CSI Drivers (EBS, EFS, S3) on EKS And How To Use Them

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Container Storage Interface (CSI) drivers play a crucial role in managing persistent storage for containerized applications. When working with Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), integrating CSI drivers becomes essential for efficient storage management. In this guide, we will delve into the details of CSI drivers on Amazon EKS and explore how to install and use them seamlessly with file systems.

Understanding CSI Drivers:

CSI is a standardized interface that allows storage vendors to develop plugins that can be used across various container orchestration platforms. With EKS, these drivers help manage the lifecycle of storage resources, enabling dynamic provisioning, attaching, and detaching volumes to and from pods

AWS EBS CSI Driver:

1 — Overview:
The AWS EBS CSI Driver allows Kubernetes clusters to use Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes as persistent storage. It supports dynamic provisioning of EBS volumes, attaching/detaching volumes to pods, and snapshot creation.

2 — Installation:

First Ensure that the necessary IAM roles and policies are in place to allow EKS to interact with the storage service. This involves creating a role with the appropriate permissions for your chosen driver as detailed in the AWS Docs.

To Deploy the EBS CSI Driver Utilize the provided Helm charts or YAML manifests to deploy the CSI driver on your EKS cluster or You can install it as an EKS Add-on and specify the IAM role you.

EBS CSI Driver add-on

Or you can use my Terraform Module to setup the appropriate policy, and roles and install the add-on on the cluster.

[GitHub - Z4ck404/terraform-aws-eks-ebs-csi-driver: A terraform module install ebs csi driver on an eks cluster](https://github.com/Z4ck404/terraform-aws- eks-ebs-csi-driver)

    module "eks-ebs-csi-driver" {  
      source           = "Z4ck404/eks-ebs-csi-driver/aws"  
      version          = "0.1.0"  
      
      aws_profile      = "zack-aws-profile"  
      aws_region       = "us-west-1"  
      eks_cluster_name = "zack-eks"  
    }

3 — Usage:

Create a storage class that provisions volumes using the EBS driver, then define a PVC to be used by your workloads.

    kind: StorageClass  
    apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1  
    metadata:  
     name: ebs-sc  
    provisioner: ebs.csi.aws.com  
    --  
    kind: PersistentVolumeClaim  
    apiVersion: v1  
    metadata:  
     name: ebs-pvc  
     spec:  
    storageClassName: ebs-sc  
     accessModes:  
       - ReadWriteOnce  
     resources:  
       requests:  
         storage: 5Gi

Amazon EFS CSI Driver

1 — Overview:

Enables the use of Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) as a persistent storage solution for Kubernetes pods. It allows Dynamic provisioning of EFS filesystems, mount targets per pod, and support for ReadWriteMany access mode.

2 — Installation:
Same as the EBS CSI Driver you will need to setup IAM resources, then install the driver using helm charts, yaml manifests, or as an EKS Add-on as explained in the AWS Docs.

3 — Usage:

Create a storage class that provisions volumes using the efs driver, then define a PVC to be used by your workloads.

    kind: StorageClass  
    apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1  
    metadata:  
      name: efs-sc  
    provisioner: efs.csi.aws.com  
    --  
    kind: PersistentVolumeClaim  
    apiVersion: v1  
    metadata:  
      name: efs-pvc  
    spec:  
      storageClassName: efs-sc  
      accessModes:  
        - ReadWriteMany  
      resources:  
        requests:  
          storage: 5Gi

S3 CSI Driver (mounting S3 as a filesystem):

1 — Overview:
The S3 CSI Driver allows Kubernetes pods to use Amazon S3 buckets as if they were mounted file systems. It enables transparent access to S3 data, and supports for ReadWriteOnce access mode.

2 — Installation:

Same as the EBS CSI Driver you will need to setup IAM resources, then install the driver using helm charts, yaml manifests or as an EKS Add-on as explained in the AWS Docs .

Or you can use my Terraform Module to setup the appropriate policy, and role and install the add-on on your cluster.

GitHub - Z4ck404/terraform-aws-eks-s3-csi-driver: A terraform module install s3 csi driver on an eks cluster and mount s3 as volume

    module "eks-s3-csi-driver" {  
      source  = "Z4ck404/eks-s3-csi-driver/aws"  
      
      aws_profile      = "zack-labs"  
      aws_region       = "us-west-2"  
      eks_cluster_name = "zack-demo-0"  
      
      s3_bucket_name = "zack-s3-mount--usw2-az1--x-s3"  
    }

3 — Usage:

You can have a look into the examples in the official repository of the mountpoint-s3-csi-driver . Static provisioning can be achieved as follows:

    apiVersion: v1  
    kind: PersistentVolume  
    metadata:  
      name: s3-pv  
    spec:  
      capacity:  
        storage: 1200Gi # ignored, required  
      accessModes:  
        - ReadWriteMany # supported options: ReadWriteMany / ReadOnlyMany  
      mountOptions:  
        - allow-delete  
        - region us-west-2  
      csi:  
        driver: s3.csi.aws.com # required  
        volumeHandle: s3-csi-driver-volume  
        volumeAttributes:  
          bucketName: s3-csi-driver  
    ---  
    apiVersion: v1  
    kind: PersistentVolumeClaim  
    metadata:  
      name: s3-claim  
    spec:  
      accessModes:  
        - ReadWriteMany # supported options: ReadWriteMany / ReadOnlyMany  
      storageClassName: "" # required for static provisioning  
      resources:  
        requests:  
          storage: 1200Gi # ignored, required  
      volumeName: s3-pv  
    ---  
    apiVersion: v1  
    kind: Pod  
    metadata:  
      name: s3-app  
    spec:  
      containers:  
        - name: app  
          image: centos  
          command: ["/bin/sh"]  
          args: ["-c", "echo 'Hello from the container!' >> /data/$(date -u).txt; tail -f /dev/null"]  
          volumeMounts:  
            - name: persistent-storage  
              mountPath: /data  
      volumes:  
        - name: persistent-storage  
          persistentVolumeClaim:  
            claimName: s3-claim

Conclusion:

These examples offer a basis for integrating and using different CSI drivers on Amazon EKS, addressing different storage needs, from block storage with EBS to file storage with EFS and even object storage with S3. There is also an Amazon FSx for Lustre CSI driver for FSx for Lustre.
Third-party CSI drivers exist to support other file systems available on AWS such as NetApp Trident which allow FSxONTAP to be used.

CSI Drivers (EBS, EFS, S3) on EKS And How To Use Them was originally published in AWS Morocco on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.