Dell at KubeCon Europe 2023
Fri, 14 Apr 2023 16:56:09 -0000
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Ever wondered why KubeCon happens twice a year? I think it has to do with the pace at which things are changing in the cloud-native world. Every six months it is amazing to see the number of new CNCF projects graduating (crossing the chasm!), the number of enterprises deploying containerized production workloads, and just how the DevOps ecosystem is evolving within the Kubernetes space. Four years ago, Dell started sponsoring KubeCon at the 2019 KubeCon in San Diego. Ever since, Dell has been a sponsor of this event even through the virtual editions during the pandemic. Next week, KubeCon is happening in Amsterdam!
First things first: Dell + Canonical community appreciation event (big party 😊): Register here.
Today the innovation engine at Dell Technologies is firing on all cylinders to deliver an infrastructure stack that suits Kubernetes deployments of any scale with extensive support for DevOps-centric workflows, particularly in the context of Kubernetes workloads. Customers can deploy and consume infrastructure for cloud-native applications anywhere they like with management ease and scalable performance. Let us see some key elements of how we are doing it with recent updates in the space.
Software-defined storage, unbounded
Scale is an essential element of cloud-native architecture, and software-defined storage is an ideal choice that allows incremental addition of capacity. There are a lot of software-defined storage solutions in the market including open source alternatives like Ceph. However, not all software-defined solutions are the same. Dell PowerFlex is an industry-leading solution that offers scalability of 1,000s of nodes with submillisecond latency and comes with all the integrations for a modern ops-driven workflow. In particular, I invite you to explore the Red Hat OpenShift validated solution for container workloads. We have a ton of resources all organized here for you to get into every detail of the architecture and the value it delivers. Also check out this great proof-of-concept deployment of Kubernetes as a service that has multicloud integration by our illustrious IaC Avengers team.
Advanced data services, CSM
Let’s dive to the kubectl level. Developers and DevOps teams building for Kubernetes want to make sure storage is well integrated into the Kubernetes layer. CSI and storage classes are table stakes. Dell Container Storage Modules (CSMs) are open-sourced data services that deliver value to business-critical Kubernetes deployments. CSM modules deliver great value along multiple dimensions:
- Delivering advanced storage data services of Dell platforms like data encryption and remote replication to enable migration and DR workflows. Here is the latest demo with PowerFlex.
- Integration with Kubernetes-native tools like Velero for app mobility and Prometheus for logging and observability. Here is an Observability module demo.
- Storage management across multiple Kubernetes clusters with the Authorization module. Watch this demo video.
- Resiliency against complete node failures with intelligent detection and failover. And here is a recent demo of how this works.
And, since the last KubeCon, we have added multiple features to make these modules work even better for you. Check out what’s new in CSM 1.5 and the latest CSM 1.6 release.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC): New Terraform integrations
What I love about IaC is that it brings cloud-like operational simplicity to any large-scale infrastructure deployment. We are super excited about the latest IaC integration that we recently launched for Dell infrastructure: Terraform providers. Check out what came out in version 1, and I am sure we will share many more updates in this space for the rest of the year. If you are someone in the infrastructure space, you might be interested in this brief history of infrastructure of code evolution.
Data protection
Backup and DR are boring until $!#? happens. This is where kube admins and DevOps engineers can collaborate with IT teams to get on the same page about the SLA requirements and implement the required data protection and recovery strategies. Built for any workload, any cloud, and any persona (aka IT Generalist), Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is an essential part of going mainstream with Kubernetes deployments. Check out this white paper that gives you a great start with Kubernetes data protection. In the same spirit, I hope you will find this series of blog posts on Amazon’s EKS Anywhere reference architecture and the thorough coverage of data protection and DR scenarios very enlightening.
Dell booth at KubeCon!
We would love to chat with you about all these things and anything Kubernetes-related at KubeCon. We have some great demos and new hands-on labs set up at the Dell booth. You can find us at the P14 booth:
Related Blog Posts
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
CSM 1.8 Release is Here!
Fri, 22 Sep 2023 21:29:12 -0000
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Introduction
This is already the third release of Dell Container Storage Modules (CSM)!
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 1.28
- OpenShift 4.13
SD-NAS support for PowerMax and PowerFlex
Historically, PowerMax and PowerFlex are Dell’s high-end and SDS for block storage. Both of these backends recently introduced support for software defined NAS.
This means that the respective CSI drivers can now provision PVC with the ReadWriteMany access mode for the volume type file. In other words, thanks to the NFS protocol different nodes from the Kubernetes cluster can access the same volume concurrently. This feature is particularly useful for applications, such as log management tools like Splunk or Elastic Search, that need to process logs coming from multiple Pods.
CSI Specification compliance
Storage capacity tracking
Like PowerScale in v1.7.0, PowerMax and Dell Unity allow you to check the storage capacity on a node before deploying storage to that node. This isn't that relevant in the case of shared storage, because shared storage generally will always show the same capacity to each node in the cluster. However, it could prove useful if the array lacks available storage.
Using this feature, an object from the CSIStorageCapacity type is created by the CSI driver in the same namespace as the CSI driver, one for each storageClass.
An example:
kubectl get csistoragecapacities -n unity # This shows one object per storageClass.
Volume Limits
The Volume Limits feature is added to both PowerStore and PowerFlex. All Dell storage platforms now implement this feature.
This option limits the maximum number of volumes to which a Kubernetes worker node can connect. This can be configured on a per-node basis, or cluster-wide. Setting this variable to zero disables the limit.
Here are some PowerStore examples.
Per node:
kubectl label node <node name> max-powerstore-volumes-per-node=<volume_limit>
For the entire cluster (all worker nodes):
Specify maxPowerstoreVolumesPerNode or maxVxflexVolumesPerNode in the values.yaml file upon Helm installation.
If you opted-in for the CSP Operator deployment, you can control it by specifying X_CSI_MAX_VOLUMES_PER_NODES in the CRD.
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
- Slack (under the Dell Infrastructure namespace)
- Live streaming on Twitch
Author: Florian Coulombel