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Version: 1.18

Backup and Restore

This guide outlines the steps to recover an Okteto instance in the event of an unexpected failure and for disaster recovery preparedness.

Okteto Metadata​

The most important resources to backup so you can effectively recover an Okteto instance are:

  • Service Accounts: A Kubernetes service account is created for every user that logs in to Okteto. Backing up all the service accounts in the okteto namespace with the label dev.okteto.com: "true" will ensure your users do not need to recreate their Okteto accounts.
  • Secrets: Kubernetes secrets store Okteto variables, tokens, certificates, ssh keypairs, and any other secrets in the okteto namespace. Backing up secrets will save a lot of time reconfiguring all of these during a recovery process.
  • Custom Resources: Any Custom Resources in the okteto namespace corresponding to the Okteto CRDs. These CRDs can be identified with the label app.kubernetes.io/part-of: okteto. Okteto uses CRDs to store your Catalog, Container Registry Credentials, and more

We recommend to backup these resources every 24h.

Recovery Process​

You can follow two different recovery processes:

  • Okteto Metadata recovery process: recovers all the users’ metadata, tokens, variables, secrets, and custom resources mentioned in the section above. It doesn’t recover users’ namespaces, preview environments and volumes.
  • Okteto Metadata and Users' Namespaces recovery process: recovers the Okteto metadata, namespaces, preview environments, and volumes for all users. This is a full and complete recovery of the Okteto instance

Namespaces are ephemeral in Okteto so we recommend using the Okteto Metadata recovery process and let your developers recreate their namespaces as needed.

Okteto Metadata Recovery Process​

This is the fastest and easiest recovery process. This recovery process will not restore users' namespaces and application data.

  • Backup the Okteto Metadata in your okteto namespace.
  • Create a new cluster
  • Reinstall the Okteto Helm chart with the same configuration as your previous Okteto instance in the new cluster.
  • Restore the Okteto Metadata in the okteto namespace of the new cluster.
  • The Ingress-Nginx service in the new cluster will have a new load balancer. Configure your DNS settings to point to the IP of this new load balancer.
  • Once the restore work is complete and it has been verified that the new cluster is functioning correctly you can delete the old cluster

Users and Namespaces Recovery​

This option requires more time and the use of external tools to backup all your namespaces:

  • Backup users' namespaces using a tool like Velero. All these namespaces have the label dev.okteto.com: "true".
  • Backup the Okteto Metadata in your okteto namespace.
  • Create a new cluster
  • Restore users' namespaces using a tool like Velero in the new cluster before reinstalling Okteto.
  • Reinstall the Okteto Helm chart with the same configuration as your previous Okteto instance in the new cluster.
  • Restore the Okteto Metadata in the okteto namespace of the new cluster.
  • The Ingress-Nginx service in the new cluster will have a new load balancer. Configure your DNS settings to point to the IP of this new load balancer.
  • Once the restore work is complete and it has been verified that the new cluster is functioning correctly you can delete the old cluster

Keep in mind that private registry configurations are not reestablished until the Helm chart is reinstalled. This may temporarily affect the ability of certain pods to pull images from the Okteto Registry.