases, apps needing low latencyMedia, documents, logsAccessSingle node accessMulti-node/shared accessExampleAmazon EBS, OpenStack CinderNFS, CephFS, GlusterFS

Understanding your storage type helps decide the right backup tool and strategy.

🔒 Why Backing Up Volumes Is Essential

🛡️ Protects critical business data

💥 Recovers from accidental deletion or failure

📦 Enables migration between clusters or cloud providers

🧪 Supports safe testing using restored copies

🔧 Common Backup Methods (No Code Involved)

1. Snapshots (for Block Volumes)

Most cloud providers and storage backends support volume snapshots, which are point-in-time backups of storage volumes. These can be triggered through the Kubernetes interface using storage plugins called CSI drivers.

Benefits:

Fast and efficient

Cloud-native and infrastructure-integrated

Easy to automate with backup tools

2. File Backups (for File Volumes)

For file-based volumes like NFS or CephFS, the best approach is to regularly copy file contents to a secure external storage location — such as object storage or an offsite file server.

Benefits:

Simple to implement

Granular control over which files to back up

Works well with shared volumes

3. Backup Tools (All-in-One Solutions)

Several tools offer full platform support to handle Kubernetes volume backup and restore — with user-friendly interfaces and no need to touch code:

Velero: Popular open-source tool that supports scheduled backups, volume snapshots, and cloud storage.

Kasten K10: Enterprise-grade solution with dashboards, policy management, and compliance features.

TrilioVault, Portworx PX-Backup, and Rancher Backup: Also offer graphical UIs and seamless Kubernetes integration.

✅ Backup Best Practices for Kubernetes Volumes

🔁 Automate backups on a regular schedule (daily/hourly)

🔐 Encrypt data at rest and in transit

🌍 Store backups in a different location/region from the primary cluster

📌 Use labels to categorize backups by application or environment

🧪 Periodically test restore processes to validate recoverability

♻️ How Restoration Works (No Coding Required)

Restoring volumes in Kubernetes depends on the type of backup:

For snapshots, simply point new volumes to an existing snapshot when creating them again.

For file backups, use backup tools to restore contents back into the volume or re-attach to new pods.

For full-platform backup tools, use the interface to select a backup and restore it — including associated volumes, pods, and configurations.

Many solutions provide dashboards, logs, and monitoring to confirm that restoration was successful.

🚀 Summary: Protect What Matters

As Kubernetes powers more business-critical applications, backing up your block and file volumes is no longer optional — it’s essential. Whether using built-in snapshots, file-based backups, or enterprise tools, ensure you have a backup and recovery plan that’s tested, automated, and production-ready.

Your Kubernetes environment can be resilient and disaster-proof — with zero code required.

Docker volume is a storage mechanism that is used for persistent data storage generated by Docker containers.

All volumes are managed by Docker and stored in a dedicated directory on your host, usually /var/lib/docker/volumes for Linux systems.

These are the uses of Volume:

Decoupling containers from storage

Attach Volume to a container

Share volume (storage/data) among different containers

On Deleting container volume do not delete

Commands of Docker Volume

create: it is used to create new volumes.

ls: It is used to list all the volumes in a namespace.

inspect: It is used to know more about any of the volumes.

rm: It is used to remove any volume if it is no longer required.

prune: It is used to remove all unused volumes.

Examples to Implement Docker Volume

You can start a container with a volume by setting the -v flag when you call docker run.

1. Create a new volume named ‘praman-vol’ and list it as below.

docker volume create praman-vol

docker volume ls

Output:

2. Check all details of this volume using the ‘inspect’ command as below:

Command: 

docker volume inspect my-vol Output:

3. Now, mount this volume to a container using the ‘-v’ flag and connect to the container using the ‘docker exec’ command, create a new test file ‘test.txt’. Stop and delete this container and create a new container and connect the same volume to this container. Again, execute this new container and check if the file is available or not in this newly created container as below

Commands:

docker run -itd -v praman-vol:/root --name wilsh-harvi alpine sleep 2000

docker exec -it wilsh-harvi sh

/  # cd /root

~ # echo “Welcome to praman” > test.txt

~ # cat test.txt

~ # exit

docker container stop wilsh-harvi

docker container rm wilsh-harvi

docker run -itd --mount source=praman-vol,target=/etc/ --name wilsh-harvi2 alpine sleep 2000

docker exec -it wilsh-harvi2 sh

/ # cat /etc/test.txt

/ # exit

Output:

Explanation: In the above snapshot, we can see that the file is available even after the first container got destroyed.

4. If we want to see the above file without mounting it to any container then we have to browse the ‘Mountpoint’ of the volume as below:

Command:

sudo cat /var/lib/docker/volumes/praman-vol/_data/test.txt

Output:

5. If this volume is no longer required and can be deleted; we can do so using the ‘rm’ command as below:

Command:

docker volume rm praman-vol

Output:

6. If there are multiple volumes that need to be deleted, we use the ‘prune’ command to delete all unused volumes at once as below:

Command:

docker volume prune

Output:

Explanation: In the above example, we have created 4 new volumes and did not attach any container to them it so we can use the ‘prune’ command to delete all the three volumes at once.

Advantages of Docker Volume

We can share volumes among multiple containers safely; backup and migration of volumes are also easy.

Allows sharing data among multiple containers.

We can attach volumes on both types of containers, whether it is a Linux and Windows container.

Conclusion

To conclude, in this article, we discussed how to create and inspect a Volume and mount it to multiple Docker Containers. This proves to be very helpful when you want shared access to files and directories among multiple Docker Containers.

Credit – Sachin Auti

MetricsViews Pvt. Ltd.

MetricsViews specializes in building a solid DevOps strategy with cloud-native including AWS, GCP, Azure, Salesforce, and many more.  We excel in microservice adoption, CI/CD, Orchestration, and Provisioning of Infrastructure - with Smart DevOps tools like Terraform, and CloudFormation on the cloud.