Classes of storage are associated with data protection policies. The storage classes are mapped to storage providers and the storage providers are connected to a backup storage server. A service broker advertises to stateful workloads in a cloud native environment a service catalog listing the storage classes. The service broker receives a request from a stateful workload for a class of storage. A storage provider having storage of the storage class is instructed to provision a volume. A response to the request includes an identification of the volume to allow the stateful workload to persist data on the volume. The storage provider is instructed to generate snapshots of the volume according to a data protection policy associated with the storage class. Backups of the snapshots to the backup storage server are conducted according to the data protection policy.