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Veeam Kasten
Kubernetes-native to the bone — applications captured as units, policies living in Git, and restores that return working apps instead of YAML archaeology.
How it’s rated
Full scoreboard ↓Quick answer
Veeam Kasten (K10) is the #1 Kubernetes data-protection platform: application-aware backup that captures whole K8s applications — pods, PVCs, ConfigMaps, Secrets, CRDs and operators — as coherent units, policy-driven via native custom resources so protection lives in the GitOps workflow, with ransomware-hardened immutable exports, cross-cluster/cross-cloud DR and restores that rebuild the application, not a pile of YAML and orphaned volumes. Acquired presciently in 2020, it's the answer to the uncomfortable audit question: the platform team ships daily — who can restore what they shipped?
The Veeam platform family
This page covers Kasten — the K8s flank. The rest of the seven-product lineup:
Quick facts
30-second orientation- Product
- Veeam Kasten (K10) — Kubernetes-native data protection
- Heritage
- Kasten acquisition (2020) — the K8s-backup pioneer
- Standing
- #1 Kubernetes data-protection platform
- Captures
- Apps as units — PVCs, ConfigMaps, Secrets, CRDs, operators
- Distributions
- EKS · AKS · GKE · OpenShift · Rancher · vanilla — CSI-driven
- GitOps-native
- Policies as custom resources — protection in the pipeline
- Cyber
- Immutable exports, ransomware detection, air-gap patterns
- DR
- Cross-cluster, cross-region, cross-cloud application mobility
- Licensing
- Per node / year — free tier for small clusters
- In India via
- TechBag — quotes, PoCs, GST invoicing, Tier-1 support
Understand K8s protection before you buy it
Most product pages skip this. We start here — so you buy a capability, not a buzzword.
What is Kubernetes data protection?
Backup rebuilt for how K8s works: the application as the unit — workloads, volumes, config, secrets and CRDs captured coherently — with policies that live in Git and restores that return working apps.
Kasten defined the category; the free tier means small clusters can start today.
Cluster folklore vs K8s-native protection — the honest table
What consolidation actually replaces, dimension by dimension.
| Dimension | "It's in Git" + volume snapshots | App-aware protection (Kasten) |
|---|---|---|
| The unit | Volume snapshots divorced from meaning | Applications — resources + state, coherent |
| Config & Secrets | 'In Git, mostly' (drift says otherwise) | Captured with the app, restored with it |
| Where policy lives | A backup console nobody visits | CRs in Git — the pipeline applies them |
| DB consistency | Crash-consistent and crossed fingers | Blueprint-quiesced, app-consistent |
| Cluster ransomware | Backups in the same blast radius | Immutable off-cluster exports |
| Region failure | Rebuild from Helm charts and memory | Cross-cluster restore, transformed |
| Cluster upgrades | Postponed for fear | Restore-to-new IS the path |
| Who restores | The platform team, always | Namespace teams, within RBAC |
Adoption is a Helm install and a PR — and the first whole-app restore drill converts the sceptics.
The five pieces of the platform
Vendors love diagrams; buyers need to know what they’re actually operating. Here’s the whole platform, demystified.
K10 Platform
Kasten runs inside the cluster as Kubernetes-native services — protection that speaks CRDs because it is CRDs.
App Discovery
Namespaces, labels and operators mapped into applications — backup scoped the way platform teams actually think.
Snapshot Fabric
Storage-native snapshots via CSI across EBS, Azure Disk, Ceph and friends — crash-consistent fast, app-consistent via hooks.
Export Vault
Backups exported to object storage with immutability — the cluster can burn; the applications can't.
Mobility Engine
Applications restored to other clusters, regions or clouds — DR, migration and cluster upgrades share one machinery.
One agent on every machine, one console over all of them — modules attach without a second operational world.
Twelve capabilities. Capture, recover, operate.
Kasten replaces the folklore — and the restore-day archaeology — with protection that speaks Kubernetes natively.
Application-Unit Backup
The whole app captured coherently — workloads, PVCs, ConfigMaps, Secrets, CRDs — not volumes divorced from the YAML that gives them meaning.
Storage-Native Snapshots
CSI-driven capture across the storage zoo — EBS, Azure Disk, GCP PD, Ceph, Portworx — fast because the storage does the work.
App-Consistent via Blueprints
Kanister blueprints quiesce databases before capture — PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB and Cassandra backed up consistent, not merely crash-safe.
GitOps-Native Policies
Protection policies are Kubernetes custom resources — versioned in Git, applied by pipeline, reviewed like the code they protect.
Immutable Exports
Off-cluster copies to object-locked storage — the ransomware that owns the cluster can't reach the applications' escape copies.
