An administrator is tasked with implementing a backup solution capable of backing up the Su- pervisor cluster, vSphere Pods, and persistent volumes…

VMware’s supported method for protecting Supervisor-cluster objects, vSphere Pods, and their persistent volumes is Velero coupled with the Velero Plugin for vSphere.

• Velero (with its Restic side-car) takes an etcd-level export of Kubernetes API objects and performs file-level backup of container volumes.

• The Velero Plugin for vSphere invokes vSphere CNS-aware snapshot APIs so that persistent volumes used by Supervisor services and vSphere Pods are quiesced and captured consistently.

Both components are required; neither vCenter Server, NSX-T Manager, nor the Host Client alone provide Kubernetes or PV backup capability.

A. VMware vCenter – Offers management and image-level VM backup only; lacks Kubernetes/PV awareness.

C. NSX-T Manager – Provides networking/security, not workload or volume backup.

D. vSphere Host Client – Single-host UI; no functionality for cluster-wide Kubernetes or PV backup.

1. VMware vSphere with Tanzu Documentation 7.0 U3

“Back Up and Restore Supervisor Cluster and Workloads with Velero and the Velero Plugin for vSphere

” docs.vmware.com

Section “Overview” & “Installing Velero” (para 1-3).

2. VMware Technical White Paper

“vSphere with Tanzu Backup and Restore using Velero Plugin for vSphere

” Rev. Oct 2021

pp. 4-6 (“Solution Components: Velero

Restic

Velero Plugin for vSphere”).

3. VMware KB 84217

“Using Velero and the vSphere Plugin to Protect Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters

” Steps 1-2.

4. M. Hibbs et al.

“Cloud Native Backup for VMware Tanzu Using Velero

” Proceedings of VMworld 2021

Session APP-2745

slides 9-11.