Operator

The Dell Container Storage Modules Operator is a Kubernetes Operator, which can be used to install and manage the CSI Drivers and CSM Modules provided by Dell for various storage platforms. This operator is available as a community operator for upstream Kubernetes and can be deployed using OperatorHub.io. The operator can be installed using OLM (Operator Lifecycle Manager) or manually.

Supported CSM Components

These CR will be used for new deployment or upgrade. In most case, it is recommended to use the latest available version.

The full compatibility matrix of CSI/CSM versions for the CSM Operator is available here

Installation

Before installing the driver, you need to install the operator. You can find the installation instructions here.

OpenShift Installation via Operator Hub

NOTE: You can update the resource requests and limits when you are deploying operator using Operator Hub

1. From your OpenShift UI, select OperatorHub in the left pane.

2. On the OperatorHub page, search for “Container Storage Modules” and select the Container Storage Modules card:

   

3. Select the appropriate operator version and click on install.

   

   Contained storage module Operator begins to install and takes you to the Install Operator page.

   On this page:

   • Select the A specific namespace on the cluster option for Installation mode.
   • Choose the Create Project option from the Installed Namespace dropdown.

4. In the Create Project window, provide the name dell-csm-operator and click Create to create a namespace called “dell-csm-operator”.

   

   • To install an operator, you need to create a Subscription object. You can do this using either the OperatorHub UI or kubectl/oc commands. During this process, you can set the Approval strategy for the InstallPlan

   • Automatic - If you want the operator to be automatically installed or upgraded (once an upgrade is available).

   • Manual - If you want a cluster administrator to manually review and approve the InstallPlan for installation/upgrades.

   

5. Click Install to deploy Container Storage Modules Operator in the dell-csm-operator namespace.

   

6. Once the operator is installed it will be displayed under the “Installed Operators”.

   

Note

• If your environment has more than 1000 Pods, the Container Storage Modules Operator may need more resources. You can adjust the default CPU and memory settings in deploy/operator.yaml and config/manager/manager.yaml. For more details on setting resource requests and limits, refer to the documentation. The current default values are listed below

      resources:
        limits:
          cpu: 200m
          memory: 512Mi
        requests:
          cpu: 100m
          memory: 192Mi
  

• If using CSM Replication with two clusters and no DNS, edit deploy/operator.yaml to add hostAliases with <FQDN>:<IP> mappings under spec.template.spec to resolve remote API endpoints. More details on host aliases are available in the documentation.

  apiVersion: apps/v1
  kind: Deployment
  metadata:
    name: dell-csm-operator-controller-manager
  spec:
    template:
      spec:
        hostAliases:
        - hostnames:
          - "remote.FQDN"
          ip: "255.255.255.1"
  

Certified vs Community

Dell CSM Operator is distributed as both Certified & Community editions.

Both editions have the same codebase and are supported by Dell Technologies, the only differences are:

• The Certified version is officially supported by Redhat by partnering with software vendors.
• The Certified version is often released couple of days/weeks after the Community version.
• The Certified version is specific to Openshift and can only be installed on specific Openshift versions where it is certified.
• The Community can be installed on any Kubernetes distributions.