Home > Storage > PowerFlex > White Papers > Installing and configuring Oracle Linux KVM on Dell PowerFlex > PowerFlex CSI and CSM
An important component outside of PowerFlex that enables a flexible consumption model for Kubernetes is the PowerFlex CSI driver. It was developed as a part of the Dell Kubernetes strategy. After the CSI driver for PowerFlex is loaded into Kubernetes, it can be used to provision persistent volumes from the underlying PowerFlex storage resource. If the Kubernetes deployment is running low on PowerFlex storage resources, you can add PowerFlex storage nodes to increase the system capacity and performance.
The CSI driver connects the PowerFlex system and Kubernetes deployments. It is a storage broker agent which dynamically provisions volumes from PowerFlex through the PowerFlex API gateway to the Kubernetes cluster. Once the volume is available on PowerFlex, it is immediately mapped to the requesting pod. If a pod is destroyed or rescheduled, the CSI plug-in ensures that the volumes are remapped upon rescheduling of that pod.
Customers running Kubernetes clusters on PowerFlex use the Dell Container Storage Modules (CSM), which extend the CSI driver capabilities. These modules:
These modules include snapshot, observability, authorization, application mobility, and resiliency.
PowerFlex supports multiple operating systems and different deployment options for on-premises and public cloud deployment models (available in AWS). PowerFlex is validated with the leading Kubernetes distributions.