Bucket Data Replication

NooBaa supports data replication policies to asynchronously replicate data from a source bucket to one or more destination buckets. This is essential for disaster recovery and high availability, ensuring your data is protected across multiple locations.

In this guide, we will configure a primary bucket that uses a local PV pool for storage. We will then apply a replication policy to this bucket so that any data written to it is automatically replicated to a secondary bucket hosted on AWS S3.

Notes

• Asynchronous Replication: Data replication from the source to the destination is not instantaneous.

Prerequisites

Follow the steps in 01_installation.md to install the NooBaa operator and its custom resource definitions (CRDs).

Bucket Class Replication

Bucket replication policies can be applied to a BucketClass. In those cases, the policy will automatically be ‘inherited’ by all bucket claims that utilize the bucketclass.

Replication Policy

We can set replication policy under the spec.placementPolicy. field of the BucketClass.

PlacementPolicy is an array of rules:

• rule_id defines the unique identifier of the rule.
• destination_bucket definers the replication target bucket.
• filter field defines the filter to apply to the source bucket during replication.

High-Level Steps

1. Create the Replication Target Bucket on AWS S3:
   • Create a NamespaceStore to connect to an external S3 bucket.
   • Create a BucketClass that uses this NamespaceStore.
   • Create an ObjectBucketClaim (OBC) to provision the target bucket.
2. Create the Primary Bucket with a Replication Policy:
   • Create a BackingStore using a local PV Pool.
   • Create a BucketClass that uses the PV Pool BackingStore and includes a replicationPolicy pointing to the target bucket.
   • Create an ObjectBucketClaim (OBC) to provision the primary bucket.
3. Verify Replication:
   • Upload files to the primary bucket.
   • Confirm that the files are replicated to the target bucket on AWS S3.

1. Create the Replication Target Bucket on AWS S3

First, we’ll set up the destination bucket on AWS S3 where the data will be replicated.

Create AWS Credentials Secret

Create a Kubernetes secret containing your AWS credentials.

kubectl create secret generic aws-s3-creds \
  --from-literal=AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<YOUR_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID> \
  --from-literal=AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<YOUR_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY> \
  --namespace noobaa

Create a NamespaceStore for AWS S3

This NamespaceStore will connect NooBaa to your target S3 bucket. Create the following aws-namespace-store.yaml file:

apiVersion: noobaa.io/v1alpha1
kind: NamespaceStore
metadata:
  name: aws-namespace-store
spec:
  awsS3:
    region: us-east-1
    secret:
      name: aws-s3-creds
      namespace: noobaa
    targetBucket: pv-pool-bucket-replication
  type: aws-s3

Here,

• targetBucket The name of your existing S3 bucket.
• secret is the name of the secret that contains the AWS credentials.

Create a BucketClass for the NamespaceStore

This BucketClass defines how to use the NamespaceStore. Create the following aws-namespace-bucket-class.yaml:

apiVersion: noobaa.io/v1alpha1
kind: BucketClass
metadata:
  name: aws-namespace-bucket-class
spec:
  namespacePolicy:
    type: Single
    single:
      resource: aws-namespace-store

Here,

• type is the type of the namespace store.
• single.resource is the namespace store we created above.

Create an ObjectBucketClaim for the Target Bucket

This OBC provisions a NooBaa bucket that maps to your external S3 bucket. This will be our replication destination. Create the following aws-object-bucket-claim.yaml:

apiVersion: objectbucket.io/v1alpha1
kind: ObjectBucketClaim
metadata:
  name: pv-pool-bucket-replication
spec:
  generateBucketName: pv-pool-bucket-replication
  storageClassName: noobaa.noobaa.io
  additionalConfig:
    bucketclass: aws-namespace-bucket-class

After a moment, a bucket will be created. You can find its full name by listing the buckets.

Accessing Your Data via the NooBaa S3 Endpoint**

Connect with the NooBaa S3 endpoint and verify the bucket creation.

export EXTERNAL_IP=$(kubectl get svc s3 -n noobaa -o json | jq -r '.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip')
export NOOBAA_ACCESS_KEY=$(kubectl get secret noobaa-admin -n noobaa -o json | jq -r '.data.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID|@base64d')
export NOOBAA_SECRET_KEY=$(kubectl get secret noobaa-admin -n noobaa -o json | jq -r '.data.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY|@base64d')
alias s3='AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=$NOOBAA_ACCESS_KEY AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=$NOOBAA_SECRET_KEY aws --endpoint https://$EXTERNAL_IP:443 --no-verify-ssl s3'
export AWS_REQUEST_CHECKSUM_CALCULATION=when_required
export AWS_RESPONSE_CHECKSUM_CALCULATION=when_required

Verify the Bucket

s3 ls
2025-08-27 16:08:14 pv-pool-bucket-replication-180c1b36-bf4e-451e-977f-1cd996f22627
2025-08-26 18:57:55 first.bucket

Here,

• pv-pool-bucket-replication-180c1b36-bf4e-451e-977f-1cd996f22627 is the name of the bucket for the obectbucketclaim we created.

