PowerStore

Installing CSI Driver for PowerStore via Dell CSM Operator

The CSI Driver for Dell PowerStore can be installed via the Dell CSM Operator. To deploy the Operator, follow the instructions available here.

Note that the deployment of the driver using the operator does not use any Helm charts and the installation and configuration parameters will be slightly different from the one specified via the Helm installer.

Listing installed drivers with the ContainerStorageModule CRD

User can query for all Dell CSI drivers using the following command:

kubectl get csm --all-namespaces

Prerequisite

Fibre Channel requirements

Dell PowerStore supports Fibre Channel communication. If you use the Fibre Channel protocol, ensure that the following requirement is met before you install the CSI Driver for Dell PowerStore:

• Zoning of the Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) to the Fibre Channel port must be done.

Set up the iSCSI Initiator

The CSI Driver for Dell PowerStore v1.4 and higher supports iSCSI connectivity.

If you use the iSCSI protocol, set up the iSCSI initiators as follows:

• Ensure that the iSCSI initiators are available on both Controller and Worker nodes.
• Kubernetes nodes must have access (network connectivity) to an iSCSI port on the Dell PowerStore array that has IP interfaces. Manually create IP routes for each node that connects to the Dell PowerStore.
• All Kubernetes nodes must have the iscsi-initiator-utils package for CentOS/RHEL or open-iscsi package for Ubuntu installed, and the iscsid service must be enabled and running. To do this, run the systemctl enable --now iscsid command.
• Ensure that the unique initiator name is set in /etc/iscsi/initiatorname.iscsi.

For information about configuring iSCSI, see Dell PowerStore documentation on Dell Support.

Set up the NVMe Initiator

If you want to use the protocol, set up the NVMe initiators as follows:

• The driver requires NVMe management command-line interface (nvme-cli) to use configure, edit, view or start the NVMe client and target. The nvme-cli utility provides a command-line and interactive shell option. The NVMe CLI tool is installed in the host using the below command.

sudo apt install nvme-cli

Requirements for NVMeTCP

• Modules including the nvme, nvme_core, nvme_fabrics, and nvme_tcp are required for using NVMe over Fabrics using TCP. Load the NVMe and NVMe-OF Modules using the below commands:

modprobe nvme
modprobe nvme_tcp

• The NVMe modules may not be available after a node reboot. Loading the modules at startup is recommended.

Requirements for NVMeFC

• NVMeFC Zoning of the Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) to the Fibre Channel port must be done.

NOTE:

• Do not load the nvme_tcp module for NVMeFC

Linux multipathing requirements

Dell PowerStore supports Linux multipathing. Configure Linux multipathing before installing the CSI Driver for Dell PowerStore.

Set up Linux multipathing as follows:

• Ensure that all nodes have the Device Mapper Multipathing package installed.

You can install it by running yum install device-mapper-multipath on CentOS or apt install multipath-tools on Ubuntu. This package should create a multipath configuration file located in /etc/multipath.conf.

• Enable multipathing using the mpathconf --enable --with_multipathd y command.
• Enable user_friendly_names and find_multipaths in the multipath.conf file.
• Ensure that the multipath command for multipath.conf is available on all Kubernetes nodes.

multipathd MachineConfig

If you are installing a CSI Driver which requires the installation of the Linux native Multipath software - multipathd, please follow the below instructions

To enable multipathd on RedHat CoreOS nodes you need to prepare a working configuration encoded in base64.

user_friendly_names yes
find_multipaths yes
}
blacklist {
}' | base64 -w0

Use the base64 encoded string output in the following MachineConfig yaml file (under source section)

apiVersion: machineconfiguration.openshift.io/v1
kind: MachineConfig
metadata:
  name: workers-multipath-conf-default
  labels:
    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: worker
spec:
  config:
    ignition:
      version: 3.2.0
    storage:
      files:
      - contents:
          source: data:text/plain;charset=utf-8;base64,ZGVmYXVsdHMgewp1c2VyX2ZyaWVuZGx5X25hbWVzIHllcwpmaW5kX211bHRpcGF0aHMgeWVzCn0KCmJsYWNrbGlzdCB7Cn0K
          verification: {}
        filesystem: root
        mode: 400
        path: /etc/multipath.conf

