Home > Storage > PowerFlex > White Papers > Google Distributed Cloud Virtual with Dell PowerFlex and Data Protection using PowerProtect Data Manager > Integrating GDC Virtual cluster with PowerProtect Data Manager
PowerProtect Data Manager can be integrated with the GDC Virtual cluster by directly connecting to the control plane of the GDC Virtual cluster. Kubernetes uses persistent volumes to store persisted application data. Persistent volumes are created on external storage devices and then attached to a particular pod using PVCs. PVCs are included along with other namespaces in Data Manager backup and recovery operations. In this solution, PowerFlex is the default storage class for the Kubernetes cluster workloads that are integrated through the PowerFlex CSI driver.
Once the Kubernetes cluster is added as an asset source in PowerProtect Data Manager and discovery is complete, the associated namespaces are available as assets for protection. PowerProtect Data Manager protects two types of Kubernetes cluster assets: Namespaces and PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs).
During the discovery process, Data Manager creates the following namespaces in the cluster:
The PowerProtect Data Manager UI is used to enable, add, and register the Kubernetes asset source for the protection of assets.
Enable the asset source as follows:
To protect the Kubernetes environment with PowerProtect Data Manager, add the GDC Virtual cluster as an asset source. Namespaces are then automatically discovered as assets for data protection operations. The following figure shows the field details of a Kubernetes cluster:
Specify the Kubernetes cluster attributes as follows:
Note: The use of any port other than 443 or 6443 requires opening the port on PowerProtect Data Manager.
The service account must have the following privileges:
Note: The admin-user service account in the kube-system namespace contains all the privileges. The token of this account can be used directly or an existing similar service account. Alternatively, create a service account that is bound to a cluster role that contains these privileges and provide the token of this service account. For more information, see the PowerProtect Data Manager Kubernetes User Guide.
When you add a GDC Virtual cluster, the cluster information appears in the table, and automatic discovery of the namespace assets is initiated as shown in the following figure:
When the discovery is successful, the namespace assets appear as assets in the Kubernetes tab in the Assets window as shown in the following figure: