The new CSI plugin for HPE hyperconverged infrastructure includes a number of updates and improvements for Kubernetes environments. Get the technical details here.
The 2021 RedHat report on Kubernetes adoption, security, and market trends – a compilation of survey results from over 500 IT professionals – indicates widespread customer adaption of Kubernetes (88%), especially in production environments (74%), stating that Kubernetes is used by ‘almost all respondents.’ Containers will very likely continue to gain popularity in 2022 due to their portability, efficiency, scalability, and reliability.
Storage providers have been addressing this trend in recent years, providing additional features for containerized environments through software updates and plugins for their customers. Third-party storage providers such as HPE can
About a year ago, HPE introduced a CSI plugin for HPE SimpliVity, allowing customers to take advantage of all of the features and simplicity of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) in Kubernetes environments. The HPE SimpliVity CSI driver for VMware vSphere lets you run containers and virtual machines (VMs) side by side and provision HPE SimpliVity storage for Kubernetes applications, boosting the speed of development and deployment of containerized applications while providing HPE SimpliVity data protection. The driver includes the following features:
- Snapshots
- Static and dynamic provisioning
- Read and write functionality from a single pod
What's new in the HPE SimpliVity CSI plugin 2.0
The new HPE SimpliVity CSI plugin 2.0 lets you create persistent volumes and volume snapshots for containerized applications and extend persistent volumes using a new feature called Offline Volume Expansion. In the latest plugin release, all the corresponding prerequisites have been updated as shown below.\
Offline Volume Expansion
CSI Volume Expansion was introduced as an alpha feature in Kubernetes 1.14 and was promoted to beta in Kubernetes 1.16. The offline volume expansion feature of CSI is the ability to extend/grow a Kubernetes persistent volume (PV) when it is not attached to a node. Currently, Offline Volume Expansion is supported only on dynamically created volumes.
To use this feature, create a storage class or modify an existing storage class by setting the allowVolumeExpansion attribute to “true.”
Figure 1. Storage class for offline volume expansion
The next step is to create a persistent volume claim (PVC) using the above storage class. Using a patch or kubectl edit command, the size of the volume can be increased.
Figure 2. Applying patch operation on the persistent volume claim (PVC)
Container platform qualification/testing/valudation
HPE SimpliVity CSI plugin 2.0 has been tested on the following container platforms:
- VMware Tanzu
- Red Hat OpenShift
- Rancher
The functionalities tested on these container platforms include:
- Block Volumes
- Volume Snapshots
- Offline Volume Expansion
- HPE SimpliVity backups
VMware Tanzu
VMware Tanzu is a portfolio of products and services that can transform the way enterprises build, run, and manage applications on Kubernetes. VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, informally known as TKG, is a multi-cloud K8’s footprint that can be run on both on-premises and in public cloud. TKG provides a consistent, upstream-compatible implementation of Kubernetes that is tested, signed, and supported by VMware. TKG is central to many of the offerings in the VMware Tanzu portfolio.
Figure 3. Installation of VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on HPE SimpliVity cluster
RedHat OpenShift
OpenShift is a cloud-based Kubernetes container platform that helps in automating the build, deployment and management of the applications and offers consistent security, built-in monitoring, centralized policy management, and compatibility with Kubernetes container workloads.
Figure 4. Installation of Red Hat OpenShift on HPE SimpliVity Cluster
Rancher
Rancher is a complete software stack for teams adopting containers. It addresses the operational and security challenges of managing multiple Kubernetes clusters while providing DevOps teams with integrated tools for running containerized workloads.
Figure 5. Installation of Rancher on HPE SimpliVity cluster
Viewing the new CSI plugin on the VMware vSphere UI
The HPE SimpliVity CSI plugin uses the CNS driver to create and delete persistent volumes. The persistent volumes created using this CSI plugin can be viewed on the VMware vSphere UI under the Cloud Native Storage tab.
Figure 6. Persistent Volumes created by HPE SimpliVity CSI plugin
The persistent volumes inherit the backup policy of the datastore on which it resides. The backup policy can be changed manually using svt-pv-policy-set CLI command. The backups of the persistent volumes can be viewed under "All HPE SimpliVity Actions" on VMware vSphere.
Figure 7: HPE SimpliVity backups of persistent volumes created by HPE SimpliVity CSI plugin
Watch for updated versions of this CSI plugin to be released as newer versions of Kubernetes and VMware vSphere come out.
References
- Download the HPE SimpliVity CSI plugin 2.0 on the GitHub repository
- CSI plugin documentation
- CSI plugin Docker images
Meet Storage Experts blogger Anusha Y, Engineer, HCI Product Management and Solutions, HPE
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