The KumoScale™ Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver implements a standard interface between a Kubernetes™ cloud orchestration framework and KumoScale storage nodes and the KumoScale Provisioner service . The KumoScale CSI driver enables the Kubernetes orchestration platform to seamlessly carve out storage resources from KumoScale storage nodes as virtual volumes and connect them to Kubernetes pods and containers. The CSI driver uses storage class parameters to provision storage to applications by storage type, thus enabling KumoScale software to optimally map the storage available to the application’s storage requirements. For example, data resiliency is a storage class parameter.
The KumoScale CSI plug-in is delivered as a container provided by KIOXIA. This container is installed on every node in a Kubernetes cluster.
Intended Audience
The target audiences for this document are storage administrators and DevOps engineers. It is assumed that the intended reader has a working knowledge of storage and networking concepts. The reader should also be familiar with the Kubernetes environment and its configuration as well as CSI concepts and terminology.
Environment Requirements
Before you begin any implementation, ensure that your environment meets the installation requirements detailed in the KumoScale Installation Guide to install KumoScale software and configure master and worker nodes on the storage cluster.
KumoScale 3.19 has been tested with Kubernetes 1.20 and 1.21. It supports Kubernetes’ Volume Snapshot feature which is generally available in version 1.20 and 1.21. Lower versions of Kubernetes are supported to the extent that Kubernetes supports backward compatibility as documented at https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/using-api/deprecation-policy/. Users who want to use the Volume Snapshot feature in lower versions will need to enable this feature as explained in Prepare the Environment for Features in Beta.
You will need the kubeadm tool for managing the Kubernetes based control plane of KumoScale.
Documentation
Before using the CSI plug-in, users should be familiar with KumoScale software terminology and processes. More information can be found in the following KumoScale software documents available on the KumoScale software web site at https://kumoscale.kioxia.com/en/documents/
- KumoScale System Overview provides an overview of the KumoScale software architecture for all environments including bare-metal.
- KumoScale User Manual describes KumoScale software features and the procedures for implementing a scale-out storage system built on the NVMe™ protocol.
- KumoScale Release Notes lists the changes made to the latest version of KumoScale software.
Topics covered in this guide include:
Installation Process describes the procedure for installing the CSI plug-in.
Storage Provisioning explains how to provision storage.
System Management Operations details the operations needed for provisioning.
Next: CSI Installation