Kubernetes NFS-Client Provisioner

NFS subdir external provisioner is an automatic provisioner that use your existing and already configured NFS server to support dynamic provisioning of Kubernetes Persistent Volumes via Persistent Volume Claims. Persistent volumes are provisioned as ${namespace}-${pvcName}-${pvName}.

Note: This repository is being migrated from https://github.com/kubernetes-incubator/external-storage/tree/master/nfs-client. Some of the following instructions will be updated once the migration is completed. To test container image built from this repository, you will have to build and push the nfs-client-provisioner image using the following instructions.

make build
# Set a custom image registry to push the container image
# Example REGISTRY="quay.io/myorg"
make image

How to deploy nfs-client to your cluster

nfs-client is an automatic provisioner that use your existing and already configured NFS server to support dynamic provisioning of Kubernetes Persistent Volumes via Persistent Volume Claims. Persistent volumes are provisioned as ${namespace}-${pvcName}-${pvName}.

To note again, you must already have an NFS Server.

With Helm

Follow the instructions from the helm chart README.

The tl;dr is

$ git clone https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/nfs-subdir-external-provisioner.git
$ cd nfs-subdir-external-provisioner/deploy/helm/
$ helm install nfs-subdir-external-provisioner . \
    --set nfs.server=x.x.x.x \
    --set nfs.path=/exported/path

Without Helm

Step 1: Get connection information for your NFS server

Make sure your NFS server is accessible from your Kubernetes cluster and get the information you need to connect to it. At a minimum you will need its hostname.

Step 2: Get the NFS-Client Provisioner files

To setup the provisioner you will download a set of YAML files, edit them to add your NFS server's connection information and then apply each with the kubectl / oc command.

Get all of the files in the deploy directory of this repository. These instructions assume that you have cloned the kubernetes-sigs/nfs-subdir-external-provisioner repository and have a bash-shell open in the root directory.

Step 3: Setup authorization

If your cluster has RBAC enabled or you are running OpenShift you must authorize the provisioner. If you are in a namespace/project other than "default" edit deploy/rbac.yaml.

Kubernetes:

# Set the subject of the RBAC objects to the current namespace where the provisioner is being deployed
$ NS=$(kubectl config get-contexts|grep -e "^\*" |awk '{print $5}')
$ NAMESPACE=${NS:-default}
$ sed -i'' "s/namespace:.*/namespace: $NAMESPACE/g" ./deploy/rbac.yaml ./deploy/deployment.yaml
$ kubectl create -f deploy/rbac.yaml

OpenShift:

On some installations of OpenShift the default admin user does not have cluster-admin permissions. If these commands fail refer to the OpenShift documentation for User and Role Management or contact your OpenShift provider to help you grant the right permissions to your admin user. On OpenShift the service account used to bind volumes does not have the necessary permissions required to use the hostmount-anyuid SCC. See also Role based access to SCC for more information. If these commands fail refer to the OpenShift documentation for User and Role Management or contact your OpenShift provider to help you grant the right permissions to your admin user.

# Set the subject of the RBAC objects to the current namespace where the provisioner is being deployed
$ NAMESPACE=`oc project -q`
$ sed -i'' "s/namespace:.*/namespace: $NAMESPACE/g" ./deploy/rbac.yaml
$ oc create -f deploy/rbac.yaml
$ oc create role use-scc-hostmount-anyuid --verb=use --resource=scc --resource-name=hostmount-anyuid -n $NAMESPACE
$ oc adm policy add-role-to-user use-scc-hostmount-anyuid system:serviceaccount:$NAMESPACE:nfs-client-provisioner

Step 4: Configure the NFS-Client provisioner

Note: To deploy to an ARM-based environment, use: deploy/deployment-arm.yaml instead, otherwise use deploy/deployment.yaml.

You must edit the provisioner's deployment file to specify the correct location of your nfs-client-provisioner container image.

