Deploy the FSx for Lustre driver - Amazon EKS
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Deploy the FSx for Lustre driver

This topic shows you how to deploy the FSx for Lustre CSI driver to your Amazon EKS cluster and verify that it works. We recommend using the latest version of the driver. For available versions, see CSI Specification Compatibility Matrix on GitHub.

Note

The driver isn’t supported on Fargate or Amazon EKS Hybrid Nodes.

For detailed descriptions of the available parameters and complete examples that demonstrate the driver’s features, see the FSx for Lustre Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver project on GitHub.

Prerequisites

  • An existing cluster.

  • The Amazon FSx CSI Driver EKS add-on requires the EKS Pod Identity agent for authentication. Without this component, the add-on will fail with the error Amazon EKS Pod Identity agent is not installed in the cluster, preventing volume operations. Install the Pod Identity agent before or after deploying the FSx CSI Driver add-on. For more information, see Set up the Amazon EKS Pod Identity Agent.

  • Version 2.12.3 or later or version 1.27.160 or later of the Amazon Command Line Interface (Amazon CLI) installed and configured on your device or Amazon CloudShell. To check your current version, use aws --version | cut -d / -f2 | cut -d ' ' -f1. Package managers such yum, apt-get, or Homebrew for macOS are often several versions behind the latest version of the Amazon CLI. To install the latest version, see Installing and Quick configuration with aws configure in the Amazon Command Line Interface User Guide. The Amazon CLI version that is installed in Amazon CloudShell might also be several versions behind the latest version. To update it, see Installing Amazon CLI to your home directory in the Amazon CloudShell User Guide.

  • Version 0.210.0 or later of the eksctl command line tool installed on your device or Amazon CloudShell. To install or update eksctl, see Installation in the eksctl documentation.

  • The kubectl command line tool is installed on your device or Amazon CloudShell. The version can be the same as or up to one minor version earlier or later than the Kubernetes version of your cluster. For example, if your cluster version is 1.29, you can use kubectl version 1.28, 1.29, or 1.30 with it. To install or upgrade kubectl, see Set up kubectl and eksctl.

Step 1: Create an IAM role

The Amazon FSx CSI plugin requires IAM permissions to make calls to Amazon APIs on your behalf.

Note

Pods will have access to the permissions that are assigned to the IAM role unless you block access to IMDS. For more information, see Secure Amazon EKS clusters with best practices.

The following procedure shows you how to create an IAM role and attach the Amazon managed policy to it.

  1. Create an IAM role and attach the Amazon managed policy with the following command. Replace my-cluster with the name of the cluster you want to use. The command deploys an Amazon CloudFormation stack that creates an IAM role and attaches the IAM policy to it.

    eksctl create iamserviceaccount \ --name fsx-csi-controller-sa \ --namespace kube-system \ --cluster my-cluster \ --role-name AmazonEKS_FSx_CSI_DriverRole \ --role-only \ --attach-policy-arn arn:aws-cn:iam::aws:policy/AmazonFSxFullAccess \ --approve

    You’ll see several lines of output as the service account is created. The last lines of output are similar to the following.

    [ℹ] 1 task: { 2 sequential sub-tasks: { create IAM role for serviceaccount "kube-system/fsx-csi-controller-sa", create serviceaccount "kube-system/fsx-csi-controller-sa", } } [ℹ] building iamserviceaccount stack "eksctl-my-cluster-addon-iamserviceaccount-kube-system-fsx-csi-controller-sa" [ℹ] deploying stack "eksctl-my-cluster-addon-iamserviceaccount-kube-system-fsx-csi-controller-sa" [ℹ] waiting for CloudFormation stack "eksctl-my-cluster-addon-iamserviceaccount-kube-system-fsx-csi-controller-sa" [ℹ] created serviceaccount "kube-system/fsx-csi-controller-sa"

    Note the name of the Amazon CloudFormation stack that was deployed. In the previous example output, the stack is named eksctl-my-cluster-addon-iamserviceaccount-kube-system-fsx-csi-controller-sa.

Now that you have created the Amazon FSx CSI driver IAM role, you can continue to the next section. When you deploy the add-on with this IAM role, it creates and is configured to use a service account that’s named fsx-csi-controller-sa. The service account is bound to a Kubernetes clusterrole that’s assigned the required Kubernetes permissions.

Step 2: Install the Amazon FSx CSI driver

We recommend that you install the Amazon FSx CSI driver through the Amazon EKS add-on to improve security and reduce the amount of work. To add an Amazon EKS add-on to your cluster, see Create an Amazon EKS add-on. For more information about add-ons, see Amazon EKS add-ons.

Important

Pre-existing Amazon FSx CSI driver installations in the cluster can cause add-on installation failures. When you attempt to install the Amazon EKS add-on version while a non-EKS FSx CSI Driver exists, the installation will fail due to resource conflicts. Use the OVERWRITE flag during installation to resolve this issue.

aws eks create-addon --addon-name aws-fsx-csi-driver --cluster-name my-cluster --resolve-conflicts OVERWRITE

Alternatively, if you want a self-managed installation of the Amazon FSx CSI driver, see Installation on GitHub.

Step 3: Deploy a storage class, persistent volume claim, and sample app

This procedure uses the FSx for Lustre Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver GitHub repository to consume a dynamically-provisioned FSx for Lustre volume.

