How ACK Backup Center Enables Seamless Multi-Cloud Kubernetes Migration

Enterprises moving container service platforms across clouds or from on‑premises data centers face multiple challenges such as data security, service interruption risk, platform compatibility, and migration complexity, especially for micro‑service architectures with large data volumes.

ACK Backup Center Overview

The ACK Backup Center provides a one‑stop disaster‑recovery and migration solution for Kubernetes workloads. It allows operators to create periodic backup plans or one‑time application backups, supporting namespace, label, and resource‑type selection, as well as storage‑volume backup for stateful applications. For GitOps‑enabled enterprises, the data‑protection feature can back up only volume data.

Migration Scenario Support

In hybrid‑cloud environments, the Backup Center can back up selected resources and volumes to Alibaba Cloud, then restore them to a target ACK cluster, achieving seamless application migration with an intuitive UI and real‑time progress monitoring.

Step‑by‑Step Migration Process

Create an ACK One registered cluster and register the source Kubernetes clusters from other clouds or on‑premises.

Deploy the Backup Center component in the registered cluster.

Back up the workloads and, for stateful apps, the associated storage volumes to a designated backup repository.

Create (or use) the target ACK cluster with sufficient compute resources and deploy the Backup Center component.

Initialize the backup repository in the target cluster, wait for synchronization, and restore the workloads.

Case Study: Specific Challenges and Solutions

Fine‑grained Backup Strategy

Challenge: Legacy clusters contain obscure resources and custom databases that must be fully restored while excluding unnecessary applications to reduce transfer volume.

Solution: Use namespace exclusion, annotation‑based volume exclusion, and selective backup of resources (e.g., exclude kube-system), as well as automatic inclusion of dependent resources like IngressClass and CRDs.

Compatibility of System Components and Underlying Cloud Resources

Challenge: Different cloud providers have varying load‑balancer annotations, CSI drivers, and image repository URLs.

Solution: Before restoration, the Backup Center allows configuration adjustments via ConfigMap or UI options, automatically mapping annotations, converting CSI storage classes, and rewriting image repository addresses.

Cross‑Version Cluster Upgrade

Challenge: Migrating from older Kubernetes versions requires API version conversion.

Solution: The Backup Center backs up all supported apiVersions (e.g., extensions/v1beta1, apps/v1beta1, apps/v1) and restores resources using the target cluster’s recommended apiVersion, handling unsupported resources with manual intervention if needed.

Cross‑Cloud Volume Data Migration

Challenge: Moving data from other providers' disks to Alibaba Cloud disks involves multiple storage types.

Solution: The Backup Center leverages Alibaba Cloud Backup Service to store volume data, supporting block, object, and file storage from other clouds, as well as self‑built storage like Ceph or NFS. During restoration, it automatically selects the appropriate ACK CSI storage class for the target cloud.

Minimizing Downtime for Data Consistency

Challenge: Ensuring data consistency often requires service pause, leading to downtime.

Solution: Incremental backup during low‑traffic periods reduces the amount of data to back up, and built‑in compression and deduplication further speed up the process.

Encryption and Secure Transfer

Challenge: Data must be encrypted during migration.

Solution: The Backup Center encrypts data locally, secures transmission, and supports server‑side encryption for the OSS bucket storing backups.

Overall, the ACK Backup Center automates resource and volume backup, handles cross‑cloud compatibility, supports version migration, and provides encryption and incremental backup, enabling enterprises to merge, upgrade, and migrate clusters with minimal disruption.