Importing a preexisting EBS volume

Overview

If you already have an AWS Elastic Block Store (EBS) volume to import into GKE on AWS, you can create a PersistentVolume (PV) object and reserve it for a specific PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC).

This page explains how to create a PV by using an existing EBS volume populated with data, and how to use the PV in a Pod. This page is for Operators and Storage specialists who want to configure and manage storage. To learn more about common roles and example tasks that we reference in Google Cloud content, see Common GKE user roles and tasks.

Before you begin

Before completing these steps, you must you must:

Using encrypted EBS volumes

If your EBS volume is encrypted with the AWS Key Management Service (KMS), you need to grant the GKE on AWS control plane AWS IAM role access to your KMS key.

To grant the control plane role access to your key:

  1. Find the name of your cluster's control plane role.

  2. Choose the AWS KMS key used to encrypt your EBS volume, and add the control plane role as a key user by following the instructions in Allow key users to use the KMS key.

Creating a PersistentVolume for a pre-existing EBS volume

You can import an existing EBS volume by specifying a new PV and adding it to your cluster.

  1. Copy the following YAML into a file named existing-volume.yaml:

    apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolume
metadata:
  name: VOLUME_NAME
  annotations:
    pv.kubernetes.io/provisioned-by: ebs.csi.aws.com
spec:
  capacity:
    storage: VOLUME_CAPACITY
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy: Retain
  storageClassName: STORAGE_CLASS_NAME
  claimRef:
    name: my-pvc
    namespace: default
  csi:
    driver: ebs.csi.aws.com
    volumeHandle: EBS_VOLUME_ID
    fsType: FILE_SYSTEM_TYPE
  nodeAffinity:
    required:
      nodeSelectorTerms:
      - matchExpressions:
        - key: topology.ebs.csi.aws.com/zone
          operator: In
          values:
          - ZONE

    Replace the following:
    • VOLUME_NAME: The name for your volume.
    • VOLUME_CAPACITY: size of the volume— for example, 30G. For more information on specifying volume capacity in Kubernetes, see the Meaning of memory.

    • STORAGE_CLASS_NAME: the name of the StorageClass that provisions the volume— for example, standard-rwo.

    • EBS_VOLUME_ID: Your EBS volume id. For example, vol-05786ec9ec9526b67.

    • FS_TYPE: The file system of the volume— for example, ext4.

    • ZONE: The AWS Availability Zone that hosts the EBS volume— for example, us-east-1c.

  2. Apply the YAML to your cluster

    kubectl apply -f existing-volume.yaml

  3. Confirm the creation of your PV

    kubectl describe pv volume-name

    The output of this command contains the status of the PV.

Using the volume with a PersistentVolumeClaim and Pod

After you have imported your volume, you can create a PVC and a Pod that attaches the PVC.

  1. The YAML below creates a PVC and attaches it to a Pod running the Nginx web server. Copy it into a file named nginx.yaml:

    apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: my-pvc
spec:
  storageClassName: STORAGE_CLASS_NAME
  volumeName: VOLUME_NAME
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: VOLUME_CAPACITY
---

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: web-server
spec:
  containers:
   - name: web-server
     image: nginx
     volumeMounts:
       - mountPath: /var/lib/www/html
         name: data
  volumes:
   - name: data
     persistentVolumeClaim:
       claimName: PVC_NAME

    Replace the following:

    • STORAGE_CLASS: The name of the StorageClass from the PersistentVolume you created previously— for example, standard-rwo.
    • VOLUME_NAME
    • VOLUME_CAPACITY
    • PVC_NAME: Name of the PVC— for example, my-pvc.

  2. Apply the YAML to your cluster

    kubectl apply -f nginx.yaml

  3. Check the status of your Nginx instance with kubectl describe. The output should have a STATUS of Running.

    kubectl describe pod web-server

What's next