FSxN CSI Driver

Before we dive into this section, make sure to familiarized yourself with the Kubernetes storage objects (volumes, persistent volumes (PV), persistent volume claim (PVC), dynamic provisioning and ephemeral storage) that were introduced on the Storage main section.

The Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP Container Storage Interface (CSI) Driver helps you run stateful containerized applications. Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver provide a CSI interface that allows Kubernetes clusters running on AWS to manage the lifecycle of Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file systems.

In order to utilize Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system with dynamic provisioning on our EKS cluster, we need to confirm that we have the Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP CSI Driver installed. The Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP Container Storage Interface (CSI) Driver implements the CSI specification for container orchestrators to manage the lifecycle of Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file systems.

As part of our workshop environment the EKS cluster has the Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP Container Storage Interface (CSI) Driver pre-installed. We can confirm the installation like so:

~$kubectl get pods -n trident

NAME                                  READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE

trident-controller-68f86749df-tr9nw   6/6     Running   0          25m

trident-node-linux-7wkg9              2/2     Running   0          25m

trident-node-linux-9g6w4              2/2     Running   0          25m

trident-node-linux-vpvnh              2/2     Running   0          25m

trident-operator-56fb7f67c4-vws4m     1/1     Running   0          29m

The FSx for NetApp ONTAP CSI driver supports dynamic and static provisioning. Currently dynamic provisioning creates an access point for each PersistentVolume. This mean an AWS EFS file system has to be created manually on AWS first and should be provided as an input to the StorageClass parameter. For static provisioning, AWS EFS file system needs to be created manually on AWS first. After that it can be mounted inside a container as a volume using the driver.

The workshop environment also has an FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system, Storage Virtual Machine (SVM) and the required security group pre-provisioned with an inbound rule that allows inbound NFS traffic for your Pods. You can retrieve information about the FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system by running the following AWS CLI command:

~$aws fsx describe-file-systems --file-system-id $FSXN_ID

Now, we'll need to create a TridentBackendConfig object configured to use the pre-provisioned FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system as part of this workshop infrastructure.

We'll be using Kustomize to create the backend and to ingest the environment variable FSXN_IP in the parametermanagementLIF value in the configuration of the storage class object:

~/environment/eks-workshop/modules/fundamentals/storage/fsxn/backend/fsxn-backend-nas.yaml
apiVersion: trident.netapp.io/v1
kind: TridentBackendConfig
metadata:
  name: backend-fsxn-ontap-nas
  namespace: trident
spec:
  version: 1
  backendName: backend-fsxn-ontap-
  storageDriverName: ontap-nas
  managementLIF: ${FSXN_IP}
  svm: fsxnsvm
  autoExportPolicy: true
  autoExportCIDRs: ["10.42.0.0/16", "100.64.0.0/16"]
  credentials:
    name: backend-fsxn-ontap-nas-secret

Let's apply this kustomization:

~$kubectl kustomize ~/environment/eks-workshop/modules/fundamentals/storage/fsxn/backend \

| envsubst | kubectl apply -f-

secret/backend-fsxn-ontap-nas-secret created

tridentbackendconfig.trident.netapp.io/backend-fsxn-ontap-nas created

Now we'll get check that the TridentBackendConfig was create using the below command:

~$kubectl get tbc -n trident

NAME                     BACKEND NAME          BACKEND UUID                           PHASE   STATUS

backend-fsxn-ontap-nas   backend-fsxn-ontap-   61a731e0-2f3c-4df9-9e49-5fc120e8247c   Bound   Success

Now, we'll need to create a StorageClass(https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/storage/storage-classes/) object

We'll be using Kustomize to create for the storage class:

~/environment/eks-workshop/modules/fundamentals/storage/fsxn/storageclass/fsxnstorageclass.yaml
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: fsxn-sc-nfs
provisioner: csi.trident.netapp.io
parameters:
  backendType: "ontap-nas"
allowVolumeExpansion: True

Let's apply this kustomization:

~$kubectl apply -k ~/environment/eks-workshop/modules/fundamentals/storage/fsxn/storageclass/

storageclass.storage.k8s.io/fsxn-sc-nfs created

Now we'll get and describe the StorageClass using the below commands. Notice that the provisioner used is the csi.trident.netapp.io driver and the provisioning mode is ontap-nas.

~$kubectl get storageclass

NAME            PROVISIONER             RECLAIMPOLICY   VOLUMEBINDINGMODE      ALLOWVOLUMEEXPANSION   AGE

fsxn-sc-nfs     csi.trident.netapp.io   Delete          Immediate              true                   44s

~$kubectl describe sc fsxn-sc-nfs

Name:            fsxn-sc-nfs

IsDefaultClass:  No

Annotations:     kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration={"allowVolumeExpansion":true,"apiVersion":"storage.k8s.io/v1","kind":"StorageClass","metadata":{"annotations":{},"name":"fsxn-sc-nfs"},"parameters":{"backendType":"ontap-nas"},"provisioner":"csi.trident.netapp.io"}

Provisioner:           csi.trident.netapp.io

Parameters:            backendType=ontap-nas

AllowVolumeExpansion:  True

MountOptions:          <none>

ReclaimPolicy:         Delete

VolumeBindingMode:     Immediate

Events:                <none>

Now that we have a better understanding of EKS StorageClass and FSxN CSI driver. On the next page, we'll focus on modifying the asset microservice to leverage the FSxN StorageClass using Kubernetes dynamic volume provisioning and a PersistentVolume to store the product images.