A new version of Anthos clusters on AWS (GKE on AWS) was released on February 3. For more information, see the release notes.

Installing storage drivers

This topic explains how to install a Container Storage Interface (CSI) storage driver on your user clusters.

Overview

By default, Anthos clusters on AWS provisions AWS EBS volumes using the default StorageClass. If you want to use another type of storage volume, you can install a CSI driver.

CSI is an open standard API that enables Kubernetes to expose arbitrary storage systems to containerized workloads. Also, CSI enables the use of modern storage features, such as and resizing and snapshots (in 1.17 and higher).

After installing a CSI driver, you need to create a Kubernetes StorageClass. You set the CSI driver as the provisioner for the StorageClass. Then, you can set the StorageClass as default, or configure your workloads to use the StorageClass. For an example of how to create a StatefulSet with a custom StorageClass, see Using StorageClasses with your workloads.

Before you begin

  • From your anthos-aws directory, use anthos-gke to switch context to your user cluster. 
    cd anthos-aws
env HTTP_PROXY=http://localhost:8118 \
anthos-gke aws clusters get-credentials CLUSTER_NAME

Installing a vendor's CSI driver

Storage vendors are responsible for providing installation instructions for their CSI drivers. See the list of CSI drivers in the CSI documentation.

Follow the installation instructions for your CSI driver, and then continue with the next steps on this page.

Verifying your driver installation

After you install a CSI driver, you can verify the installation by running the following commands.

env HTTP_PROXY=http://localhost:8118 \
  kubectl get csinodes \
  -o jsonpath='{range .items[*]} {.metadata.name}{": "} {range .spec.drivers[*]} {.name}{"\n"} {end}{end}'

Using a CSI driver

To use a CSI driver:

  1. Create a custom StorageClass which references the driver in its provisioner field.

  2. To provision storage, you can either:

Considerations for StorageClass backed by a CSI driver

When you create a StorageClass, consider the following:

  • Check your CSI driver documentation for driver-specific parameters that you provide to your StorageClass, including the provisioner name.

  • You should name the StorageClass after its properties (such as fast or highly-replicated), rather than after the name of the specific driver or appliance behind it. When you name a StorageClass after its properties, you can create StorageClasses with the same name in different clusters and environments. Then, configure your workloads to use the same StorageClass.

What's next?