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Configure Google Cloud NetApp Volumes

Contributors netapp-aruldeepa joan-ing netapp-mwallis
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You can configure Google Cloud NetApp Volumes as a backend for Trident to provision storage for Kubernetes workloads.

Overview

Trident supports Google Cloud NetApp Volumes for both NAS (NFS and SMB) and block (iSCSI) workloads.

  • NAS workloads use the google-cloud-netapp-volumes backend

  • Block (iSCSI) workloads use the google-cloud-netapp-volumes-san backend

NAS volumes provide file-based storage and are accessed using NFS or SMB protocols. These volumes support shared access across multiple pods or nodes.

Block volumes provide raw block storage and are accessed as iSCSI devices attached to Kubernetes nodes. These volumes are used when applications require block-level access.

This applies to the following environments:

  • Trident 26.02 and later

  • Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) or Red Hat OpenShift

  • Google Cloud NetApp Volumes storage pools

To configure block (iSCSI) storage, see Configure block storage (iSCSI).

Prepare to configure

Cloud identity enables Kubernetes workloads to access Google Cloud resources by authenticating as a workload identity instead of using static credentials.

To use cloud identity with Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, you must have:

  • A Kubernetes cluster deployed using Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

  • Workload identity enabled on the GKE cluster and the metadata server enabled on the node pools

  • A Google Cloud service account with the Google Cloud NetApp Volumes Admin role (roles/netapp.admin) or an equivalent custom role

  • Trident installed with the cloud provider set to GCP and the cloud identity annotation configured

Trident operator

To install Trident using the Trident operator, edit tridentorchestrator_cr.yaml:

apiVersion: trident.netapp.io/v1
kind: TridentOrchestrator
metadata:
  name: trident
spec:
  namespace: trident
  cloudProvider: "GCP"
  cloudIdentity: "iam.gke.io/gcp-service-account: cloudvolumes-admin-sa@mygcpproject.iam.gserviceaccount.com"
Helm

Set the cloud provider and cloud identity when installing Trident with Helm:

helm install trident trident-operator-100.6.0.tgz \
  --set cloudProvider=GCP \
  --set cloudIdentity="iam.gke.io/gcp-service-account: cloudvolumes-admin-sa@mygcpproject.iam.gserviceaccount.com"
tridentctl

Install Trident by specifying the cloud provider and cloud identity:

tridentctl install \
  --cloud-provider=GCP \
  --cloud-identity="iam.gke.io/gcp-service-account: cloudvolumes-admin-sa@mygcpproject.iam.gserviceaccount.com" \
  -n trident

Configure NAS storage

Note For Google Cloud NetApp Volumes UNIFIED storage pools, Trident applies UNIFIED-specific naming and validation rules during volume operations.

When locating a volume, Trident can evaluate multiple compatible volume name variants (for example, hyphen and underscore formats) to improve import and discovery reliability.

Driver details

Trident provides the google-cloud-netapp-volumes driver to provision NAS storage from Google Cloud NetApp Volumes.

The driver supports the following access modes:

  • ReadWriteOnce (RWO)

  • ReadOnlyMany (ROX)

  • ReadWriteMany (RWX)

  • ReadWriteOncePod (RWOP)

Driver Protocol volumeMode Access modes supported File systems supported

google-cloud-netapp-volumes

NFS SMB

Filesystem

RWO, ROX, RWX, RWOP

nfs, smb

Configure a Trident NAS backend

apiVersion: trident.netapp.io/v1
kind: TridentBackendConfig
metadata:
  name: gcnv-nas
  namespace: trident
spec:
  version: 1
  storageDriverName: google-cloud-netapp-volumes
  projectNumber: "<project-number>"
  location: "<region>"
  sdkTimeout: "600"
  storage:
  - labels:
      cloud: gcp
    network: "<vpc-network>"

Provision NAS volumes

NAS volumes are provisioned using the google-cloud-netapp-volumes backend and support NFS and SMB protocols.

StorageClass for NFS volumes

To provision NFS volumes, set nasType to nfs.

apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: gcnv-nfs
provisioner: csi.trident.netapp.io
parameters:
  backendType: "google-cloud-netapp-volumes"
  trident.netapp.io/nasType: "nfs"
allowVolumeExpansion: true

StorageClass for SMB volumes

To provision SMB volumes, set nasType to smb and provide credentials.

apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: gcnv-smb
provisioner: csi.trident.netapp.io
parameters:
  backendType: "google-cloud-netapp-volumes"
  trident.netapp.io/nasType: "smb"
  csi.storage.k8s.io/node-stage-secret-name: "smbcreds"
  csi.storage.k8s.io/node-stage-secret-namespace: "default"
allowVolumeExpansion: true

PersistentVolumeClaim example (RWX)

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: gcnv-nas-rwx
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteMany
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 100Gi
  storageClassName: gcnv-nfs

PersistentVolumeClaim example (RWO)

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: gcnv-nas-rwo
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 100Gi
  storageClassName: gcnv-nfs
Note NAS volumes use volumeMode: Filesystem.