Introducing Portworx Backup 2.9: Managing Kubernetes and KubeVirt Backups at Scale

Portworx Backup 2.9.0 is now live, introducing smarter, user-driven capabilities to protect and manage your Kubernetes and KubeVirt workloads at scale. This release focuses on making backup management more intuitive and efficient for modern enterprise environments.

Here’s an overview of the most impactful new features and improvements, with a spotlight on how they help IT teams meet their backup and business continuity goals.

What’s New in Portworx Backup 2.9.0?

Retry Backups at VM Level
You can now retry only failed VMs within VM backups, without having to reprocess VMs that backed up successfully. This reduces any unnecessary load on your backup server, keeps backup windows shorter, and provides granular control for backup operations. The result: more predictable adherence to RPO (Recovery Point Objective) targets and less time spent catching up on partial failures.

All Backups Page

Retry VM pop up

Bulk Operations for Schedules
Managing backups at scale is simpler than ever. You can now suspend, resume, or delete multiple backup schedules at once, which is ideal for organizations that are protecting numerous clusters and schedules with Portworx Backup. Enhanced filtering lets you quickly narrow down schedules by name and schedule policy, saving administrative time and reducing risk of manual errors.

Schedule management page

Bulk action pop up

Back Up Volume Resources Only
Portworx Backup (PXB) 2.9.0 adds the ability to back up only the Kubernetes PersistentVolume (PV) and PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) specs, without including the underlying data. This capability dramatically reduces backup size and time when only the resource definitions are needed. It also eliminates data redundancy and saves on storage costs if you’re already protecting actual volume data by other means, such as through array-based snapshots or NFS-level backups.

Deploy PXB in Proxy-Enabled Clusters
IT teams can now deploy PXB in proxy-enabled Kubernetes clusters across all supported platforms (except IKS). Configuration is flexible via Helm parameters or Kubernetes secrets, including support for authentication and custom CA certificates. This ensures PXB can operate securely and in compliance with enterprise and regulatory requirements, connecting through HTTP proxies common in many production environments.

Enhanced UI Experience
A series of UI enhancements make Portworx Backup even easier to navigate and manage:

• The backup, restore, and all-backups pages have been redesigned for faster workflows and greater clarity.
• Updates to cluster listings and the rules page surface key information and actions upfront.

These changes help both new and experienced users get tasks done faster with less training, and provide better at-a-glance visibility into backups.

Backup dashboard (Dedicated VM column)

VM pop up with details

Improved KubeVirt VM Visualization
Customers running KubeVirt workloads now benefit from more interactive visualization of VM backup statuses. This makes it easy to track and troubleshoot individual VM backups, bringing higher visibility and confidence to VM data protection strategies.

Moving Forward

Portworx Backup 2.9.0 demonstrates our ongoing commitment to building a smarter, more flexible platform for cloud-native data protection. Whether you’re operating at enterprise scale or managing a fast-growing cluster environment, this release empowers you with better tools to achieve backup reliability and operational efficiency.