Ransomware Detection
Anomaly signals on backup streams flag encryption patterns in cluster data — the platform estate joins the tripwire grid.
Whole-App Restore
The application returns as a unit — resources, volumes and config rewired — not a YAML archaeology project with orphaned PVCs.
Selective Resource Restore
One PVC, one Secret, one namespace — restore scoped to the incident, transformed on the way if the target differs.
Cross-Cluster & Cross-Cloud DR
Applications restored to another cluster, region or cloud — transformations handle storage classes and networking differences.
Fleet Management
Many clusters, one policy plane — the platform team's estate governed centrally while each cluster keeps its autonomy.
K8s-Native RBAC & Self-Service
Namespace teams restore their own applications within guardrails — platform teams stop being the restore bottleneck.
The Veeam Estate Tie-In
The K8s flank of the same vendor covering VMs, SaaS and the vault — the audit story stays whole as the stack modernises.
Watch Kasten in action
The AWS-told overview, the best-practices discipline and the ransomware answer.
What is Veeam Kasten — with AWS
The K8s data-protection pitch, told with the cloud it most often runs on.
Kubernetes Data Protection Best Practices
The discipline — app-consistency, exports and policy design.
Kasten K10: Kubernetes Ransomware Protection
Immutable exports and detection — the cluster's ransomware answer.
Want a live, India-context walkthrough on your own fleet?
Book a guided demo →Every cluster has snapshots somewhere. Nobody has restored from them.
Here’s what genuinely sets Kasten apart from the alternatives.
Apps, not volumes
A PVC snapshot without its ConfigMaps, Secrets and CRDs is a puzzle, not a backup. Kasten captures applications as coherent units — which is the entire difference when restore day comes.
Protection lives in the pipeline
Policies as custom resources means backup ships with the app — versioned in Git, applied by ArgoCD, reviewed in the PR. The platform team never context-switches to a backup console.
The VM-tool trap, avoided
Agent-era tools snapshot nodes and miss the point: pods are cattle, state lives in CSI volumes, meaning lives in the API server. K8s-native protection is a different discipline — Kasten defined it.
DR, migration and upgrades share machinery
Cross-cluster restore with transformations covers the region failure, the cloud migration AND the scary cluster upgrade — three runbooks, one engine.
Ransomware thought of the cluster too
Immutable off-cluster exports and anomaly detection — because attackers noticed that platform estates carry production and their backups often live in the same blast radius.
The pioneer, with a parent
Kasten invented the category and Veeam bought it before rivals noticed K8s mattered — the #1 platform with the #1 vendor's roadmap and support behind it.
The numbers behind the platform
What your Kasten journey looks like
Cluster census
Clusters, distributions, storage classes, stateful apps and the honest answer to 'who can restore this?' — TechBag maps it free.
K10 in the pilot cluster
Helm-installed, apps discovered, first policies as CRs in the GitOps repo — immutable exports wired to object storage.
Restore drills
Whole-app restore, a cross-cluster move with transformations, a blueprint-quiesced database recovery — timed.
Fleet steady state
Multi-cluster policy plane live, namespace self-service within RBAC, node counts true-ed up. TechBag manages renewals.
Trusted across regulated industries in 100+ countries
The review scoreboard
Modelled on Gartner Peer Insights structure. *Counts and breakdowns are illustrative pending verified review collection.
Quick poll — what’s driving your evaluation?
Talk to an advisor“A namespace deletion took out a production app — resources, volumes, everything. Whole-app restore had it back, rewired, in 40 minutes. The YAML archaeology we avoided would have taken days.”
“Policies live in our GitOps repo next to the apps they protect. Backup coverage is now a PR review question, not an audit surprise.”
“We restored our whole stack to a new region during a cloud incident — transformations handled the storage classes. The DR test finally matched the DR slide.”
“Kanister blueprints quiesce our PostgreSQL before capture — app-consistent, not crash-and-hope. The DBAs signed off, which never happens.”
“The cluster upgrade we'd postponed for a year happened in an afternoon — restore-to-new-cluster IS the upgrade path.”
“Immutable exports to object-locked S3 means the cluster and its backups aren't one blast radius. Security approved a K8s tool in one meeting. A first.”
“Per-node licensing is fair; watch autoscaler-heavy estates — node counts breathe, and so does the bill. Plan the true-up.”
“Namespace teams restore their own apps within RBAC guardrails. The platform team stopped being the restore help desk.”
Where everyone sits — the grids
Analyst firms bury this view behind paywalls, and G2 retired its Grid. So here’s TechBag’s synthesis of the K8s protection market — tap any vendor to see why it sits where it does.
TechBag K8s-Protection Grid
Execution strength vs product vision — the classic market map, minus the paywall.
The category pioneer at #1, with a platform parent — this page's subject.
App-Awareness × Ops Burden
The grid nobody publishes — how K8s-native the capture is vs who carries the pager for it.
App-aware depth at product-grade ops — the defined corner of the category.
Positions are TechBag’s illustrative synthesis of public review-platform data and vendor documentation — not a reproduction of any analyst graphic. Verify before relying on it.
Kasten vs the K8s-protection field
The OSS default, the storage arms and the platform modules — honest lanes, including when Velero is enough.
| Dimension | Veeam Kasten | Velero (OSS) | Portworx PX-Backup | Commvault (K8s) | Cloud-native snapshots |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heritage & focus | The category pioneer (#1) | The open-source default | Storage-vendor arm | Platform module | Volume snapshots |
| App-aware capture (CRDs/operators) | The benchmark | Resource-level | Good | Solid | None |
| DB consistency (hooks/blueprints) | Kanister blueprints | Hooks, DIY | App hooks | App-aware | Crash-consistent |
| GitOps ergonomics | Policies as CRs | CR-native too | API-driven | Console-first | IaC-able |
| Cross-cluster/cloud mobility | Transform-aware | Possible | Good | Supported | Same-cloud only |
| Ops burden | Product-grade | You are the vendor | Moderate | Platform-managed | None |
| Economics | Per node + free tier | Free | Per node | Platform pricing | Snapshot storage |
| Best fit | Production K8s with stakes | OSS-first small estates | Portworx storage shops | Commvault estates | Dev/test clusters |
Which K8s-protection path fits you?
Honest fit signals — because the fastest way to lose your trust is to pretend one product wins every scenario.
Choose Veeam Kasten if…
- ✓Kubernetes carries production revenue
- ✓GitOps-native policy (CRs in the PR) fits your operating model
- ✓Cross-cluster DR / migration / upgrades need one engine
- ✓Immutable off-cluster exports are a security requirement
Choose Velero if…
- ✓OSS-first culture and engineering time to spare
- ✓Estate small enough that DIY toil stays bounded
Choose PX-Backup if…
- ✓Portworx is already your storage layer
Choose Commvault if…
- ✓K8s is one workload in a platform consolidation — hub live
Snapshots alone if…
- ✓The cluster is genuinely disposable (audit that claim)
What does cluster folklore cost you?
Drag the sliders (count K8s nodes; IT-hour cost as loaded platform-engineer rate). Estimates assume ~6 hours per node per year across Velero-style plugin upkeep, untested-restore risk work and DR-doc theatre, with ~65% absorbed by product-grade protection — the namespace-deletion day is the real number. Illustrative.
Loaded cost = salary + overheads per productive hour. Illustrative only — your TechBag quote models actual device counts and modules.
Three ways to consume it
Kasten prices per node with a free small-cluster tier. TechBag models node-breathing and bundles with the Veeam estate in one GST quote.
Free tier
Best for the first cluster
- Small clusters, full features
- The PoC is genuinely free
- Graduate when the estate does
Per-node enterprise
Best for production fleets
- Multi-cluster policy plane
- Immutability + detection
- True-ups for autoscaler estates
+ Veeam estate
Best for consolidators
- K8s beside VMs, SaaS, vault
- One vendor, one audit story
- TechBag negotiates the bundle
Buy it for less — TechBag pricing beats list
Whatever the list prices above, TechBag negotiates a significantly better deal — with GST-compliant INR invoicing and local support. Ask us for your discounted quote.
Get an India-ready quote
Tell us your device counts and current tools — we’ll model it against what you spend today.
The 8 questions to ask every K8s-backup vendor
Take this into your next vendor call — including ours.
Ask the platform team: if this namespace vanished, who restores it, from what, how fast? Silence is the finding.
Delete a test app entirely (resources + PVCs) and restore it as a unit. YAML archaeology means the tool failed.
Verify blueprint quiescing on YOUR databases — crash-consistent Postgres is a time bomb with a nice label.
Confirm backups export off-cluster to object-locked storage — in-cluster backups share the blast radius.
Restore to a different cluster with different storage classes. The transformation engine is the DR claim — test it.
Policies as CRs in YOUR repo, applied by YOUR pipeline — verify the workflow end to end.
Autoscaling estate? Model node-count breathing against per-node licensing before the quote.
Coming from Velero? List the plugins you maintain and the restores you've actually tested. That list is the comparison.
Questions buyers ask
Ready to evaluate Kasten?
Start on the free tier today, or bring your cluster census and let a TechBag advisor design the PoC around a whole-app restore drill.
Stats, ratings, review counts and pricing are illustrative and sourced from public materials; verify before purchase.