Protecting critical information of an application orchestrator deployment, such as an etcd data store in a kubernetes cluster

A system comprising:

• a first computing device comprising one or more hardware processors, wherein the first computing device executes a storage manager that is configured to manage a backup job of an etcd data store of a first Kubernetes cluster, wherein the first computing device operates outside the first Kubernetes cluster, and wherein the etcd data store, which is part of a control plane of the first Kubernetes cluster, comprises information that describes objects deployed in the first Kubernetes cluster;
• a second computing device comprising one or more hardware processors, wherein the second computing device operates outside the first Kubernetes cluster, and wherein the second computing device executes a first data agent and a media agent;
• wherein the first data agent is further configured to:
• instruct the first Kubernetes cluster to generate a first snapshot of the etcd data store of the first Kubernetes cluster, and to store the first snapshot in a first directory of a hostPath volume within the first Kubernetes cluster;
• based on determining that the first snapshot is not found in the first directory:
• cause a data transfer agent to be deployed as a containerized application in a first pod executing within the first Kubernetes cluster, wherein the first pod executes on a computing device within the first Kubernetes cluster that comprises one or more hardware processors, cause the data transfer agent to request the hostPath volume to be created within the first Kubernetes cluster, cause the data transfer agent to request the first directory to be created within the hostPath volume, instruct the first Kubernetes cluster to generate the first snapshot of the etcd data store, and instruct the first Kubernetes cluster to store the first snapshot in the first directory;
• based on determining that the first snapshot is found in the first directory:
• cause the data transfer agent to transmit contents of the first snapshot in the first directory to the first data agent;
• in conjunction with the media agent, generate a secondary copy of the etcd data store, and store the secondary copy at a data storage that is outside of the first Kubernetes cluster, wherein the secondary copy is based on the contents of the first snapshot transmitted by the data transfer agent, and wherein the data storage comprises one or more data storage devices;
• and
• after the first snapshot, instruct the first Kubernetes cluster to generate subsequent snapshots of the etcd data store, and to store the subsequent snapshots of the etcd data store in the first directory of the hostPath volume without causing the hostPath volume and the first directory to be created again.