velero/docs/faq.md

FAQ

When is it appropriate to use Ark instead of etcd's built in backup/restore?

Etcd's restore tooling is good for recovering from data loss in a single etcd cluster, but does not support more sophisticated restores. If you only want to recover from data loss in a single etcd cluster, you're likely better off using etcd's backup/restore tooling.

Examples of cases where Ark is useful:

• backing up both Kubernetes resources and persistent volume state
• cluster migrations
• backing up a subset of your Kubernetes resources
• backing up Kubernetes resources that are stored across multiple etcd clusters (for example if you run a custom apiserver)

Will Ark restore my Kubernetes resources exactly the way they were before?

Yes, with some exceptions. For example, when Ark restores pods it deletes the nodeName from the pod so that it can be scheduled onto a new node. You can see some more examples of the differences in pod_restorer.go