CSI inline ephemeral volumes

You can provision temporary, pod-specific storage by using Container Storage Interface (CSI) inline ephemeral volumes that are automatically created at pod deployment and removed at pod termination.

Overview of CSI inline ephemeral volumes

Traditionally, volumes that are backed by Container Storage Interface (CSI) drivers can only be used with a PersistentVolume and PersistentVolumeClaim object combination.

CSI inline ephemeral volumes allow you to specify CSI volumes directly in the Pod specification, rather than in a PersistentVolume object. Inline volumes are ephemeral and do not persist across pod restarts.

CSI inline ephemeral volumes are only available with the following supported CSI drivers:

Azure File CSI driver
Secrets Store CSI driver

Support limitations for CSI inline ephemeral volumes

warning

The Shared Resource CSI Driver feature is now generally available in Builds for Red Hat OpenShift 1.1. This feature is now removed in OpenShift Container Platform 4.18 and later. To use this feature, ensure that you are using Builds for Red Hat OpenShift 1.1 or later. For information about Builds for Red Hat OpenShift 1.1, see "Builds for Red Hat OpenShift 1.1".

By default, OpenShift Container Platform supports CSI inline ephemeral volumes with these limitations:

Support is only available for CSI drivers. In-tree and FlexVolumes are not supported.
Community or storage vendors provide other CSI drivers that support these volumes. Follow the installation instructions provided by the CSI driver provider.

CSI drivers might not have implemented the inline volume functionality, including Ephemeral capacity. For details, see the CSI driver documentation.

Additional resources

Builds for Red Hat OpenShift 1.1

CSI Volume Admission plugin

To restrict Container Storage Interface (CSI) ephemeral volume usage based on pod security standards, the CSI Volume Admission plugin enforces admission policies by inspecting security profile labels on CSI drivers.

Overview of CSI Volume Admission plugin

The CSI Volume Admission plugin allows you to restrict the use of an individual CSI driver capable of provisioning CSI ephemeral volumes on pod admission. Administrators can add a csi-ephemeral-volume-profile label, and this label is then inspected by the Admission plugin and used in enforcement, warning, and audit decisions.

To use the CSI Volume Admission plugin, administrators add the security.openshift.io/csi-ephemeral-volume-profile label to a CSIDriver object, which declares the CSI driver’s effective pod security profile when it is used to provide CSI ephemeral volumes, as shown in the following example:

Example CSIDriver YAML file enabling using of the CSI Admission plugin
kind: CSIDriver
metadata:
  name: csi.mydriver.company.org
  labels:
    security.openshift.io/csi-ephemeral-volume-profile: restricted

Setting metadata.labels.security.openshift.io/csi-ephemeral-volume-profile to restricted enables use of the CSI Admission plugin.

This “effective profile” communicates that a pod can use the CSI driver to mount CSI ephemeral volumes when the pod’s namespace is governed by a pod security standard.

The CSI Volume Admission plugin inspects pod volumes when pods are created; existing pods that use CSI volumes are not affected. If a pod uses a container storage interface (CSI) volume, the plugin looks up the CSIDriver object and inspects the csi-ephemeral-volume-profile label, and then use the label’s value in its enforcement, warning, and audit decisions.

Pod security profile enforcement

When a CSI driver has the csi-ephemeral-volume-profile label, pods using the CSI driver to mount CSI ephemeral volumes must run in a namespace that enforces a pod security standard of equal or greater permission. If the namespace enforces a more restrictive standard, the CSI Volume Admission plugin denies admission. The following table describes the enforcement behavior for different pod security profiles for given label values.

Pod security profile enforcement

Pod security profile	Driver label: restricted	Driver label: baseline	Driver label: privileged
Restricted	Allowed	Denied	Denied
Baseline	Allowed	Allowed	Denied
Privileged	Allowed	Allowed	Allowed

Pod security profile warning

The CSI Volume Admission plugin can warn you if the CSI driver’s effective profile is more permissive than the pod security warning profile for the pod namespace. The following table shows when a warning occurs for different pod security profiles for given label values.

Pod security profile warning

Pod security profile	Driver label: restricted	Driver label: baseline	Driver label: privileged
Restricted	No warning	Warning	Warning
Baseline	No warning	No warning	Warning
Privileged	No warning	No warning	No warning

Pod security profile audit

The CSI Volume Admission plugin can apply audit annotations to the pod if the CSI driver’s effective profile is more permissive than the pod security audit profile for the pod namespace. The following table shows the audit annotation applied for different pod security profiles for given label values.

Pod security profile audit

Pod security profile	Driver label: restricted	Driver label: baseline	Driver label: privileged
Restricted	No audit	Audit	Audit
Baseline	No audit	No audit	Audit
Privileged	No audit	No audit	No audit

Default behavior for the CSI Volume Admission plugin

If the referenced CSI driver for a CSI ephemeral volume does not have the csi-ephemeral-volume-profile label, the CSI Volume Admission plugin considers the driver to have the privileged profile for enforcement, warning, and audit behaviors. Likewise, if the pod’s namespace does not have the pod security admission label set, the Admission plugin assumes the restricted profile is allowed for enforcement, warning, and audit decisions. Therefore, if no labels are set, CSI ephemeral volumes using that CSI driver are only usable in privileged namespaces by default.

The CSI drivers that ship with OpenShift Container Platform and support ephemeral volumes have a reasonable default set for the csi-ephemeral-volume-profile label:

Azure File CSI driver: privileged

If desired, an admin can change the default value of the label.

Embedding a CSI inline ephemeral volume in the pod specification

To provision temporary storage that automatically follows your pod’s lifecycle, embed a Container Storage Interface (CSI) inline ephemeral volume in the pod specification so the CSI driver manages volume creation and cleanup as pods start/stop.

Procedure

Create the Pod object definition and save it to a file.

Embed the CSI inline ephemeral volume in the file as in the following pod YAML file:

Example pod YAML file with embedded ephemeral volume
kind: Pod
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: my-csi-app
spec:
  containers:
    - name: my-frontend
      image: busybox
      volumeMounts:
      - mountPath: "/data"
        name: my-csi-inline-vol
      command: [ "sleep", "1000000" ]
  volumes:
    - name: my-csi-inline-vol
      csi:
        driver: inline.storage.kubernetes.io
        volumeAttributes:
          foo: bar

Where spec.volumes.nameis the name of the volume that is used by pods.

Create the object definition file that you saved in the previous step by running the following command.
```
$ oc create -f my-csi-app.yaml
```

Additional resources

Pod Security Standards

Overview of CSI inline ephemeral volumes​

Support limitations for CSI inline ephemeral volumes​

CSI Volume Admission plugin​

Overview of CSI Volume Admission plugin​

Pod security profile enforcement​

Pod security profile warning​

Pod security profile audit​

Default behavior for the CSI Volume Admission plugin​

Embedding a CSI inline ephemeral volume in the pod specification​