Version 1.6. This version is no longer supported. For more information see the version support policy.

Troubleshooting storage

This document gives troubleshooting guidance for storage issues.

Volume fails to attach

This issue can occur if a virtual disk is attached to the wrong virtual machine, it may be due to Issue #32727 in Kubernetes 1.12.

The output of gkectl diagnose cluster looks like this:

Checking cluster object...PASS
Checking machine objects...PASS
Checking control plane pods...PASS
Checking gke-connect pods...PASS
Checking kube-system pods...PASS
Checking gke-system pods...PASS
Checking storage...FAIL
    PersistentVolume pvc-776459c3-d350-11e9-9db8-e297f465bc84: virtual disk "[datastore_nfs] kubevols/kubernetes-dynamic-pvc-776459c3-d350-11e9-9db8-e297f465bc84.vmdk" IS attached to machine "gsl-test-user-9b46dbf9b-9wdj7" but IS NOT listed in the Node.Status
1 storage errors

One or more Pods are stuck in the ContainerCreating state with warnings like this:

Events:
  Type     Reason              Age               From                     Message
  ----     ------              ----              ----                     -------
  Warning  FailedAttachVolume  6s (x6 over 31s)  attachdetach-controller  AttachVolume.Attach failed for volume "pvc-776459c3-d350-11e9-9db8-e297f465bc84" : Failed to add disk 'scsi0:6'.

To resolve this issue:

If a virtual disk is attached to the wrong virtual machine, you might need to manually detach it:

Drain the node. See Safely draining a node {:.external"}. You might want to include the --ignore-daemonsets and --delete-local-data flags in your kubectl drain {:.external"> command.
Power off the VM
Edit the VM's hardware config in vCenter to remove the volume.
Power on the VM
Uncordon the node

Volume is lost

This issue can occur if a virtual disk was permanently deleted. This can happen if an operator manually deletes a virtual disk or the virtual machine it is attached to. If you see a "not found" error related to your VMDK file, it is likely that the virtual disk was permanently deleted.

The output of gkectl diagnose cluster looks like this:

Checking cluster object...PASS
Checking machine objects...PASS
Checking control plane pods...PASS
Checking gke-connect pods...PASS
Checking kube-system pods...PASS
Checking gke-system pods...PASS
Checking storage...FAIL
    PersistentVolume pvc-52161704-d350-11e9-9db8-e297f465bc84: virtual disk "[datastore_nfs] kubevols/kubernetes-dynamic-pvc-52161704-d350-11e9-9db8-e297f465bc84.vmdk" IS NOT found
1 storage errors

One or more Pods are stuck in the ContainerCreating state:

Events:
  Type     Reason              Age                   From                                    Message
  ----     ------              ----                  ----                                    -------
  Warning  FailedAttachVolume  71s (x28 over 42m)    attachdetach-controller                 AttachVolume.Attach failed for volume "pvc-52161704-d350-11e9-9db8-e297f465bc84" : File []/vmfs/volumes/43416d29-03095e58/kubevols/
  kubernetes-dynamic-pvc-52161704-d350-11e9-9db8-e297f465bc84.vmdk was not found

To prevent this issue from occurring, manage your virtual machines as described in Resizing a user cluster and Upgrading clusters.

To resolve this issue, you might need to manually clean up related Kubernetes resources:

Delete the PVC that referenced the PV by running kubectl delete pvc [PVC_NAME].
Delete the Pod that referenced the PVC by running kubectl delete pod [POD_NAME].
Repeat step 2. Yes, really. See Kubernetes issue 74374 {:.external}.

vSphere CSI Volume fails to detach

This issue occurs if the CNS > Searchable privilege has not been granted to the vSphere user.

If you find pods stuck in the ContainerCreating phase with FailedAttachVolume warnings, it could be due to a failed detach on a different node.

To check for CSI detach errors:

kubectl get volumeattachments -o=custom-columns=NAME:metadata.name,DETACH_ERROR:status.detachError.message

The output is similar to the following:

NAME                                                                   DETACH_ERROR
csi-0e80d9be14dc09a49e1997cc17fc69dd8ce58254bd48d0d8e26a554d930a91e5   rpc error: code = Internal desc = QueryVolume failed for volumeID: "57549b5d-0ad3-48a9-aeca-42e64a773469". ServerFaultCode: NoPermission
csi-164d56e3286e954befdf0f5a82d59031dbfd50709c927a0e6ccf21d1fa60192d   
csi-8d9c3d0439f413fa9e176c63f5cc92bd67a33a1b76919d42c20347d52c57435c   
csi-e40d65005bc64c45735e91d7f7e54b2481a2bd41f5df7cc219a2c03608e8e7a8

To resolve this issue, add the CNS > Searchable privilege to your vcenter user account. The detach operation automatically retries until it succeeds.

CSI volume creation fails with `NotSupported` error

This issue occurs when an ESXi host in the vSphere cluster is running a version lower than ESXi 6.7U3.

The output of kubectl describe pvc includes this error:

Failed to provision volume with StorageClass : rpc error:
code = Internal desc = Failed to create volume. Error: CnsFault error:
CNS: Failed to create disk.:Fault cause: vmodl.fault.NotSupported

To resolve this issue, upgrade your ESXi hosts to version 6.7U3 or later.

vSphere CSI volume fails to attach

This known issue {:.external} in the open-source vSphere CSI driver occurs when a node is shut down, deleted, or fails.

The output of kubectl describe pod looks like this:

Events:
  Type     Reason              Age        From                     Message
  ----     ------              ----       ----                     -------
  Warning  FailedAttachVolume  2m30s      attachdetach-controller  Multi-Attach error for volume
                                                                   "pvc-xxxxx"
                                                                   Volume is already exclusively attached to one
                                                                   node and can't be attached to another