ebs-snapshot-restore

A Kubernetes operator for automated restoration of EBS volumes from snapshots. Designed to restore stateful workloads (StatefulSets) and their associated PersistentVolumeClaims from pre-existing VolumeSnapshots created by SnapScheduler.

Description

ebs-snapshot-restore is a Kubernetes operator built with controller-runtime that automates the process of restoring EBS-backed PersistentVolumeClaims from VolumeSnapshots.

The operator manages the full restore lifecycle through the EBSSnapshotRestore custom resource:

1. Validation — finds and validates VolumeSnapshots for each target workload by matching PVC labels and snapshot timestamps. Supports explicit restore time (snapshotRestoreTime) or automatic selection of the latest available snapshot.

2. Scale Down — safely scales down target StatefulSets and associated operator Deployments to zero replicas before performing restore, ensuring data consistency.

3. Restore — deletes existing PVCs and recreates them from VolumeSnapshots, waiting for each PVC to be fully bound before proceeding.

4. Scale Up — scales workloads back to their original replica count and waits for all pods to become ready.

5. Lock — once a restore plan completes successfully, it is locked to prevent accidental re-execution.

6. Hooks — runs custom Job-based hooks at pre-restore (before Scale Down) and post-restore (after Scale Up) points in the lifecycle, for workarounds the workload can't perform on its own (e.g. detaching/reattaching parts, running migrations). Each hook is tracked independently in status by name and event, so a hook is only re-run if it previously failed or hasn't run yet — successful hooks are skipped on subsequent reconciles, same as the rest of the restore plan once locked. Hooks can optionally pull environment variables from Secrets (extraSecrets), and can be marked mutable so that changing their command/args triggers a re-run on post-restore even after a previous success — useful for hooks that need to evolve over time (e.g. evolving migration scripts) without forcing a full restore.

Supported workload types

• statefulset — primary restore target with PVC management
• deployment — operator/controller deployments that need to be paused during restore

Supported storage

• AWS EBS volumes provisioned via ebs.csi.aws.com
• VolumeSnapshots managed by SnapScheduler

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• go version v1.24.0+
• docker version 17.03+.
• kubectl version v1.11.3+.
• Access to a Kubernetes v1.11.3+ cluster.

To Deploy on the cluster

Build and push your image to the location specified by IMG:

make docker-build docker-push IMG=<some-registry>/ebs-snapshot-restore:tag

NOTE: This image ought to be published in the personal registry you specified. And it is required to have access to pull the image from the working environment. Make sure you have the proper permission to the registry if the above commands don’t work.

Install the CRDs into the cluster:

make install

Deploy the Manager to the cluster with the image specified by IMG:

make deploy IMG=<some-registry>/ebs-snapshot-restore:tag

NOTE: If you encounter RBAC errors, you may need to grant yourself cluster-admin privileges or be logged in as admin.

Create instances of your solution You can apply the samples (examples) from the config/sample:

kubectl apply -k config/samples/

NOTE: Ensure that the samples has default values to test it out.

To Uninstall

Delete the instances (CRs) from the cluster:

kubectl delete -k config/samples/

Delete the APIs(CRDs) from the cluster:

make uninstall

UnDeploy the controller from the cluster:

make undeploy

Project Distribution

Following the options to release and provide this solution to the users.

By providing a bundle with all YAML files

1. Build the installer for the image built and published in the registry:

make build-installer IMG=<some-registry>/ebs-snapshot-restore:tag

NOTE: The makefile target mentioned above generates an 'install.yaml' file in the dist directory. This file contains all the resources built with Kustomize, which are necessary to install this project without its dependencies.

2. Using the installer

Users can just run 'kubectl apply -f ' to install the project, i.e.:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/<org>/ebs-snapshot-restore/<tag or branch>/dist/install.yaml

By providing a Helm Chart

1. Build the chart using the optional helm plugin

kubebuilder edit --plugins=helm/v1-alpha

2. See that a chart was generated under 'dist/chart', and users can obtain this solution from there.

NOTE: If you change the project, you need to update the Helm Chart using the same command above to sync the latest changes. Furthermore, if you create webhooks, you need to use the above command with the '--force' flag and manually ensure that any custom configuration previously added to 'dist/chart/values.yaml' or 'dist/chart/manager/manager.yaml' is manually re-applied afterwards.

Contributing

NOTE: Run make help for more information on all potential make targets

More information can be found via the Kubebuilder Documentation

License

Copyright 2026 Edenlab.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.