What is Velero used for?

Velero is a backup, restore and migration tool for Kubernetes cluster resources and persistent volumes, for public cloud or on-premises clusters. It is a good fit for disaster recovery for Kubernetes clusters and moving applications between clusters.

Is Velero open source?

Yes. Velero is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at velero-io/velero and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. Velero is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

What is Velero an alternative to?

Velero is an open-source alternative to Veeam. Other open-source alternatives to Veeam include Backrest, Bareos and restic.

Is Velero actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Velero was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.18.4, published on 28 September 2026. The project has 10k stars on GitHub.

Velero: open-source alternative to Veeam

About Velero

Velero, formerly Heptio Ark, gives Kubernetes administrators tools to back up and restore cluster resources and persistent volumes. It works with public cloud platforms as well as on-premises clusters, and helps teams recover from data loss or a failed cluster without rebuilding everything by hand.

Besides disaster recovery, Velero can migrate cluster resources to other clusters and replicate a production cluster into development and testing clusters. It consists of two parts: a server that runs inside the cluster and a command-line client that runs on your own machine. Documentation includes a getting started guide, architecture notes and instructions for extending the tool.

The project is written in Go and released under the Apache-2.0 license. Support is available through troubleshooting docs, GitHub issues and the velero-users and velero-dev channels on the Kubernetes Slack, and bi-weekly community meetings alternate between time zones friendly to Asia and to the US and Europe.

Key features

Back up Kubernetes resources and persistent volumes
Restore a cluster after data loss
Migrate workloads to another cluster
Clone production into dev and test clusters
Server in-cluster plus local CLI client

Good fit for

→Disaster recovery for Kubernetes clusters
→Moving applications between clusters

Built with: Go; Kubernetes
Tags: kubernetes; backup; disaster-recovery; migration; persistent-volumes; devops; go

Velero: questions and answers

What is Velero used for?: Velero is a backup, restore and migration tool for Kubernetes cluster resources and persistent volumes, for public cloud or on-premises clusters. It is a good fit for disaster recovery for Kubernetes clusters and moving applications between clusters.
Is Velero open source?: Yes. Velero is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at velero-io/velero and is written mainly in Go.
Is Velero free?: Yes. Velero is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
What is Velero an alternative to?: Velero is an open-source alternative to Veeam. Other open-source alternatives to Veeam include Backrest, Bareos and restic.
Is Velero actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Velero was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.18.4, published on 28 September 2026. The project has 10k stars on GitHub.