Storage Link to heading

Volumes Link to heading

Containers state are ephemeral, once the container is terminated then the Controller will recreate the container but data from the crashed/deleted container is lost. We can persist the container or containers data by using Volumes, but it will last only while the Pod is alive, once the Pod is eliminated then the volume is gone.

  • More references: kubectl explain pod.spec.volumes
  • Pod have shared filesystem so all containers can share the files with a volume
  • Ephemeral Volumes: emptyDir, configMap, secrets
  • Persistent Volumes: hostPath, local, ebs (aws), etc

Mount propagation: Which can be None, HostToContainer, Bidirectional. This is about mounts on top of mounted volumes.

Persistent Volumes Link to heading

These volumes can persist even if the Pod is terminated.

  • PersistentVolume: Piece of Storage attached to the cluster by an Administrator
  • PersistentVolumeClaim: Request to a storage space by an user (Pods)

How PV and PVC work together: PV controller monitor Etcd looking for PVCs if found the it searchs for a valid PV and bound to it If not then checks for the storage class for dynamic provisioning of PV. Each storageClass have its own Provisioner.

Notes:

  • If a PVC is deleted then it waits until no Pod is using it. If a PV is deleted then it waits until no PVC is using it.
  • A PV binding to a PVC is 1 to 1 mapping only.
  • volumeMode:
    • Filesystem: if the volume backed by a device is empty, k8s creates a filesystem before mounting it
    • Block: No filesystem layer, much faster to write, the app in the pod needs to know how to handle Raw Block device
  • acccessMode: ReadWriteOnce, ReadOnlyMany, ReadWriteMany, ReadWriteOncePod
  • storageClassName: if this is defined then the PVCs can get a PV with the specific class name
  • persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy:
    • Retain: PVC is deleted but not the PV and also the storage
    • Delete: PVC and PV are deleted as well as the storage
    • Recycle: Performs rm -rf in the volume and it’s available for new claims
  • One single PVC can be used by multiple containers and use different folders by using: subPath and subPathExpr
  • When using type “local”, k8s will make sure Pods that uses that PV are allocated in the nodeAffinity of the PV.
    • The PV and local type must have nodeAffinity defined.

Persistent Volume Claim Link to heading

These PVC have some properties similar from PVs and also:

  • Selectors: The matchLabels and matchExpressions is ANDed and help to bound a PVC witht the PV.
  • Class: the class name PV where the PVC will be bound, of not specified then will be bound to the kids default classStorage, it can also be empty string “”.

Snapshots Link to heading

  • A PVC can be created from a volume snapshots via .spec.dataSource. It can also be created from another existing PVC.
  • PVC can also be prepopulated via .spec.dataSourceRef and a Custom Resource.

Storage Class Link to heading

  • Kubernetes has a default storageClass, it can have multilples but the latest one will have priority.
  • Each storageClass have its own Providioner that creates PVs

Volume Snapshots Link to heading

  • VolumeSnapshotContent is the resource and VolumeSnapshot is the request to create snapshots.
  • These snapshots can be pre-provsioned (manual creation of VolumeSnapshotContent) or Dynamic (via VolumeSnapshot) from a PVC

Notes for the lab Link to heading

no

  • 00: Pod with Volume emptyDir
  • 01: Pod NFS Volume
  • 02: Configmap & secrets, read only
  • 03: PV and PVC with local and hostPath
  • 04: Storage Class with EBS
    • Reclaiming: Delete, Retain and Recycle
  • 05: Volume Snapshots Meh