Create sharedv4 PVCs

This document describes how to use Portworx sharedv4 (ReadWriteMany) volumes in your Kubernetes cluster.

Prerequisites

• sharedv4 volumes must not be disabled on your cluster.
• NFS ports between nodes must be open.

Provision a Sharedv4 Volume

Sharedv4 volumes are useful when you want multiple PODs to access the same PVC (volume) at the same time. They can use the same volume even if they are running on different hosts. They provide a global namespace and the semantics are POSIX compliant.

To increase fault tolerance, you can enable Sharedv4 service volumes by setting a value for sharedv4_svc_type. With this feature enabled, every sharedv4 volume has a Kubernetes service associated with it. Sharedv4 service volumes expose the volume via a Kubernetes service IP. If the sharedv4 (NFS) server goes offline for a sharedv4 service volume and the volume requires a failover, only application pods that were running on the 2 nodes involved in failover need to be restarted.

Step 1: Create a StorageClass

1. Create the following storageClass, specifying your own values for the following fields:

   • The metadata.name field with a name for your storageClass
   • The parameters.repl field with the replication factor you’d like to set
   • The sharedv4 field set to true
   • (Optional) The sharedv4_svc_type field set to ClusterIP if you want to enable the sharedv4 service feature

   • (Optional) The sharedv4_failover_strategy field set to normal or aggressive (shorter failover grace period)

     NOTE: The default value for sharedv4_failover_strategy in sharedv4 volumes is normal, and the default value for sharedv4_failover_strategy in sharedv4 service volumes is aggressive.

     kind: StorageClass
     apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
     metadata:
         name: px-sharedv4-sc
     provisioner: kubernetes.io/portworx-volume
     parameters:
        repl: "2"
        sharedv4: "true"
        sharedv4_svc_type: "ClusterIP"

2. Apply the storageClass:

   kubectl apply -f examples/volumes/portworx/portworx-sharedv4-sc.yaml

3. Verify the storage class is created:

   kubectl describe storageclass px-sharedv4-sc

   Name:        px-sharedv4-sc
   IsDefaultClass:    No
   Annotations:     <none>
   Provisioner:     kubernetes.io/portworx-volume
   Parameters:    repl=2,sharedv4=true,sharedv4_svc_type=ClusterIP
   Events:     <none>

Step 2: Create persistent volume claim

Creating a ReadWriteMany persistent volume claim:

kubectl create -f examples/volumes/portworx/portworx-volume-sharedv4-pvc.yaml

Example:

kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: px-sharedv4-pvc
  annotations:
    volume.beta.kubernetes.io/storage-class: px-sharedv4-sc
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteMany
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 10Gi

Note the accessMode for this PVC is set to ReadWriteMany so the Kubernetes allows mounting this PVC on multiple pods.

Verifying persistent volume claim is created:

kubectl get pvc

NAME            STATUS    VOLUME                                   CAPACITY   ACCESSMODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
px-sharedv4-pvc   Bound     pvc-a38996b3-76e9-11e7-9d47-080027b25cdf 10Gi       RWX           px-sharedv4-sc   12m

Step 3: Create pods which use the persistent volume claim

We will start two pods which use the same shared volume.

Starting pod-1

kubectl create -f examples/volumes/portworx/portworx-volume-sharedv4-pod-1.yaml

Example:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: pod1
spec:
  containers:
  - name: test-container
    image: gcr.io/google_containers/test-webserver
    volumeMounts:
    - name: test-volume
      mountPath: /test-portworx-volume
  volumes:
  - name: test-volume
    persistentVolumeClaim:
      claimName: px-sharedv4-pvc

Starting pod-2

kubectl create -f examples/volumes/portworx/portworx-volume-sharedv4-pod-2.yaml

Example:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: pod2
spec:
  containers:
  - name: test-container
    image: gcr.io/google_containers/test-webserver
    volumeMounts:
    - name: test-volume
      mountPath: /test-portworx-volume
  volumes:
  - name: test-volume
    persistentVolumeClaim:
      claimName: px-sharedv4-pvc

Verifying pods are running:

kubectl get pods

NAME      READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod1      1/1       Running   0          2m
pod2      1/1       Running   0          1m

Convert a sharedv4 volume to a sharedv4 service volume

Perform the following steps to convert a sharedv4 volume to use the new sharedv4 service feature:

1. Detach the volume by scaling down the application pods down to 0.

2. Run the following pxctl command:

   pxctl volume update --sharedv4_service_type=ClusterIP <volume>

3. Scale the pods back up to start the application.

Convert a sharedv4 service volume to a sharedv4 volume

Perform the following steps to convert a sharedv4 service volume to a sharedv4 volume:

1. Detach the volume by scaling the application pods down to 0.

2. Run the following pxctl command:

   pxctl volume update --sharedv4_service_type="" <volume>

3. Scale the pods back up to start the application.

Update a legacy shared volume to a sharedv4 volume

You can update an existing shared volume to use the new v4 protocol and convert it into a sharedv4 volume. Run the following pxctl command to update the volume setting

pxctl volume update --sharedv4=on <vol-name>