Skip to main content

OpenStack Karbor

OpenStack Karbor is a data protection-as-a-service (DPaaS) project for OpenStack that provides application-aware backup, restore, and Disaster Recovery (DR) workflows for cloud resources.

  • Data protection-as-a-service for OpenStack resources (data protection)
  • Application-consistent backup and restore workflows across multiple OpenStack services (backup & recovery)
  • Abstraction layer over providers such as storage or backup backends via plugins (integration & extensibility)
  • Policy-driven protection plans, checkpoints, and scheduled operations for OpenStack tenants (governance & automation)
  • RESTful Application Programming Interface (API) for integrating protection operations into higher-level tools and portals (API platform)

More About OpenStack Karbor

OpenStack Karbor is a data protection-as-a-service (DPaaS) project that addresses the protection, backup, and recovery problem space for OpenStack-based clouds. It focuses on orchestrating application-consistent backup and restore workflows for OpenStack resources, treating data protection as an API-driven service that tenants and operators can consume programmatically or through user interfaces built on top of its API.

Karbor exposes a RESTful API (API platform) that allows users to define what needs to be protected, how often, and where the backups or replicas are stored. Rather than implementing low-level storage or snapshot mechanisms directly, Karbor acts as an orchestration and abstraction layer (orchestration) over multiple underlying protection providers, such as storage systems, backup applications, or cloud-native snapshot engines. This model allows operators to integrate different vendor technologies behind a consistent OpenStack-facing interface.

At the core of Karbor are protection plans and checkpoints (backup & recovery). A protection plan describes the resources to protect, such as compute instances, volumes, and other OpenStack service objects, along with the policies and schedules that govern protection operations. When a plan is executed, Karbor coordinates the creation of a checkpoint, representing a recoverable state for the defined set of resources. These checkpoints can later be used to perform restore operations that re-create or roll back resources to the captured state.

Karbor integrates with other OpenStack projects (cloud infrastructure), typically working with services such as Nova for compute, Cinder for block storage, and possibly others, depending on provider support. It is designed to handle multi-resource and cross-service consistency, so that an application composed of multiple instances and volumes can be protected as a single unit. This helps align backup and recovery operations with application topology rather than treating each resource in isolation.

Enterprises deploy Karbor in OpenStack environments where data protection, backup governance, and DR workflows must be automated and exposed through APIs (IT operations & governance). Tenant projects can consume Karbor to define and manage their own protection plans within quota and policy boundaries set by cloud operators. Providers and plugins (integration & extensibility) enable connection to external backup or storage technologies, which makes Karbor relevant as a coordination layer within existing enterprise data protection ecosystems.

From a directory and taxonomy perspective, OpenStack Karbor can be classified under data protection-as-a-service, backup and recovery orchestration, and OpenStack ecosystem services. It occupies a role at the control-plane level, focusing on policy, workflow, and abstraction rather than raw data movement, and it is intended to be integrated with both OpenStack-native resource managers and third-party data protection platforms.