VMware vSphere CSI Driver Operator

    Familiarity with persistent storage and is recommended when working with a CSI Operator and driver.

    To create CSI-provisioned persistent volumes (PVs) that mount to vSphere storage assets, OKD, after this feature is enabled, installs the vSphere CSI Driver Operator and the vSphere CSI driver by default in the namespace.

    • vSphere CSI Driver Operator: After being enabled, the Operator provides a storage class, called thin-csi, that you can use to create persistent volumes claims (PVCs). The vSphere CSI Driver Operator supports dynamic volume provisioning by allowing storage volumes to be created on-demand, eliminating the need for cluster administrators to pre-provision storage.

    • vSphere CSI driver: The driver enables you to create and mount vSphere PVs.

    Storage vendors have traditionally provided storage drivers as part of Kubernetes. With the implementation of the Container Storage Interface (CSI), third-party providers can instead deliver storage plug-ins using a standard interface without ever having to change the core Kubernetes code.

    CSI Operators give OKD users storage options, such as volume snapshots, that are not possible with in-tree volume plug-ins.

    Additional resources

    To enable the vSphere Container Storage Interface (CSI) Driver Operator, you must enable feature gates with the TechPreviewNoUpgrade feature set.

    1. Enable feature gates with the TechPreviewNoUpgrade feature set (see Nodes → Enabling features using feature gates).

      1. NAME                                                    READY   STATUS  RESTARTS    AGE
      2. vmware-vsphere-csi-driver-controller-5646dbbf54-cnsx7   9/9     Running 0           4h29m
      3. vmware-vsphere-csi-driver-node-gfjrb                    3/3     Running 0           4h37m
      5. vmware-vsphere-csi-driver-node-lgksl                    3/3     Running 0           4h37m
      6. vmware-vsphere-csi-driver-node-vb4gv                    3/3     Running 0           4h37m
      7. vmware-vsphere-csi-driver-operator-7c7fc474c-p544t      1/1     Running 0           4h29m

    3. Verify that the storage class is installed:

      1. NAME            PROVISIONER                     RECLAIMPOLICY   VOLUMEBINDINGMODE       ALLOWVOLUMEEXPANSION    AGE
      2. thin (default)  kubernetes.io/vsphere-volume    Delete          Immediate               false                   5h43m