Home > Data Protection > PowerProtect Data Manager > Dell PowerProtect Data Manager: Protecting Kubernetes Workloads > Protection of Kubernetes clusters
PowerProtect Data Manager discovers the Kubernetes clusters using the IP address or FQDN. PowerProtect Data Manager uses the discovery service account and the token (kubeconfig file) to integrate with kube- apiserver. PowerProtect Data Manager protects two types of assets of Kubernetes cluster that are Namespaces and PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs). The PowerProtect controller is responsible for the backup and restore of PVCs. The VMware Velero component is responsible for the backup and restore of metadata that is saved in the target storage.
A protection policy enables selecting a specific group of assets to be backed up. The protection policy is created using the PowerProtect Data Manager UI for the backup schedule and retention lock. When a protection policy is created, a new storage unit (SU) is created on the protection storage as part of protection policy configuration.
With Kubernetes workloads, a BackupStorageLocation containing the SU information is also created on the cluster. The PowerProtect controller running in the Kubernetes cluster creates a corresponding BackupStorageLocation in the Velero namespace whenever a BackupStorageLocation is created in the PowerProtect namespace.