CSI topology for FlashArray cloud drives

The CSI topology feature for FlashArray Cloud Drives (FACD) allows applications to provision and use cloud drives only on FlashArrays that are in the same zone as a given node. This improves fault tolerance for replicas, performance, and manageability for large clusters.

Prerequisites

In order to use the CSI topology feature with a FlashArray Direct Access volume or FlashBlade Direct Access filesystem, you must meet the following prerequisites:

• Portworx version 3.0.0 or newer installed on a new Kubernetes cluster deployed on infrastructure that meets the minimum requirements for Portworx.

note

You cannot enable this feature on an existing Portworx installation.

• Portworx Operator version 23.5.1 or newer.

• One or more FlashArrays is reachable from worker nodes.

• All nodes must have management access to all arrays.

• All nodes must support iSCSI, FC, and NVMe technologies.

Enable CSI topology

To enable CSI topology, specify the topology.portworx.io/zone label to describe the topology of each FlashArray.

Prepare your environment

Before installing Portworx, it is essential to label your Kubernetes nodes with the correct topology, specifically indicating the zone for each FlashArray. This step is crucial for proper management and access control, especially when working with multiple FlashArrays.

1. To label your nodes, run the following commands for each node, specifying the appropriate zone:

   kubectl label node <nodeName> topology.portworx.io/zone=zone-1
   kubectl label node <nodeName> topology.portworx.io/zone=zone-2

   Ensure that the nodes are labeled with the correct zone before installing Portworx on them. In setups like OpenShift Container Platform, this step becomes particularly important. If you are managing multiple FlashArrays and wanting to control node access to specific FlashArrays, then you can configure different MachineSets accordingly.

   By labeling the nodes, you help ensure proper topology-aware storage deployment and access control for the respective zones.

2. Create a px-pure-secret containing the information for your FlashArrays with the topology.portworx.io/zone label. For example:

   {
     "FlashArrays": [
       {
         "MgmtEndPoint": "<managementEndpoint>",
         "APIToken": "<apiToken>",
         "Labels": {
           "topology.portworx.io/zone": "zone-1"
         }
       },
       {
         "MgmtEndPoint": "<managementEndpoint>",
         "APIToken": "<apiToken>",
         "Labels": {
           "topology.portworx.io/zone": "zone-2"
         }
       }
     ]
   }

Generate the specs

1. Navigate to Portworx Central and log in, or create an account.

2. Select Portworx Enterprise from the product catalog and click Continue.

3. On the Product Line page, choose any option depending on which license you intend to use, then select Continue to start the spec generator.

4. Choose your Portworx version, platform, and click Customize at the bottom of the Summary section.

5. Specify your cluster information on the Basic, Storage and Network pages.

6. On the Customize page, specify the following in the Environment Variables tab:

   • Name: FACD_TOPOLOGY_ENABLED
   • Value: true

   Also, ensure that the Enable CSI checkbox is selected in the Advance Settings tab.
   Click Finish to create the specs.

Apply the specs and verify

1. Deploy the Operator:

   kubectl apply -f 'https://install.portworx.com/<version-number>?comp=pxoperator'

   serviceaccount/portworx-operator created
   podsecuritypolicy.policy/px-operator created
   clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/portworx-operator created
   clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/portworx-operator created
   deployment.apps/portworx-operator created

2. Deploy the StorageCluster:

   kubectl apply -f 'https://install.portworx.com/<version-number>?operator=true&mc=false&kbver=&b=true&kd=type%3Dgp2%2Csize%3D150&s=%22type%3Dgp2%2Csize%3D150%22&c=px-cluster-XXXX-XXXX&eks=true&stork=true&csi=true&mon=true&tel=false&st=k8s'

   storagecluster.core.libopenstorage.org/px-cluster-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-8dfd338e915b created

3. Verify if the cloud drives for a given node are provisioned on arrays that are in the same zone:

   pxctl sv pool show

   PX drive configuration:
   Pool ID: 0 
   Type:  Default 
   UUID:  xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-0d1797392d56 
   IO Priority:  HIGH 
   Labels:  topology.portworx.io/zone=zone-2,beta.kubernetes.io/arch=amd64,medium=STORAGE_MEDIUM_SSD,iopriority=HIGH,topology.portworx.io/region=region-2,kubernetes.io/hostname=dev-leather-forger-1,kubernetes.io/arch=amd64,kubernetes.io/os=linux,beta.kubernetes.io/os=linux 
   Size: 250 GiB 
   Status: Online 
   Has metadata:  No 
   Balanced:  Yes
       ....

   You will see that Labels flag is set for your volumes.