Why using an OCI registry for backup storage makes sense
#Modern infrastructure teams already operate OCI registries as critical, highly-available systems. Extending that infrastructure to backup storage eliminates operational overhead while inheriting properties that are difficult to replicate elsewhere:
- Immutability: Many registries support content-addressable, immutable layers by default. Once written, backup data cannot be silently overwritten.
- Built-in replication: Registry geo-replication and mirroring distribute backup data across regions without additional configuration.
- Unified access control: Existing IAM roles, robot accounts, and token policies apply to backup storage without new credential systems.
- Air-gapped friendly: Registries communicate over standard HTTPS and are already permitted in most firewalled and air-gapped environments.
What happens when backup storage is coupled to your primary infrastructure
#Storing backups in the same system they are meant to protect defeats the purpose of having a backup. OCI registries offer a natural separation point:
- Isolated namespaces: Backup data lives in a dedicated repository, separate from container images and application artifacts.
- Independent credentials: Registry robot accounts can be scoped to backup repositories only, limiting blast radius if credentials are compromised.
- Cross-provider portability: Any OCI-compliant registry works, so backups can be stored with a different cloud provider than your primary workloads.
How Plakar uses OCI registries as a backup backend
#Plakar encodes all repository data that is snapshots, packfiles, indexes, and metadata as native OCI artifacts and pushes them to any compliant registry:
- Storage Connector: Initialize a Kloset store directly in an OCI registry and back up any source (file systems, databases, containers, or cloud storage) into it.
Backed by Plakar’s encryption and deduplication pipeline, every snapshot stored in the registry is encrypted end-to-end and deduplicated globally before being written. The registry never sees plaintext data.
Compatible registries include Docker Hub, Amazon ECR, Google Artifact Registry, Azure Container Registry, GitHub Container Registry, and self-hosted implementations such as Harbor.
