Kasten K10 Disaster Recovery (DR) Setup Guide for Kubernetes / OpenShift

5 min readMar 16, 2026

Modern Kubernetes platforms require strong disaster recovery (DR) strategies. While application backups protect workloads and persistent volumes, it is equally important to protect the backup system itself.

In Kasten K10, the catalog stores critical backup metadata such as:

Backup policies
Restore points
Storage location profiles
Backup configuration and metadata

If the cluster fails and the catalog is lost, restoring applications becomes difficult even if backup data still exists.

To solve this, Kasten K10 Disaster Recovery (DR) allows you to export the K10 catalog to external object storage such as:

AWS S3/Azure Storage/ Google Cloud Storage
NFS/SMB
Other S3-compatible object storage systems

This guide explains how to configure Kasten K10 Disaster Recovery using the K10 Dashboard UI on OpenShift.

Why Kasten DR Is Important

In Kubernetes environments, clusters can fail due to:

Infrastructure failures
Storage corruption
Accidental deletion of namespaces
Cluster rebuild or migration

Without protecting the Kasten catalog, you may lose:

Backup policies
Restore history
Backup configuration

Kasten DR ensures that all metadata required for recovery is safely stored outside the cluster.

Prerequisites

Before configuring disaster recovery, ensure the following requirements are met.

Kasten K10 must be installed and running on your OpenShift cluster.

You need an object storage bucket for DR backups, such as:

AWS S3/Azure Storage/ Google Cloud Storage
NFS/SMB
Any S3-compatible storage system

You must have the following credentials:

Access Key ID
Secret Access Key

Step 2 — Kasten Dashboard Access

The K10 Dashboard must be accessible via browser.

Example route:

https://k10-route-kasten-io.apps.<cluster-domain>/k10/#

Step 2 — Create an S3 Location Profile

The Location Profile defines where Kasten stores backup data and disaster recovery metadata.

Navigate to console : Settings → Profiles → Location → New Profile

Immutable Backups : Enable this option if supported by your object storage.
This prevents backups from being modified or deleted.

After entering the configuration:

Click Validate
Click Save

Wait for the validation status to show: SUCCESS

This confirms that Kasten can access the storage bucket.

Configure the profile with the following values using cli.

kind: Profile
apiVersion: config.kio.kasten.io/v1alpha1
metadata:
  name: profile-name
  namespace: kasten-io
spec:
  locationSpec:
    type: ObjectStore
    objectStore:
      name: s3-bucket-name
      objectStoreType: S3
      region: us-east-1
    credential:
      secretType: AwsAccessKey
      secret:
        apiVersion: v1
        kind: secret
        name: k10secret-key # create first secret for aws access key and secret key
        namespace: kasten-io
  type: Location

Step 3 — Enable Kasten Disaster Recovery

Once the location profile is created, enable DR for the Kasten catalog.

Navigate to console : Settings → Setup Kasten DR

Configure the following options:

Location Profile

Select the S3 profile you created earlier

Passphrase Method

Passphrase

This passphrase is used to encrypt catalog backups.

Snapshot Configuration

Export local catalog snapshots

Click Enable Kasten DR to activate disaster recovery.

What Happens Internally

Once DR is enabled, Kasten automatically creates a disaster recovery policy responsible for exporting the catalog to object storage.

Example policy generated by Kasten:

apiVersion: config.kio.kasten.io/v1alpha1
kind: Policy
metadata:
  name: k10-disaster-recovery-policy
  namespace: kasten-io
spec:
  frequency: "@hourly"
  retention:
    hourly: 4
    daily: 1
    weekly: 1

This policy performs the following tasks automatically:

Creates hourly snapshots of the Kasten catalog
Encrypts the metadata using the configured passphrase
Exports the encrypted snapshots to S3 object storage

This ensures that the Kasten configuration is always recoverable.

Disaster Recovery Data Flow

The DR workflow follows this process:

Kasten Catalog stores policies, profiles, and backup metadata.
Kasten creates a catalog snapshot.
The snapshot is encrypted using the passphrase.
An export job is triggered.
The encrypted snapshot is uploaded to the S3 bucket.

The exported catalog includes:

Backup policies
Location profiles
Restore points metadata
Backup configuration

Verify the DR Configuration

You can verify the disaster recovery configuration using the OpenShift CLI.

Check the DR Policy

oc get policy k10-disaster-recovery-policy -n kasten-io

Check Recent Actions

oc get actions -n kasten-io

This shows recent backup or export jobs.

Verify Encryption Key Secret

oc get secret k10masterkey -n kasten-io

If everything is working correctly, you will see scheduled DR export jobs running periodically.

Disaster Recovery Restore Process

In case of a complete cluster failure, the recovery process is simple.

Install Kasten K10 on the new cluster.
Recreate the same S3 Location Profile.
Navigate to Setup Kasten DR.
Enter the original passphrase.
Provide the Cluster ID.

Kasten will automatically restore:

Backup policies
Location profiles
Restore points metadata

This restores the entire backup configuration environment.

Important Things to Remember

Save the Passphrase

The passphrase is required to decrypt DR backups.

If the passphrase is lost, the DR backups cannot be restored.

Store the passphrase securely using:

Password managers
Secret management tools
Secure documentation

Save the Cluster ID

The Cluster ID is required when restoring the Kasten catalog.

Without the Cluster ID, Kasten cannot identify the correct catalog backups.

DR Protects Only Kasten Metadata

Kasten DR protects backup metadata only.

Application data must still be protected using regular backup policies.

Best Practice Architecture

Layer 1 — Application Backup

Application data and persistent volumes are backed up to TrueNAS NFS storage.

Layer 2 — Kasten DR Metadata

Kasten catalog metadata is exported to S3 object storage.

This design provides two independent recovery layers, ensuring that both application data and backup configuration remain protected.

Conclusion

Kasten K10 Disaster Recovery ensures that the backup platform itself is protected. By exporting the K10 catalog to S3 object storage, organizations can recover backup policies, metadata, and restore points even after a complete cluster failure. When combined with application backup policies, this creates a complete Kubernetes disaster recovery strategy for modern cloud-native environments.

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About The Author
Suraj Solanki
Senior DevOps Engineer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suraj-solanki
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