PowerFlex

Installing CSI Driver for PowerFlex via Operator

The CSI Driver for Dell PowerFlex can be installed via the Dell CSI Operator.

To deploy the Operator, follow the instructions available here.

There are sample manifests provided which can be edited to do an easy installation of the driver. Note that the deployment of the driver using the operator does not use any Helm charts. The installation and configuration parameters will be slightly different from the ones specified via the Helm installer.

Kubernetes Operators make it easy to deploy and manage the entire lifecycle of complex Kubernetes applications. Operators use Custom Resource Definitions (CRD) which represents the application and use custom controllers to manage them.

Prerequisites:

If multipath is configured, ensure CSI-PowerFlex volumes are blacklisted by multipathd. See troubleshooting section for details

SDC Deployment for Operator

This feature deploys the sdc kernel modules on all nodes with the help of an init container.
For non-supported versions of the OS also do the manual SDC deployment steps given below. Refer to https://hub.docker.com/r/dellemc/sdc for supported versions.
Note: When the driver is created, MDM value for initContainers in driver CR is set by the operator from mdm attributes in the driver configuration file, config.yaml. An example of config.yaml is below in this document. Do not set MDM value for initContainers in the driver CR file manually.
Note: To use an sdc-binary module from customer ftp site:
- Create a secret, sdc-repo-secret.yaml to contain the credentials for the private repo. To generate the base64 encoding of a credential:

     echo -n <credential>| base64 -i

secret sample to use:

     apiVersion: v1
     kind: Secret
     metadata:
       name: sdc-repo-creds
       namespace: vxflexos
     type: Opaque
     data:
       # set username to the base64 encoded username, sdc default is
         username: <username in base64>
       # set password to the base64 encoded password, sdc default is
         password: <password in base64>

Create secret for FTP side by using the command kubectl create -f sdc-repo-secret.yaml.
Optionally, enable sdc monitor by uncommenting the section for sidecar in manifest yaml. Please note the following:
- If using sidecar, you will need to edit the value fields under the HOST_PID and MDM fields by filling the empty quotes with host PID and the MDM IPs.
- If not using sidecar, please leave this commented out – otherwise, the empty fields will cause errors.

Example CR: config/samples/vxflex_v260_ops_411.yaml

        sideCars:
    # Comment the following section if you don't want to run the monitoring sidecar
      - name: sdc-monitor
        envs:
        - name: HOST_PID
          value: "1"
        - name: MDM
          value: ""
      - name: external-health-monitor
        args: ["--monitor-interval=60s"]
    initContainers:
      - image: dellemc/sdc:3.6
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        name: sdc
        envs:
          - name: MDM
            value: "10.x.x.x,10.x.x.x"

Note: Please comment the sdc-monitor sidecar section if you are not using it. Blank values for MDM will result in error. Do not comment the external-health-monitor argument.

Manual SDC Deployment

For detailed PowerFlex installation procedure, see the Dell PowerFlex Deployment Guide. Install the PowerFlex SDC as follows:

Steps

Download the PowerFlex SDC from Dell Online support. The filename is EMC-ScaleIO-sdc-*.rpm, where * is the SDC name corresponding to the PowerFlex installation version.
Export the shell variable MDM_IP in a comma-separated list using export MDM_IP=xx.xxx.xx.xx,xx.xxx.xx.xx, where xxx represents the actual IP address in your environment. This list contains the IP addresses of the MDMs.
Install the SDC per the Dell PowerFlex Deployment Guide:
- For Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS, run rpm -iv ./EMC-ScaleIO-sdc-*.x86_64.rpm, where * is the SDC name corresponding to the PowerFlex installation version.
To add more MDM_IP for multi-array support, run /opt/emc/scaleio/sdc/bin/drv_cfg --add_mdm --ip 10.xx.xx.xx.xx,10.xx.xx.xx

Install Driver

Create namespace: Run kubectl create namespace <driver-namespace> command using the desired name to create the namespace.

Prepare the config.yaml for driver configuration.

