Announcing CSM Release 1.6!
Mon, 29 Apr 2024 18:40:02 -0000
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Introduction
The first release of 2023 for Kubernetes CSI Driver & Dell Container Storage Modules (CSM) is here!
The official changelog is available in the CHANGELOG directory of the CSM repository.
CSI Features
Supported Kubernetes distributions
The newly supported Kubernetes distributions are:
- Kubernetes 1.26
- MKE 3.6
- RKE 1.4
Note: OpenShift 4.12 official qualification is not there yet. Indeed, these modules have been tested against Kubernetes 1.25 which is based on OpenShift 4.12. But you must install them using Helm package manager, not CSI or CSM Operators.
Installation Wizard
One of the major new features for CSI in CSM 1.6 is the Installation Wizard.
If you are a faithful reader of this blog series, you already know that Dell's CSI and CSM moved to pure Helm Charts and are distributed in our helm chart repository. This paved the way for the wizard installer!
Straight from the documentation portal, you can launch the wizard to configure and install the CSI and CSM modules for PowerStore and PowerMax. All the dependencies between CSI and CSM are managed.
The wizard doesn't aim to cover all use cases but gives an excellent default values.yaml, which can always be tuned later.
It has never been easier to install CSI and CSM!
cert-csi open-source
cert-csi is Dell's test framework to validate and qualify drivers against the Kubernetes distributions.
If all tests from cert-csi pass, we call a platform (Linux OS + Kubernetes distribution) certified and officially supported by the Dell Engineering and Support structure.
With cert-csi open-sourced, the community can validate a platform, even if it’s not in the support matrix yet.
For more details about how to use the cert-csi utility, see the documentation portal.
Other features
The dellctl images CLI prints all the container images needed by Dell CSI drivers.
PowerMax Metro volumes are now fully compliant with the CSI specification for volume expansion, clone, and snapshot.
CSM Features
CSM Operator adds PowerStore support
The CSM Operator is the future of the Operator framework for Dell CSI driver and Dell Container Storage Modules and now integrates the modules for PowerStore.
CSM Resiliency PowerStore support
Kubernetes is notably conservative with StatefulSets on node failures: it won't reschedule them automatically and requires an administrator to force the deletion of the pods.
CSM resiliency solves that problem (and more) by querying the backend storage and getting the volumes' status to allow rescheduling in a few seconds after a node is NotReady for Kubernetes.
PowerStore is now part of the supported storage backends!
CSM Replication PowerFlex support
CSM replication supports PowerFlex and it is now possible to combine it with an offering of PowerFlex in AWS. For these types of designs, it is recommended to have low latency between the source and the target. For example, here is the architecture of our lab:
And the result of a replicated volume in PowerFlex UI in AWS looks like this:
To learn more about PowerFlex in AWS, see the video Dell Project Alpine Gets Real with PowerFlex on AWS and the blog Dell PowerFlex is now available on AWS.
CSM Observability PowerMax support
CSM Observability can collect PowerMax metrics, including the performance of the storage groups that back the PVC, the capacity of the storage resource pool, and more.
Useful links
Stay informed of the latest updates of the Dell CSM eco-system by subscribing to:
- The Dell CSM Github repository
- Our DevOps & Automation Youtube playlist
- The Slack Workspaces at Dell Technologies
- Demo of CSM replication with PowerFlex
Author: Florian Coulombel