In this release, we introduced the Unified Repository architecture to build a data path where data movers and the backup repository are decoupled and a unified backup repository could serve various data movement activities.
In this release, we also deeply integrate Velero with Kopia, specifically, Kopia's uploader modules are isolated as a generic file system uploader; Kopia's repository modules are encapsulated as the unified backup repository.
For more information, refer to the [design document](https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/velero/blob/v1.10.0/design/unified-repo-and-kopia-integration/unified-repo-and-kopia-integration.md).
Velero's file system backup (a.k.s. pod volume backup or formerly restic backup) is refactored as the first user of the Unified Repository architecture. Specifically, we added a new path, the Kopia path, besides the existing Restic path. While Restic path is still available and set as default, you can opt in Kopia path by specifying the `uploader-type` parameter at installation time. Meanwhile, you are free to restore from existing backups under either path, Velero dynamically switches to the correct path to process the restore.
For more information, visit the [file system backup document](https://velero.io/docs/v1.10/file-system-backup/) and [v1.10 upgrade guide document](https://velero.io/docs/v1.10/upgrade-to-1.10/).
Meanwhile, we've created a performance guide for both Restic path and Kopia path, which helps you to choose between the two paths and provides you the best practice to configure them under different scenarios. Please note that the results in the guide are based on our testing environments, you may get different results when testing in your own ones. For more information, visit the [performance guide document](https://velero.io/docs/v1.10/performance-guidance/).
In this release, Velero moves plugins BackupItemAction, RestoreItemAction and VolumeSnapshotterAction to version v1, this allows future plugin changes that do not support backward compatibility, so is a preparation for various complex tasks, for example, data movement tasks.
For more information, refer to the [plugin versioning design document](https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/velero/blob/v1.10.0/design/plugin-versioning.md).
#### Refactor the controllers using Kubebuilder v3
In this release we continued our code modernization work, rewriting some controllers using Kubebuilder v3. This work is ongoing and we will continue to make progress in future releases.
#### Add credentials to volume snapshot locations
In this release, we enabled dedicate credentials options to volume snapshot locations so that you can specify credentials per volume snapshot location as same as backup storage location.
In this release we added several changes to enhance the robustness of CSI snapshot procedures, for example, some protection code for error handling, and a mechanism to skip exclusion checks so that CSI snapshot works with various backup resource filters.
#### Backup schedule pause/unpause
In this release, Velero supports to pause/unpause a backup schedule during or after its creation. Specifically:
At creation time, you can specify `–paused` flag to `velero schedule create` command, if so, you will create a paused schedule that will not run until it is unpaused
After creation, you can run `velero schedule pause` or `velero schedule unpause` command to pause/unpause a schedule
Due to the major changes of file system backup, the old upgrade steps are not suitable any more. For the new upgrade steps, visit [v1.10 upgrade guide document](https://velero.io/docs/v1.10/upgrade-to-1.10/).
In this release, Kopia backup repository (so the Kopia path of file system backup) doesn't support self signed certificate for S3 compatible storage. To track this problem, refer to this [Velero issue](https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/velero/issues/5123) or [Kopia issue](https://github.com/kopia/kopia/issues/1443).
Due to the code change in Velero, there will be some code change required in vSphere plugin, without which the functionality may be impacted. Therefore, if you are using vSphere plugin in your workflow, please hold the upgrade until the issue [#485](https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/velero-plugin-for-vsphere/issues/485) is fixed in vSphere plugin.
* Fix issue 5505: the pod volume backups/restores except the first one fail under the kopia path if "AZURE_CLOUD_NAME" is specified (#5512, @Lyndon-Li)
* After Pod Volume Backup/Restore refactor, remove all the unreasonable appearance of "restic" word from documents (#5499, @Lyndon-Li)
* Refactor Pod Volume Backup/Restore doc to match the new behavior (#5484, @Lyndon-Li)
* Issue fix 5477: create the common way to support S3 compatible object storages that work for both Restic and Kopia; Keep the resticRepoPrefix parameter for compatibility (#5478, @Lyndon-Li)
* Fix issue 5386: Velero providers a full URL as the S3Url while the underlying minio client only accept the host part of the URL as the endpoint and the schema should be specified separately. (#5387, @Lyndon-Li)
* Fix a repoEnsurer problem introduced by the refactor - The repoEnsurer didn't check "" state of BackupRepository, as a result, the function GetBackupRepository always returns without an error even though the ensreReady is specified. (#5359, @Lyndon-Li)
* Fix issue 4874 and 4752: check the daemonset pod is running in the node where the workload pod resides before running the PVB for the pod (#5319, @Lyndon-Li)
* Refactor the repoEnsurer code to use controller runtime client and wrap some common BackupRepository operations to share with other modules (#5308, @Lyndon-Li)
* Fill gaps for Kopia path of PVBR: integrate Repo Manager with Unified Repo; pass UploaderType to PVBR backupper and restorer; pass RepositoryType to BackupRepository controller and Repo Ensurer (#5259, @Lyndon-Li)
* Update the CRD for kopia integration (#5135, @reasonerjt)
* Let "make shell xxx" respect GOPROXY (#5128, @reasonerjt)
* Modify BackupStoreGetter to avoid BSL spec changes (#5122, @sseago)
* Dump stack trace when the plugin server handles panic (#5110, @reasonerjt)
* Make CSI snapshot creation timeout configurable. (#5104, @jxun)
* Fix bsl validation bug: the BSL is validated continually and doesn't respect the validation period configured (#5101, @ywk253100)
* Exclude "csinodes.storage.k8s.io" and "volumeattachments.storage.k8s.io" from restore by default. (#5064, @jxun)
* Move 'velero.io/exclude-from-backup' label string to const (#5053, @niulechuan)
* Modify Github actions. (#5052, @jxun)
* Fix typo in doc, in https://velero.io/docs/main/restore-reference/ "Restore order" section, "Mamespace" should be "Namespace". (#5051, @niulechuan)
* Delete opened issues triage action. (#5041, @jxun)
* When spec.RestoreStatus is empty, don't restore status (#5008, @sseago)
* Added DownloadTargetKindCSIBackupVolumeSnapshots for retrieving the signed URL to download only the `<backup name>`-csi-volumesnapshots.json.gz and DownloadTargetKindCSIBackupVolumeSnapshotContents to download only `<backup name>`-csi-volumesnapshotcontents.json.gz in the DownloadRequest CR structure. These files are already present in the backup layout. (#4980, @anshulahuja98)
* Refactor BackupItemAction proto and related code to backupitemaction/v1 package. This is part of implementation of the plugin version design https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/velero/blob/main/design/plugin-versioning.md (#4943, @phuongatemc)