  1. Note the security group for your cluster. You can see it in the Amazon Web Services Management Console under the Networking section or by using the following Amazon CLI command. Replace my-cluster with the name of the cluster you want to use.

    aws eks describe-cluster --name my-cluster --query cluster.resourcesVpcConfig.clusterSecurityGroupId
  2. Create a security group for your Amazon FSx file system according to the criteria shown in Amazon VPC Security Groups in the Amazon FSx for Lustre User Guide. For the VPC, select the VPC of your cluster as shown under the Networking section. For "the security groups associated with your Lustre clients", use your cluster security group. You can leave the outbound rules alone to allow All traffic.

  3. Download the storage class manifest with the following command.

    curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/aws-fsx-csi-driver/master/examples/kubernetes/dynamic_provisioning/specs/storageclass.yaml
  4. Edit the parameters section of the storageclass.yaml file. Replace every example value with your own values.

    parameters: subnetId: subnet-0eabfaa81fb22bcaf securityGroupIds: sg-068000ccf82dfba88 deploymentType: PERSISTENT_1 automaticBackupRetentionDays: "1" dailyAutomaticBackupStartTime: "00:00" copyTagsToBackups: "true" perUnitStorageThroughput: "200" dataCompressionType: "NONE" weeklyMaintenanceStartTime: "7:09:00" fileSystemTypeVersion: "2.12"
    • subnetId – The subnet ID that the Amazon FSx for Lustre file system should be created in. Amazon FSx for Lustre isn’t supported in all Availability Zones. Open the Amazon FSx for Lustre console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/fsx/ to confirm that the subnet that you want to use is in a supported Availability Zone. The subnet can include your nodes, or can be a different subnet or VPC:

      • You can check for the node subnets in the Amazon Web Services Management Console by selecting the node group under the Compute section.

      • If the subnet that you specify isn’t the same subnet that you have nodes in, then your VPCs must be connected, and you must ensure that you have the necessary ports open in your security groups.

    • securityGroupIds – The ID of the security group you created for the file system.

    • deploymentType (optional) – The file system deployment type. Valid values are SCRATCH_1, SCRATCH_2, PERSISTENT_1, and PERSISTENT_2. For more information about deployment types, see Create your Amazon FSx for Lustre file system.

    • other parameters (optional) – For information about the other parameters, see Edit StorageClass on GitHub.

  5. Create the storage class manifest.

    kubectl apply -f storageclass.yaml

    An example output is as follows.

    storageclass.storage.k8s.io/fsx-sc created
  6. Download the persistent volume claim manifest.

    curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/aws-fsx-csi-driver/master/examples/kubernetes/dynamic_provisioning/specs/claim.yaml
  7. (Optional) Edit the claim.yaml file. Change 1200Gi to one of the following increment values, based on your storage requirements and the deploymentType that you selected in a previous step.

    storage: 1200Gi
    • SCRATCH_2 and PERSISTENT1.2 TiB, 2.4 TiB, or increments of 2.4 TiB over 2.4 TiB.

    • SCRATCH_11.2 TiB, 2.4 TiB, 3.6 TiB, or increments of 3.6 TiB over 3.6 TiB.

  8. Create the persistent volume claim.

    kubectl apply -f claim.yaml

    An example output is as follows.

    persistentvolumeclaim/fsx-claim created
  9. Confirm that the file system is provisioned.

    kubectl describe pvc

    An example output is as follows.

    Name: fsx-claim Namespace: default StorageClass: fsx-sc Status: Bound [...]
    Note

    The Status may show as Pending for 5-10 minutes, before changing to Bound. Don’t continue with the next step until the Status is Bound. If the Status shows Pending for more than 10 minutes, use warning messages in the Events as reference for addressing any problems.

  10. Deploy the sample application.

    kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/aws-fsx-csi-driver/master/examples/kubernetes/dynamic_provisioning/specs/pod.yaml
  11. Verify that the sample application is running.

    kubectl get pods

    An example output is as follows.

    NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE fsx-app 1/1 Running 0 8s
  12. Verify that the file system is mounted correctly by the application.

    kubectl exec -ti fsx-app -- df -h

    An example output is as follows.

    Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on overlay 80G 4.0G 77G 5% / tmpfs 64M 0 64M 0% /dev tmpfs 3.8G 0 3.8G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup 192.0.2.0@tcp:/abcdef01 1.1T 7.8M 1.1T 1% /data /dev/nvme0n1p1 80G 4.0G 77G 5% /etc/hosts shm 64M 0 64M 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 6.9G 12K 6.9G 1% /run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount tmpfs 3.8G 0 3.8G 0% /proc/acpi tmpfs 3.8G 0 3.8G 0% /sys/firmware
  13. Verify that data was written to the FSx for Lustre file system by the sample app.

    kubectl exec -it fsx-app -- ls /data

    An example output is as follows.

    out.txt

    This example output shows that the sample app successfully wrote the out.txt file to the file system.

Note

Before deleting the cluster, make sure to delete the FSx for Lustre file system. For more information, see Clean up resources in the FSx for Lustre User Guide.

Performance tuning for FSx for Lustre

When using FSx for Lustre with Amazon EKS, you can optimize performance by applying Lustre tunings during node initialization. The recommended approach is to use launch template user data to ensure consistent configuration across all nodes.

These tunings include:

  • Network and RPC optimizations

  • Lustre module management

  • LRU (Lock Resource Unit) tunings

  • Client cache control settings

  • RPC controls for OST and MDC

For detailed instructions on implementing these performance tunings: