Quick summary
- Backing up Amazon EKS is essential, especially for clusters running stateful workloads, like databases and persistent services.
- Persistent Volumes, Secrets, and namespace-specific configurations must be backed up with full context to ensure reliable recovery.
- Legacy backup tools often fall short in EKS environments by overlooking Kubernetes-specific resources and relationships.
- Effective EKS backup requires automated discovery, policy-based configuration, and support for multi-cluster, cross-region restoration.
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) helps engineering teams scale containerized applications in the cloud, without the burden of managing Kubernetes control plane infrastructure. EKS takes the grunt work out of managing Kubernetes control planes, but when it comes to backing up your stateful workloads, the complexity is very much still alive.
Backing up an EKS cluster, especially one running databases, internal tools, or persistent services, introduces new challenges. You’re dealing with namespace separation, persistent volumes, secrets, and tightly coupled configurations that traditional VM-based backup tools simply aren’t designed to handle.
This post explores why EKS backup is essential for modern cloud-native environments, the gaps in conventional solutions, and how Eon helps you protect your Kubernetes data without creating operational drag.
Why isn’t EKS backup handled automatically?
Amazon EKS takes the heavy lifting out of managing the Kubernetes control plane, but that doesn’t mean you're off the hook.
Under AWS’s shared responsibility model, you're still accountable for everything running on your worker nodes. That includes stateful workloads, persistent volumes, and cluster-specific configurations, all of which need a backup strategy that understands how Kubernetes actually works.
In these environments:
- Pods run containers, often with stateful storage
- Namespaces isolate teams/services
- Persistent Volumes (PVs) and Persistent Volume Claims (PVCs) handle durable storage, often backed by EBS
- Secrets store sensitive config like credentials and tokens
Without a purpose-built backup strategy, one wrong config or cluster hiccup can spiral into downtime, finger-pointing, and a lot of YAML you didn’t plan on touching today. That's why a robust Kubernetes cloud backup approach is mission-critical.
What problems do legacy backup tools cause in EKS?
Most legacy backup platforms were built for monolithic applications and virtual machines. They don’t understand Kubernetes concepts like namespaces, PVCs, or pod identity, which makes them a poor fit for Kubernetes backup and restore scenarios.
Here’s where they typically fail:
- Lack of context: Backups don’t capture relationships between resources (e.g., namespace-specific secrets tied to PVCs).
- Storage configuration mismatch: PVCs must be restored into matching environments. Legacy tools often treat volumes as static blobs.
- Limited discovery: They miss critical stateful resources scattered across namespaces and regions.
- Restoration friction: You can’t simply “lift and shift” a resource without realigning it to its original cluster and region.
How does Eon approach EKS backup differently?
Eon was purpose-built for Kubernetes cluster backup and restore, with deep integration for Amazon EKS environments. Our platform understands Kubernetes. We back up data the way your clusters are actually structured, not forcing you to translate them into legacy VM paradigms.
Here’s how Eon stacks up against traditional tools when it comes to managing EKS backup at scale:
Eon vs. Legacy Tools: Feature-by-Feature Comparison
How does Eon discover and organize Kubernetes resources?
Once you grant Eon access to your EKS control plane, the platform automatically discovers backup-eligible resources across your clusters. Each Kubernetes namespace is treated as an independent unit—a practical and secure way to organize backup policies and ensure alignment with how your teams actually deploy and manage apps.
We back up:
- PVCs and PVs tied to stateful workloads
- Secrets for configuration and access
- Contextual metadata like cluster/region info
Can I control what gets backed up and how often?
Not every workload needs to be backed up. Our Cloud Backup Posture Management (CBPM) platform gives you full control without the overhead. You can:
- Automatically ignore stateless resources to reduce noise
- Configure backup frequency, retention, and exclusions per resource or namespace
- Manage policies across multiple clusters and environments from a single view
But Eon goes even further with intelligent data classification. When onboarding your EKS clusters, we analyze each namespace to identify:
- Which applications are running
- Whether it's a production or non-production environment
- If the PVCs contain sensitive data, like PII or credentials
This helps you prioritize what to back up and apply the right policy without guesswork.
💡How does Eon help reduce storage costs and clutter? Eon helps teams manage cost and compliance by retaining what’s important and pruning what’s not. Backups are automatically classified, deduplicated, and optimized. Then, stale snapshots are cleaned up on your behalf.
And for data-rich environments, we also support granular database search and restore for workloads running on PVCs—the same powerful restore functionality we offer for EC2-based databases.
You stay in control of your backup posture, without babysitting jobs or writing brittle scripts to fill in tool gaps.
What does Eon’s restore process look like in real life?
The best backups are the ones you can restore fast.
Eon ensures that restoration happens in the right context, meaning:
- Resources go back to the correct namespace, region, and cluster
- Associated configurations, like Secrets, are redeployed seamlessly
- Your team spends less time reconfiguring and more time resolving
Whether recovering from a failed deployment or performing a disaster recovery operation, Eon ensures your Kubernetes backup strategy delivers real-world resilience, not just theoretical safety.
Real-World Example: A fintech company accidentally deleted a critical PVC tied to a Postgres database running in an EKS cluster. With Eon, the SRO team restored the PVC and associated Secrets within minutes, without needing to manually map volumes or redeploy services, avoiding customer downtime and internal SLAs breach.
Key Takeaways: Smarter EKS Backup, Done Right
Amazon EKS simplifies Kubernetes operations, but backing up stateful data remains a complex task
Legacy backup tools aren't built for Kubernetes, leading to misconfigurations, slow recovery, and wasted effort
Eon provides a Kubernetes backup platform that:
- Identifies and backs up PVCs, Secrets, and more at the namespace level
- Optimizes policies for speed, compliance, and efficiency
- Enables recovery with full context and minimal overhead
Ready to Simplify Your EKS Backup Strategy?
Eon makes it easy to protect your Kubernetes workloads without diving into endless YAML, scripting backup jobs, or managing third-party tooling.
Request a personalized demo and see how Eon can transform your EKS backup posture today.
EKS Backup FAQs: What Cloud Ops and SRE Teams Need to Know
Curious about how to back up Amazon EKS the right way? These frequently asked questions cover persistent volumes, Kubernetes backup strategies, and how Eon removes the usual complexity.
What’s the best way to back up EKS persistent volumes?
The most effective way to back up EKS persistent volumes is by using a platform that understands how stateful data is stored and accessed in EKS. Eon automatically discovers and protects Persistent Volumes (PVs) and Persistent Volume Claims (PVCs) at the namespace level so your backup policies stay efficient, accurate, and aligned with how your clusters actually run.
Do I need to back up stateless Kubernetes clusters?
Generally, stateless workloads in Kubernetes don’t need to be backed up. They’re easily redeployed and don’t retain critical data between restarts. But once your cluster includes databases, persistent storage, or configuration stored in Kubernetes Secrets, backup becomes essential. Eon intelligently filters out the noise and ensures only stateful, high-value resources are captured.
How does Eon differ from traditional Kubernetes backup tools?
Most legacy tools were built for VMs, not containers. They treat Kubernetes like just another layer of infrastructure. Eon is different:
- Namespace-level discovery
- Granular policies, automated stale snapshot cleanup, and seamless multi-cluster support
- Context-aware restore that gets data back into the right cluster, region, and namespace
In short, it means less effort, more control, and backups that are actually useful when you need them.
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