Example: config.yaml

 # Username for accessing PowerFlex system.	
 # Required: true
- username: "admin"
 # Password for accessing PowerFlex system.	
 # Required: true
 password: "password"
 # System name/ID of PowerFlex system.	
 # Required: true
 systemID: "ID1"
 # REST API gateway HTTPS endpoint/PowerFlex Manager public IP for PowerFlex system.
 # Required: true
 endpoint: "https://127.0.0.1"
 # Determines if the driver is going to validate certs while connecting to PowerFlex REST API interface.
 # Allowed values: true or false
 # Required: true
 # Default value: true
 skipCertificateValidation: true 
 # indicates if this array is the default array
 # needed for backwards compatibility
 # only one array is allowed to have this set to true 
 # Required: false
 # Default value: false
 isDefault: true
 # defines the MDM(s) that SDC should register with on start.
 # Allowed values:  a list of IP addresses or hostnames separated by comma.
 # Required: true
 # Default value: none 
 mdm: "10.0.0.1,10.0.0.2"
 # Defines all system names used to create powerflex volumes
 # Required: false
 # Default value: none
 AllSystemNames: "name1,name2"
- username: "admin"
 password: "Password123"
 systemID: "ID2"
 endpoint: "https://127.0.0.2"
 skipCertificateValidation: true 
 mdm: "10.0.0.3,10.0.0.4"
 AllSystemNames: "name1,name2"

After editing the file, run the following command to create a secret called vxflexos-config kubectl create secret generic vxflexos-config -n <driver-namespace> --from-file=config=config.yaml

Use the following command to replace or update the secret:

kubectl create secret generic vxflexos-config -n <driver-namespace> --from-file=config=config.yaml -o yaml --dry-run=client | kubectl replace -f -

Note:

System ID, MDM configuration, etc. now are taken directly from config.yaml. MDM provided in the input_sample_file.yaml will be overidden with MDM values in config.yaml.
Please provide MDM values in input_sample_file.yaml so that it will be overidden by default value.

Create a Custom Resource (CR) for PowerFlex using the sample files provided here.

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

Parameter	Description	Required	Default
replicas	Controls the number of controller pods you deploy. If the number of controller pods is greater than the number of available nodes, excess pods will become stay in a pending state. Defaults are 2 which allows for Controller high availability.	Yes	2
fsGroupPolicy	Defines which FS Group policy mode to be used, Supported modes `None, File and ReadWriteOnceWithFSType`	No	“ReadWriteOnceWithFSType”
Common parameters for node and controller
X_CSI_VXFLEXOS_ENABLELISTVOLUMESNAPSHOT	Enable list volume operation to include snapshots (since creating a volume from a snap actually results in a new snap)	No	false
X_CSI_VXFLEXOS_ENABLESNAPSHOTCGDELETE	Enable this to automatically delete all snapshots in a consistency group when a snap in the group is deleted	No	false
X_CSI_DEBUG	To enable debug mode	No	true
X_CSI_ALLOW_RWO_MULTI_POD_ACCESS	Setting allowRWOMultiPodAccess to “true” will allow multiple pods on the same node to access the same RWO volume. This behavior conflicts with the CSI specification version 1.3. NodePublishVolume description that requires an error to be returned in this case. However, some other CSI drivers support this behavior and some customers desire this behavior. Customers use this option at their own risk.	No	false

Execute the kubectl create -f <input_sample_file.yaml> command to create PowerFlex custom resource. This command will deploy the CSI-PowerFlex driver.
- Example CR for PowerFlex Driver

apiVersion: storage.dell.com/v1
kind: CSIVXFlexOS
metadata:
  name: test-vxflexos
  namespace: test-vxflexos
spec:
  driver:
    configVersion: v2.6.0
    replicas: 1
    dnsPolicy: ClusterFirstWithHostNet
    forceUpdate: false
    fsGroupPolicy: File
    common:
      image: "dellemc/csi-vxflexos:v2.6.0"
      imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
      envs:
        - name: X_CSI_VXFLEXOS_ENABLELISTVOLUMESNAPSHOT
          value: "false"
        - name: X_CSI_VXFLEXOS_ENABLESNAPSHOTCGDELETE
          value: "false"
        - name: X_CSI_DEBUG
          value: "true"
        - name: X_CSI_ALLOW_RWO_MULTI_POD_ACCESS
          value: "false"
    sideCars:
    # comment the following section if you don't want to run the monitoring sidecar
      - name: sdc-monitor
        envs:
        - name: HOST_PID
          value: "1"
        - name: MDM
          value: ""
          
