OpenEBS — Bring your storage close to container using proven infrastructure technology

Getting started and troubleshooting

Overview

I found running pod in Kubernetes in AWS as challenge when it requires persistent volume. We can use EBS as persistent volume but requires a node to be in the same availability zone as the EBS volume is.

OpenEBS resolves the issue by putting a abstraction layer on top of storage layer using iSCSI technology. It works by creating a Controller Pod which is iSCSI initiator and maintains replication, fail-over etc.

The details on how it works is nicely depicted in the article below -

Using OpenEBS as a Kubernetes persistent volume

Limitation

So far I have found that for each pvc it creates a controller and multiple volume replica which can be resource intensive if you want to run multiple volumes.

Installation and Configuration

To get started, it is simple to start with Jiva as StorageEngine since it uses node root volume by default. It is a must to install iscsi tool before installing OpenEBS on node, otherwise Controller will not start (it runs on the port 3260).