Skip to content

Use Harvester with Dell Storage

Co-authored with Parasar Kodati.

Dell CSI drivers for PowerStore, PowerMax, PowerFlex, and PowerScale have all been tested and are compatible with KubeVirt . This guide provides instructions for installing Dell CSI for PowerMax on Harvester , though the steps are very similar regardless of the storage backend.

Tested on :

  • Harvester v1.3.1
  • CSM v2.11
  • PowerMax protocols : Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and NFS

Getting Started

To use helm and kubectl, first download the KUBECONFIG from the Harvester UI :

Prerequisites

Connectivity

The bare-metal nodes need access to the REST API endpoint and the storage network to provision and mount volumes.

When dealing with Fibre Channel, it is imperative that the zoning to the nodes is completed before installing the CSI driver.

As part of the installation process, you will need :

  • The Unisphere API endpoint (and possibly a backup endpoint for PowerMax)
  • The credentials to access the API
  • The storage identifier (SymID for PowerMax)
  • The storage pool

Multipathd

Configuring the multipath service is mandatory when using block storage protocols like Fibre Channel, iSCSI, or NVMe.

The CloudInit manifest below sets up :

  • multipathd to start on node boot
  • multipath.conf to ensure only EMC LUNs are part of multipathd (not Longhorn volumes)
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dell/iac-storage-automation/refs/heads/main/kubernetes/harvester/multipathd-harvester.yaml

To take effect immediately, either restart the node or SSH into it and start the service manually.

iSCSI and NVMe

If you use iSCSI, adapt the sample file to start the iscsid daemon. For NVMe, ensure the nvme-auto-connect.service is started.

Namespace and Secret Creation

kubectl create namespace powermax
kubectl create secret generic powermax-creds -n powermax \
  --from-literal=username=unisphere_user \
  --from-literal=password=your_password

Helm Installation

The simplest way to install Dell CSI and CSM with Helm is to use the Installation Wizard . First, add the repo :

helm repo add dell https://dell.github.io/helm-charts

StorageClass and VolumeSnapshotClass

For StorageClass creation, refer to the samples . They contain different configurations (with or without replication, different file system types, and more).

For VolumeSnapshotClass, see the samples in the same repository .

Harvester csi-driver-config

The last step is configuring Harvester's csi-driver-config to allow the Dell provisioner to take Virtual Machine snapshots.

Go to Advanced > Settings > csi-driver-config > Edit Setting :

{
  "driver.longhorn.io": {
    "volumeSnapshotClassName": "longhorn-snapshot",
    "backupVolumeSnapshotClassName": "longhorn"
  },
  "csi-powermax.dellemc.com": {
    "volumeSnapshotClassName": "powermax-snapclass",
    "backupVolumeSnapshotClassName": "powermax-snapclass"
  }
}

Conclusion

At the time of publication, Harvester supports third-party storage for data volumes only. This will change soon and will allow a full CSM experience.

In the meantime, you can experiment with Harvester and send your feedback 😉

Sources