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

  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.

    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:

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, the excess pods will be in pending state until new nodes are available for scheduling. Default is 2 which allows for Controller high availability. Yes 2
namespace Specifies namespace where the driver will be installed Yes “powerstore”
fsGroupPolicy Defines which FS Group policy mode to be used. Supported modes None, File and ReadWriteOnceWithFSType No “ReadWriteOnceWithFSType”
storageCapacity Enable/Disable storage capacity tracking feature No false
Common parameters for node and controller
X_CSI_POWERSTORE_NODE_NAME_PREFIX Prefix to add to each node registered by the CSI driver Yes “csi-node”
X_CSI_FC_PORTS_FILTER_FILE_PATH To set path to the file which provides a list of WWPN which should be used by the driver for FC connection on this node No “/etc/fc-ports-filter”
Controller parameters
X_CSI_POWERSTORE_EXTERNAL_ACCESS allows specifying additional entries for hostAccess of NFS volumes. Both single IP address and subnet are valid entries No empty
X_CSI_NFS_ACLS Defines permissions - POSIX mode bits or NFSv4 ACLs, to be set on NFS target mount directory. No “0777”
Node parameters
X_CSI_POWERSTORE_ENABLE_CHAP Set to true if you want to enable iSCSI CHAP feature No false
  1. 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>
  1. Verify the CSI Driver installation

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.