The CSI driver for PowerFlex is a plug-in that is installed into Kubernetes to enable the automated provisioning of persistent storage using a storage class from the underlying PowerFlex storage system. The CSI driver for PowerFlex and Kubernetes communicates using the CSI protocol. The CSI driver for PowerFlex supports PV capabilities, dynamic and static PV provisioning, and snapshot capabilities.

CSI drivers can be installed using two options:

• Installation of CSI Drivers using Helm
• Installation of CSI drivers using Dell CSI Operator

For this document, we have considered using CSI drivers using Helm.

The Helm chart can be used to install the CSI driver for Dell PowerFlex using a shell script. This script installs the CSI driver container image along with the required Kubernetes sidecar containers.

The controller section of the Helm chart installs the following components in a single deployment in the vxflexos namespace:

• CSI driver for Dell PowerFlex
• Kubernetes Provisioner that provisions the volumes
• Kubernetes Attacher that attaches the volumes to the containers
• Kubernetes Snapshotter that provides snapshot support
• Kubernetes External Resizer that resizes the volume

The node section of the Helm chart installs the following components in a daemon set in the vxflexos namespace:

• CSI driver for Dell PowerFlex
• Kubernetes Node Registrar that handles the driver registration