Provisioning regional persistent disks

Dynamic provisioning

To enable dynamic provisioning of regional persistent disks, create a StorageClass with the replication-type parameter, and specify zone constraints in allowedTopologies.

For example, the following manifest describes a StorageClass named regionalpd-storageclass that uses standard persistent disks and that replicates data to the europe-west1-b and europe-west1-c zones:

kind: StorageClass
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: regionalpd-storageclass
provisioner: pd.csi.storage.gke.io
parameters:
  type: pd-balanced
  replication-type: regional-pd
volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer
allowedTopologies:
- matchLabelExpressions:
  - key: topology.gke.io/zone
    values:
    - europe-west1-b
    - europe-west1-c

If using a regional cluster, you can leave allowedTopologies unspecified. If you do this, when you create a Pod that consumes a PersistentVolumeClaim which uses this StorageClass a regional persistent disk is provisioned with two zones. One zone is the same as the zone that the Pod is scheduled in. The other zone is randomly picked from the zones available to the cluster.

When using a zonal cluster, allowedTopologies must be set.

Once the StorageClass is created, next create a PersistentVolumeClaim object, using the storageClassName field to refer to the StorageClass. For example, the following manifest creates a PersistentVolumeClaim named regional-pvc and references the regionalpd-storageclass:

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: regional-pvc
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 500Gi
  storageClassName: regionalpd-storageclass

Since the StorageClass is configured with volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer, the PersistentVolume is not provisioned until a Pod using the PersistentVolumeClaim has been created.

The following manifest is an example Pod using the previously created PersistentVolumeClaim:

kind: Pod
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: task-pv-pod
spec:
  volumes:
    - name: task-pv-storage
      persistentVolumeClaim:
        claimName: regional-pvc
  containers:
    - name: task-pv-container
      image: nginx
      ports:
        - containerPort: 80
          name: "http-server"
      volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: "/usr/share/nginx/html"
          name: task-pv-storage

Manual provisioning

First, create a regional persistent disk using the gcloud compute disks create command. The following example creates a disk named gce-disk-1 replicated to the europe-west1-b and europe-west1-c zones:

gcloud compute disks create gce-disk-1 \
   --size 500Gi \
   --region europe-west1 \
   --replica-zones europe-west1-b,europe-west1-c

You can then create a PersistentVolume that references the regional persistent disk you just created. In addition to objects in Using preexisting Persistent Disks as PersistentVolumes, the PersistentVolume for a regional persistent disk should also specify a node-affinity. If you use a StorageClass, it should specify the persistent disk CSI driver.

Here's an example of a StorageClass manifest that uses standard persistent disks and that replicates data to the europe-west1-b and europe-west1-c zones:

kind: StorageClass
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: regionalpd-storageclass
provisioner: pd.csi.storage.gke.io
parameters:
  type: pd-balanced
  replication-type: regional-pd
volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer
allowedTopologies:
- matchLabelExpressions:
  - key: topology.gke.io/zone
    values:
    - europe-west1-b
    - europe-west1-c

Here's an example manifest that creates a PersistentVolume named pv-demo and references the regionalpd-storageclass:

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolume
metadata:
  name: pv-demo
spec:
  storageClassName: "regionalpd-storageclass"
  capacity:
     storage: 500Gi
  accessModes:
     - ReadWriteOnce
  claimRef:
    namespace: default
    name: pv-claim-demo
  csi:
    driver: pd.csi.storage.gke.io
    volumeHandle: projects/PROJECT_ID/regions/europe-west1/disks/gce-disk-1
  nodeAffinity:
    required:
      nodeSelectorTerms:
        - matchExpressions:
          - key: topology.gke.io/zone
            operator: In
            values:
               - europe-west1-b
               - europe-west1-c

Note the following for the PersistentVolume example:

• The volumeHandle field contains details from the gcloud compute disks create call, including your PROJECT_ID.
• The claimRef.namespace field must be specified even when it is set to default.