Configure Velero backup and restore with Min.io as the local object store

[Note:  This is the second article in a series on setting up your Velero development environment.  In the first article, we setup your development environment and connected to AWS S3 as the object store]

During development and testing of a plugin for Velero, I blew through my monthly AWS “allowance” in a little over two weeks. When I thought about it, I had a few options to pursue. I could wait until the end of the billing cycle to refresh my funds, get approval for a larger allowance (not happening!), or figure out another option for a cloud provider.

I started thinking about object stores and persistent volumes and had a conversation with Rafael Brito (http://www.rafaelbrito.com/). He pointed me to a blog he did back in 2019 using Minio + NFS (http://www.rafaelbrito.com/2019/11/project-velero-12-on-openshift-311.html).

I did some research into Minio (https://min.io/) and realized there was a simple way to use Minio + a local directory on the Mac to mimic using AWS as a cloud provider for Velero backup and restore.

I thought others might find these steps useful during dev/test so here goes…

Install the Minio server on the Mac

 % brew install minio/stable/minio

Create a directory on the mac to use as the local persistent storage:

 % cd /Users/<your username>

 % mkdir velero-storage

Start up the Minio server on the mac and pass the newly created directory to Minio

 % export MINIO_ACCESS_KEY=minio

 % export MINIO_SECRET_KEY=<your minio pwd>

 % minio server /Users/<your username>/velero-storage

Open a browser and access the Minio interface via one of the endpoints:

You must first create the bucket in Minio before using Velero backup

     Go into the Minio gui and select the (+) button in the lower right hand corner and create a "velero" bucket manually

Next, go into your home directory and create a credentials-minio file. This is similar to your .aws/credentials file

 % more credentials-minio
 [default]
 aws_access_key_id = minio
 aws_secret_access_key = <your minio pwd>

Then setup the environment variables and install Velero to use Minio

There are a couple items of note:

BUCKET is the bucket you created in Minio

REGION uses the url of the Minio server

SECRETFILE points to your credentials file

use-volume-snapshots must be false

Then run your Velero backup

 % velero backup create velero-test

Once the backup completes, you should see the backup stored in your velero-storage directory on the Mac and also in the velero bucket in the Minio browser gui!

Head over to github.com for the markdown version of this document and also for sample scripts to help you install and run Velero.

https://github.com/davemazur/velero_dev_guide