After deploying thisMachineConfig object, CoreOS will start multipath service automatically. Alternatively, you can check the status of the multipath service by entering the following command in each worker nodes. sudo multipath -ll

If the above command is not successful, ensure that the /etc/multipath.conf file is present and configured properly. Once the file has been configured correctly, enable the multipath service by running the following command: sudo /sbin/mpathconf –-enable --with_multipathd y

Finally, you have to restart the service by providing the command sudo systemctl restart multipathd

For additional information refer to official documentation of the multipath configuration.

(Optional) Volume Snapshot Requirements

For detailed snapshot setup procedure, click here.

(Optional) Replication feature Requirements

Applicable only if you decided to enable the Replication feature in sample.yaml

replication:
  enabled: true

Replication CRD’s

The CRDs for replication can be obtained and installed from the csm-replication project on Github. Use csm-replication/deploy/replicationcrds.all.yaml located in csm-replication git repo for the installation.

CRDs should be configured during replication prepare stage with repctl as described in install-repctl

1. Create namespace. Execute kubectl create namespace powerstore to create the powerstore namespace (if not already present). Note that the namespace can be any user-defined name, in this example, we assume that the namespace is ‘powerstore’.

2. Create a file called config.yaml that has Powerstore array connection details with the following content

   arrays:
      - endpoint: "https://10.0.0.1/api/rest"     # full URL path to the PowerStore API
        globalID: "unique"                        # unique id of the PowerStore array
        username: "user"                          # username for connecting to API
        password: "password"                      # password for connecting to API
        skipCertificateValidation: true           # indicates if client side validation of (management)server's certificate can be skipped
        isDefault: true                           # treat current array as a default (would be used by storage classes without arrayID parameter)
        blockProtocol: "auto"                     # what SCSI transport protocol use on node side (FC, ISCSI, NVMeTCP, NVMeFC, None, or auto)
        nasName: "nas-server"                     # what NAS should be used for NFS volumes
        nfsAcls: "0777"                           # (Optional) defines permissions - POSIX mode bits or NFSv4 ACLs, to be set on NFS target mount directory.
                                                  # NFSv4 ACls are supported for NFSv4 shares on NFSv4 enabled NAS servers only. POSIX ACLs are not supported and only POSIX mode bits are supported for NFSv3 shares.
   

   Change the parameters with relevant values for your PowerStore array. Add more blocks similar to above for each PowerStore array if necessary.

   If replication feature is enabled, ensure the secret includes all the PowerStore arrays involved in replication.

   User Privileges

   The username specified in config.yaml must be from the authentication providers of PowerStore. The user must have the correct user role to perform the actions. The minimum requirement is Storage Operator.

3. Create Kubernetes secret:

   Create a file called secret.yaml in same folder as config.yaml with following content

   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Secret
   metadata:
      name: powerstore-config
      namespace: powerstore
   type: Opaque
   data:
      config: CONFIG_YAML
   

   Combine both files and create Kubernetes secret by running the following command:

   
   sed "s/CONFIG_YAML/`cat config.yaml | base64 -w0`/g" secret.yaml | kubectl apply -f -
   

Install Driver

1. Follow all the prerequisites above

2. Create a CR (Custom Resource) for PowerStore using the sample files provided here. This file can be modified to use custom parameters if needed.

3. Users should configure the parameters in CR. The following table lists the primary configurable parameters of the PowerStore driver and their default values:

4. Execute the following command to create PowerStore custom resource:

kubectl create -f <input_sample_file.yaml>

This command will deploy the CSI PowerStore driver in the namespace specified in the input YAML file.

• Next, the driver should be installed, you can check the condition of driver pods by running

  kubectl get all -n <driver-namespace>
  

5. Verify the CSI Driver installation

6. Refer https://github.com/dell/csi-powerstore/tree/main/samples for the sample files.

Note :

1. “Kubelet config dir path” is not yet configurable in case of Operator based driver installation.
2. Snapshotter and resizer sidecars are not optional. They are defaults with Driver installation.