2. Create the Primary Bucket with a Replication Policy

Now, we’ll create the primary bucket that stores data locally and replicates it to the AWS bucket we just configured.

Create a PV Pool BackingStore

This BackingStore will use a PersistentVolume (PV) to store data locally. Create the following pv-pool-backing-store.yaml:

apiVersion: noobaa.io/v1alpha1
kind: BackingStore
metadata:
  name: pv-pool-backing-store
  namespace: noobaa
spec:
  pvPool:
    numVolumes: 1
    resources:
      requests:
        storage: 16Gi
        memory: 4Gi
        cpu: 2000m
      limits:
        memory: 4Gi
        cpu: 2000m
  type: pv-pool

Create a BucketClass with a Replication Policy

This BucketClass uses the local PV pool for storage and includes a replicationPolicy. Create the following replication-bucket-class.yaml:

apiVersion: noobaa.io/v1alpha1
kind: BucketClass
metadata:
  name: replication-bc
  namespace: noobaa
spec:
  placementPolicy:
    tiers:
      - backingStores:
          - pv-pool-backing-store
  replicationPolicy: |
    {
      "rules": [
        {
          "rule_id": "rule-1",
          "destination_bucket": "pv-pool-bucket-replication-180c1b36-bf4e-451e-977f-1cd996f22627"
        }
      ]
    }    

Here,

• tiers is the list of backing stores that will be used for the bucket.
• rule_id is the unique identifier of the rule.
• destination_bucket is the name of the bucket that was created earlier.

Create an ObjectBucketClaim for the Primary Bucket

This OBC will create our primary source bucket. Create the following replication-object-bucket-claim.yaml:

apiVersion: objectbucket.io/v1alpha1
kind: ObjectBucketClaim
metadata:
  name: pv-pool-bucket
spec:
  generateBucketName: pv-pool-bucket
  storageClassName: noobaa.noobaa.io
  additionalConfig:
    bucketclass: replication-bc

Now, for the disaster scenario of this pv-pool-bucket bucket we want to replicate this bucket to another cloud bucket what we created and added to the replication policy of the bucket class.

3.Verify Bucket Replication

Now we’ll upload a file to the source bucket and verify that it’s replicated to the target bucket.

List S3 Buckets

List the buckets to find the full names generated by NooBaa.

s3 ls 

# Expected output (names will vary):
2025-09-03 13:27:09 replicated-source-bucket-58d15153-54a6-47af-bd7b-e88e7a72e7db
2025-09-03 10:58:57 aws-replication-target-bucket-180c1b36-bf4e-451e-977f-1cd996f22627

Upload some Objects to the Source Bucket

## Generate some demo txt file
echo "Hello World" > demo.txt
echo "Hello Kubestash" > kubestash.txt
echo "Hello NooBaa" > noobaa.txt

## Upload the file to the bucket
s3 cp  demo.txt   s3://pv-pool-bucket-58d15153-54a6-47af-bd7b-e88e7a72e7db/demo.txt
s3 cp  kubestash.txt  s3://pv-pool-bucket-58d15153-54a6-47af-bd7b-e88e7a72e7db/kubestash.txt
s3 cp  noobaa.txt s3://pv-pool-bucket-58d15153-54a6-47af-bd7b-e88e7a72e7db/noobaa.txt

## List the objects in the bucket
s3 ls s3://pv-pool-bucket-58d15153-54a6-47af-bd7b-e88e7a72e7db/
2025-09-03 14:35:11         12 demo.txt
2025-09-03 14:35:30         16 kubestash.txt
2025-09-03 14:35:35         13 noobaa.txt

Verify Replication to the Target Bucket

s3 ls s3://pv-pool-bucket-replication-180c1b36-bf4e-451e-977f-1cd996f22627/

2025-09-03 14:40:49         12 demo.txt
2025-09-03 14:40:48         16 kubestash.txt
2025-09-03 14:40:48         13 noobaa.txt

You can also verify the presence of these objects from your AWS S3 console.

This confirms that the replication policy is working correctly.