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.

Check existing ContainerStorageModule CRD

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

kubectl get csm --all-namespaces

Prerequisites

The following are requirements to be met before installing the CSI Driver for Dell PowerStore:

• A Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster (see supported versions)
• If you plan to use either the Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NVMe/TCP, or NVMe/FC protocols, refer to either Fibre Channel requirements or Set up the iSCSI Initiator or Set up the NVMe Initiator sections below. You can use NFS volumes without FC, iSCSI, NVMe/TCP, or NVMe/FC configurations.

You can use either the Fibre Channel (FC), iSCSI, NVMe/TCP, or NVMe/FC protocol, but you do not need all four to be enabled.

For NVMe support the preferred multipath solution is NVMe native multipathing. The Dell Host Connectivity Guide describes the details of each configuration option.

If you want to use pre-configured iSCSI/FC hosts be sure to check that they are not part of any host group.

• Linux native multipathing requirements
• Mount propagation is enabled on container runtime that is being used
• If using Snapshot feature, satisfy all Volume Snapshot requirements
• Insecure registries are defined in Docker or other container runtimes, for CSI drivers that are hosted in a non-secure location.
• Ensure that your nodes support mounting NFS volumes if using NFS

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 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

The following requirements must be fulfilled in order to successfully use the NVMe protocols with the CSI PowerStore driver:

• All OpenShift or Kubernetes nodes connecting to Dell storage arrays must use unique NQNs.
• The driver requires the NVMe command-line interface (nvme-cli) to manage 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 on RPM oriented Linux distributions.

sudo dnf -y install nvme-cli

• Support for NVMe requires native NVMe multipathing to be configured on each worker node in the cluster. Please refer to the Dell Host Connectivity Guide for more details on NVMe connectivity requirements. To determine if the worker nodes are configured for native NVMe multipathing run the following command on each worker node:

cat /sys/module/nvme_core/parameters/multipath

If the result of the command displays Y then NVMe native multipathing is enabled in the kernel. If the output is N then native NVMe multipating is disabled. Consult the Dell Host Connectivity Guide for Linux to enable native NVMe multipathing.

• The default NVMeTCP native multipathing policy is “numa”. The preferred IO policy for NVMe devices used for PowerStore is round-robin. You can use udev rules to enable the round robin policy on all worker nodes. To view the IO policy you can use the following command:

nvme list-subsys

Configure the IO policy

To change the IO policy to round-robin you can add a udev rule on each worker node. Place a config file in /etc/udev/rules.d with the name 71-nvme-io-policy.rules with the following contents:

ACTION=="add|change", SUBSYSTEM=="nvme-subsystem", ATTR{iopolicy}="round-robin"

In order to change the rules on a running kernel you can run the following commands:

/sbin/udevadm control --reload-rules
/sbin/udevadm trigger --type=devices --action=change

On OCP clusters you can add a MachineConfig to enable this rule on all worker nodes:

apiVersion: machineconfiguration.openshift.io/v1
kind: MachineConfig
metadata:
  name: 99-workers-multipath-round-robin
  labels:
    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: worker
spec:
  config:
    ignition:
      version: 3.2.0
    storage:
      files:
      - contents:
          source: data:text/plain;charset=utf-8;base64,QUNUSU9OPT0iYWRkfGNoYW5nZSIsIFNVQlNZU1RFTT09Im52bWUtc3Vic3lzdGVtIiwgQVRUUntpb3BvbGljeX09InJvdW5kLXJvYmluIg==
          verification: {}
        filesystem: root
        mode: 420
        path: /etc/udev/rules.d/71-nvme-io-policy.rules

Configure the control loss timeout

To reduce the impact of PowerStore non disruptive software upgrades you must set the control loss timeout. This can be done using udev rules on each worker node. More information can be found in the Dell Host Connectivity Guide. The configure the control loss timeout place a config file in /etc/udev/rules.d with the name 72-nvmf-ctrl_loss_tmo.rules with the following contents:

ACTION=="add|change", SUBSYSTEM=="nvme", KERNEL=="nvme*", ATTR{ctrl_loss_tmo}="-1"

In order to change the rules on a running kernel you can run the following commands:

/sbin/udevadm control --reload-rules
/sbin/udevadm trigger --type=devices --action=change

On OCP clusters you can add a MachineConfig to enable this rule on all worker nodes:

apiVersion: machineconfiguration.openshift.io/v1
kind: MachineConfig
metadata:
  name: 99-nvmf-ctrl-loss-tmo
  labels:
    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: worker
spec:
  config:
    ignition:
      version: 3.2.0
    storage:
      files:
      - contents:
          source: data:text/plain;charset=utf-8;base64,QUNUSU9OPT0iYWRkfGNoYW5nZSIsIFNVQlNZU1RFTT09Im52bWUiLCBLRVJORUw9PSJudm1lKiIsIEFUVFJ7Y3RybF9sb3NzX3Rtb309Ii0xIgo=
          verification: {}
        filesystem: root
        mode: 420
        path: /etc/udev/rules.d/72-nvmf-ctrl_loss_tmo.rules

Requirements for NVMeTCP

Starting with OCP 4.14 NVMe/TCP is enabled by default on RCOS nodes.

• 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

For NVMe connectivity native NVMe multipathing is used. The following sections apply only for iSCSI and Fiber Channel connectivity.

Dell PowerStore supports Linux multipathing and NVMe native 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.

The following is a sample multipath.conf file:

defaults {
  user_friendly_names yes
  find_multipaths yes
}
  blacklist {
}

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 systemctl enable multipathd

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

On OCP clusters you can add a MachineConfig to configure multipathing on the worker nodes.

You will need to first base64 encode the multipath.conf and add it to the MachineConfig definition.

echo 'defaults {
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 the 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

For additional information refer to the Dell Host Connectivity Guide.

(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

Namespace and PowerStore API Access Configuration

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.