      # Uncomment the following to install 'external-health-monitor' sidecar to enable health monitor of CSI volumes from Controller plugin.
      # Also set the env variable controller.envs.X_CSI_HEALTH_MONITOR_ENABLED  to "true".
      # - name: external-health-monitor
      #   args: ["--monitor-interval=60s"]

    controller:
      envs:
        # X_CSI_HEALTH_MONITOR_ENABLED: Enable/Disable health monitor of CSI volumes from Controller plugin - volume condition.
        # Install the 'external-health-monitor' sidecar accordingly.
        # Allowed values:
        #   true: enable checking of health condition of CSI volumes
        #   false: disable checking of health condition of CSI volumes
        # Default value: false
        - name: X_CSI_HEALTH_MONITOR_ENABLED
          value: "false"

    node:
      envs:
        # X_CSI_HEALTH_MONITOR_ENABLED: Enable/Disable health monitor of CSI volumes from node plugin - volume usage
        # Allowed values:
        #   true: enable checking of health condition of CSI volumes
        #   false: disable checking of health condition of CSI volumes
        # Default value: false
        - name: X_CSI_HEALTH_MONITOR_ENABLED
          value: "false"

    initContainers:
      - image: dellemc/sdc:3.6
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        name: sdc
        envs:
          - name: MDM
            value: "10.xx.xx.xx,10.xx.xx.xx"  #provide MDM value

    ---
    apiVersion: v1
    kind: ConfigMap
    metadata:
      name: vxflexos-config-params
      namespace: test-vxflexos
    data:
      driver-config-params.yaml: |
        CSI_LOG_LEVEL: "debug"
        CSI_LOG_FORMAT: "TEXT"        
      ```
 ### Pre-Requisite for installation with OLM
     Please run the following commands for creating the required ConfigMap before installing the dell-csi-operator using OLM.
     
   ```yaml
       1. git clone https://github.com/dell/dell-csi-operator.git 
       2. cd dell-csi-operator 
       3. tar -czf config.tar.gz driverconfig/ 
       # Replace operator-namespace in the below command with the actual namespace where the operator will be deployed by OLM 
       4. kubectl create configmap dell-csi-operator-config --from-file config.tar.gz -n <operator-namespace>

Volume Health Monitoring

Volume Health Monitoring feature is optional and by default this feature is disabled for drivers when installed via operator.

To enable this feature, add the below block to the driver manifest before installing the driver. This ensures to install external health monitor sidecar. To get the volume health state value under controller should be set to true as seen below. To get the volume stats value under node should be set to true.

 # Uncomment the following to install 'external-health-monitor' sidecar to enable health monitor of CSI volumes from Controller plugin.
   # Also set the env variable controller.envs.X_CSI_HEALTH_MONITOR_ENABLED  to "true".
   # - name: external-health-monitor
   #   args: ["--monitor-interval=60s"]
   
 # Install the 'external-health-monitor' sidecar accordingly.
 # Allowed values:
 #   true: enable checking of health condition of CSI volumes
 #   false: disable checking of health condition of CSI volumes
 # Default value: false
  controller:
envs:
  - name: X_CSI_HEALTH_MONITOR_ENABLED
    value: "true"
node:
envs:
 # X_CSI_HEALTH_MONITOR_ENABLED: Enable/Disable health monitor of CSI volumes from node plugin - volume usage
 # Allowed values:
 #   true: enable checking of health condition of CSI volumes
 #   false: disable checking of health condition of CSI volumes
 # Default value: false
  - name: X_CSI_HEALTH_MONITOR_ENABLED
    value: "true"