Equivalent of backup CLI from schedule to YAML format

[s4ndalHat]

Hello,

Is there any valid value to create backup from schedule like the equivalent of velero backup create --from-schedule in a YAML format ?

I didn't find anything in the API types reference in the documentation.

Thanks!

[kaovilai]

--from-schedule-file ? something like that?

[kaovilai]

not any known flag currently afaict but is this something you wanted?

[sseago]

@kaovilai it sounds like they wanted a way to do this avoiding the CLI completely.

[sseago]

I'm not sure how this would work. The velero backup create CLI is a way to create a backup CR, so the --from-schedule tells the CLI how to fill out the backup spec rather than specifying the spec fields via CLI flags.

It sounds like you want to create a backup CR directly from yaml (via kubectl create -f), but when you're creating the yaml for a backup, the CLI isn't used at all. The backup CR is created in its entirety and Velero just reconciles it as-is.

In other words, if you want to create the backup CR manually, then just create yaml yourself and pass to kubectl create/apply -- if you don't want to specify all of the backup spec fields yourself, that's what the velero CLI is for. If you want to create a backup based on the content of a current backup schedule, the CLI seems like the perfect tool for this.

[sseago]

This is potentially a very large change since the backup spec fields are referenced in so many places in the code. If we do decide we want this kind of functionality, I think we really need to implement it in such a way that the backup spec contains all the values we need directly. Since doing this from the backup controller itself seems like a pretty big anti-pattern, perhaps the best alternative would be some sort of new CR that provides some alternate means of creating a Velero backup -- something like a BackupTemplate CR that, when reconciled just results in a backup being created. This would also be a big change, but it's a lot more self-contained than modifying everywhere in Velero that references backup spec fields to do a more complex lookup.

[s4ndalHat]

I was just wondering about why this was not implemented, but there is no urgency for me ☺️
Anyway, really glad that you guys are so proactive about it and think about it

Regards,

[kaovilai]

Velero can add annotation of backup spec from schedule backupspec during first backup creation to the backup and read from there.. instead of a new status field.

[kaovilai]

the backupRequest object can just take spec from the annotation if fromSchedule is found.

[kaovilai]

Using annotation would be similar to how they are adding managedFields, or last-applied-configuration annotation.

[sseago]

@s4ndalHat This isn't really analogous to the "from-backup" flag on restore -- that's an explicit field in the restore.spec which always references an external object. "from-schedule" is different -- it functions by telling the CLI to copy all of the spec template values from the schedule into the backup spec directly.