Configure local storage

This page shows you how to configure local volumes for GKE on Bare Metal clusters.

GKE on Bare Metal clusters provide two options for configuring local PVs) in the cluster: LVP share and LVP node mounts. LVP share uses directories in a shared file system, while LVP node mounts uses dedicated disks.

LVP share

This storage class creates a local PV backed by subdirectories in a local, shared file system on every node in the cluster. These subdirectories are automatically created during cluster creation. Workloads using this storage class will share capacity and IOPS because the PVs are backed by the same shared file system. For better isolation, we recommend configuring disks through LVP node mounts instead.

Configure an LVP share

  1. Optional: Before cluster creation, mount a disk using the configured path as a mount point so that the created PVs will share the new disk capacity and be isolated from the boot disk.

  2. Specify the following under lvpShare in the cluster CR:

    • path: The host machine path on each host where subdirectories are created. A local PV is created for each subdirectory. The default path is /mnt/localpv-share.
    • storageClassName: The storage class that PVs are created with during cluster creation. The default value is local-shared.
    • numPVUnderSharedPath: Number of subdirectories to create under path. The default value is 5.

    The configuration looks similar to the following:

    apiVersion: baremetal.cluster.gke.io/v1
kind: Cluster
metadata:
  name: cluster1
  namespace: cluster-cluster1
spec:
  storage:
    lvpShare:
      path: /mnt/localpv-share
      storageClassName: local-shared
      numPVUnderSharedPath: 5

PVs are created with the storage class specified in storageClassName. The total number of local PVs created in the cluster is numPVUnderSharedPath multiplied by the number of nodes.

LVP node mounts

This storage class creates a local PV for each mounted disk in the configured directory. Each PV maps to a disk with capacity equal to the underlying disk capacity. The total number of local PVs created in the cluster is the number of disks mounted under the path across all nodes. Additional mounts can be added after cluster creation.

Configure LVP node mounts

  1. On nodes that have extra disks for PVs, format and mount each disk under path. This can also be done before or after cluster creation. See best practices.

    1. List disks and find the one you want to mount:

      sudo lsblk

    2. Format the disk, for example with single ext4 file system:

      sudo mkfs.ext4 -m 0 -E lazy_itable_init=0,lazy_journal_init=0,discard /dev/DEVICE_ID

    3. Under the configured path, create a directory as the mount point for the new disk:

      sudo mkdir -p /mnt/localpv-disk/MNT_DIR

    4. Mount the disk:

      sudo mount -o discard,defaults /dev/DEVICE_ID /mnt/localpv-disk/MNT_DIR &&
sudo chmod a+w /mnt/localpv-disk/MNT_DIR

    5. Add the disk to the /etc/fstab file, so that the device automatically mounts again when the instance restarts:

      # Backup of your current /etc/fstab file
sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.backup

# Use the blkid command to find the UUID for the zonal persistent disk
sudo blkid /dev/DEVICE_ID

# Edit /etc/fstab file: create an entry that includes the UUID
UUID=UUID_VALUE /mnt/disks/MNT_DIR ext4 discard,defaults,NOFAIL_OPTION 0 2

  2. Specify the following under lvpNodeMounts in cluster CR:

    • path: The host machine path for each mount where mounted disks are discovered and a local PV is created. The default path is /mnt/localpv-disk.
    • storageClassName: The storage class that PVs are created with during cluster creation. The default value is local-disks.

    The configuration looks something similar to the following:

    apiVersion: baremetal.cluster.gke.io/v1
kind: Cluster
metadata:
  name: cluster1
  namespace: cluster-cluster1
spec:
  storage:
    lvpNodeMounts:
      path: /mnt/localpv-disk
      storageClassName: local-disks

    PVs are created with the storage class specified in storageClassName. The total number of PVs created is the number of disks mounted under path across all nodes.

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