Next you must edit the provisioner's deployment file to add connection information for your NFS server. Edit deploy/deployment.yaml and replace the two occurences of with your server's hostname.

kind: Deployment
apiVersion: apps/v1
metadata:
  name: nfs-client-provisioner
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nfs-client-provisioner
  strategy:
    type: Recreate
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nfs-client-provisioner
    spec:
      serviceAccountName: nfs-client-provisioner
      containers:
        - name: nfs-client-provisioner
          image: quay.io/external_storage/nfs-client-provisioner:latest
          volumeMounts:
            - name: nfs-client-root
              mountPath: /persistentvolumes
          env:
            - name: PROVISIONER_NAME
              value: fuseim.pri/ifs
            - name: NFS_SERVER
              value: <YOUR NFS SERVER HOSTNAME>
            - name: NFS_PATH
              value: /var/nfs
      volumes:
        - name: nfs-client-root
          nfs:
            server: <YOUR NFS SERVER HOSTNAME>
            path: /var/nfs

You may also want to change the PROVISIONER_NAME above from fuseim.pri/ifs to something more descriptive like nfs-storage, but if you do remember to also change the PROVISIONER_NAME in the storage class definition below.

To disable leader election, define an env variable named ENABLE_LEADER_ELECTION and set its value to false.

Step 5: Deploying your storage class

Parameters:

Name	Description	Default
onDelete	If it exists and has a delete value, delete the directory, if it exists and has a retain value, save the directory.	will be archived with name on the share: archived-+volume.Name
archiveOnDelete	If it exists and has a false value, delete the directory. if onDelete exists, archiveOnDelete will be ignored.	will be archived with name on the share: archived-+volume.Name
pathPattern	Specifies a template for creating a directory path via PVC metadata's such as labels, annotations, name or namespace. To specify metadata use ${.PVC.}: ${PVC.namespace}	n/a

This is deploy/class.yaml which defines the NFS-Client's Kubernetes Storage Class:

apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: managed-nfs-storage
provisioner: fuseim.pri/ifs # or choose another name, must match deployment's env PROVISIONER_NAME'
parameters:
  pathPattern: "${.PVC.namespace}/${.PVC.annotations.nfs.io/storage-path}" # waits for nfs.io/storage-path annotation, if not specified will accept as empty string.
  onDelete: delete

Step 6: Finally, test your environment!

Now we'll test your NFS provisioner.

Deploy:

$ kubectl create -f deploy/test-claim.yaml -f deploy/test-pod.yaml

Now check your NFS Server for the file SUCCESS.

kubectl delete -f deploy/test-pod.yaml -f deploy/test-claim.yaml

Now check the folder has been deleted.

Step 7: Deploying your own PersistentVolumeClaims

To deploy your own PVC, make sure that you have the correct storage-class as indicated by your deploy/class.yaml file.

For example:

kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: test-claim
  annotations:
    volume.beta.kubernetes.io/storage-class: "managed-nfs-storage"
    nfs.io/storage-path: "test-path" # not required, depending on whether this annotation was shown in the storage class description
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteMany
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 1Mi

Build and publish with GitHub Actions

In a forked repository you can use GitHub Actions pipeline defined in .github/workflows/release.yml. The pipeline builds Docker images for linux/amd64, linux/arm64, and linux/arm/v7 platforms and publishes them using a multi-arch manifest. The pipeline is triggered when you add a tag like gh-v{major}.{minor}.{patch} to your commit and push it to GitHub. The tag is used for generating Docker image tags: latest, {major}, {major}:{minor}, {major}:{minor}:{patch}.

The pipeline adds several labels:

• org.opencontainers.image.title=${{ github.event.repository.name }}
• org.opencontainers.image.description=${{ github.event.repository.description }}
• org.opencontainers.image.url=${{ github.event.repository.html_url }}
• org.opencontainers.image.source=${{ github.event.repository.clone_url }}
• org.opencontainers.image.created=${{ steps.prep.outputs.created }}
• org.opencontainers.image.revision=${{ github.sha }}
• org.opencontainers.image.licenses=${{ github.event.repository.license.spdx_id }}

Important:

• The pipeline performs the docker login command using REGISTRY_USERNAME and REGISTRY_TOKEN secrets, which have to be provided.
• You also need to provide the DOCKER_IMAGE secret specifying your Docker image name, e.g., quay.io/[username]/nfs-subdir-external-provisioner.