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Hooks

Velero currently supports executing commands in containers in pods during a backup.

Backup Hooks

When performing a backup, you can specify one or more commands to execute in a container in a pod when that pod is being backed up.

Velero versions prior to v0.7.0 only support hooks that execute prior to any custom action processing (“pre” hooks).

As of version v0.7.0, Velero also supports “post” hooks - these execute after all custom actions have completed, as well as after all the additional items specified by custom actions have been backed up.

There are two ways to specify hooks: annotations on the pod itself, and in the Backup spec.

Specifying Hooks As Pod Annotations

You can use the following annotations on a pod to make Velero execute a hook when backing up the pod:

Pre hooks

Annotation Name	Description
`pre.hook.backup.velero.io/container`	The container where the command should be executed. Defaults to the first container in the pod. Optional.
`pre.hook.backup.velero.io/command`	The command to execute. If you need multiple arguments, specify the command as a JSON array, such as `["/usr/bin/uname", "-a"]`
`pre.hook.backup.velero.io/on-error`	What to do if the command returns a non-zero exit code. Defaults to Fail. Valid values are Fail and Continue. Optional.
`pre.hook.backup.velero.io/timeout`	How long to wait for the command to execute. The hook is considered in error if the command exceeds the timeout. Defaults to 30s. Optional.

Post hooks (v0.7.0+)

Annotation Name	Description
`post.hook.backup.velero.io/container`	The container where the command should be executed. Defaults to the first container in the pod. Optional.
`post.hook.backup.velero.io/command`	The command to execute. If you need multiple arguments, specify the command as a JSON array, such as `["/usr/bin/uname", "-a"]`
`post.hook.backup.velero.io/on-error`	What to do if the command returns a non-zero exit code. Defaults to Fail. Valid values are Fail and Continue. Optional.
`post.hook.backup.velero.io/timeout`	How long to wait for the command to execute. The hook is considered in error if the command exceeds the timeout. Defaults to 30s. Optional.

Specifying Hooks in the Backup Spec

Please see the documentation on the Backup API Type for how to specify hooks in the Backup spec.

Hook Example with fsfreeze

We are going to walk through using both pre and post hooks for freezing a file system. Freezing the file system is useful to ensure that all pending disk I/O operations have completed prior to taking a snapshot.

We will be using examples/nginx-app/with-pv.yaml for this example. Follow the steps for your provider to setup this example.

Annotations

The Velero example/nginx-app/with-pv.yaml serves as an example of adding the pre and post hook annotations directly to your declarative deployment. Below is an example of what updating an object in place might look like.

kubectl annotate pod -n nginx-example -l app=nginx \
    pre.hook.backup.velero.io/command='["/sbin/fsfreeze", "--freeze", "/var/log/nginx"]' \
    pre.hook.backup.velero.io/container=fsfreeze \
    post.hook.backup.velero.io/command='["/sbin/fsfreeze", "--unfreeze", "/var/log/nginx"]' \
    post.hook.backup.velero.io/container=fsfreeze

Now test the pre and post hooks by creating a backup. You can use the Velero logs to verify that the pre and post hooks are running and exiting without error.

velero backup create nginx-hook-test

velero backup get nginx-hook-test
velero backup logs nginx-hook-test | grep hookCommand

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