Storage considerations

Dynamic storage must be supported on the cluster. The deployment script on a private OpenShift® Container Platform (OCP) cluster needs storage classes that the installer can use.

Before you begin

The supported storage providers for a starter deployment of Cloud Pak for Business Automation include the IBM® Storage Suite for IBM Cloud® Paks. For more information, see Why IBM Storage Suite for IBM Cloud Paks External link opens a new window or tab .

Note: Starter deployments do not support the Portworx storage solution.

Installation needs block storage for ReadWriteOnce (RWO). Your storage must have sufficient space for the deployment. For more information, see Storage Classes External link opens a new window or tab .

About this task

The administrator must make a note of the storage class to use, and provide this name to the user who creates the CP4BA deployment.

Attention: CP4BA production deployments often need high performance, so do not use open source storage providers like the Kubernetes NFS-Client Provisioner for your production deployments. Use Container Storage Interface (CSI) drivers from platform-providers like IBM Storage Fusion, AWS EFS, Azure Files, and others. For more information, see Storage options.

For a starter deployment, you can follow the instructions in Kubernetes NFS-Client Provisioner External link opens a new window or tab to configure NFS server and client for the OpenShift Container Platform nodes if you need to set up an NFS server. You can also go to the following technote to find step-by-step instructions on How do I create a storage class for NFS dynamic storage provisioning in an OpenShift environment? External link opens a new window or tab

If you plan to use Azure File storage on Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO) for your CP4BA starter deployment, then make sure that you create a storage class with the NFS protocol. The following example YAML file creates a storage class with the name azurefile, but you can name it whatever you want.

apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: azurefile
allowVolumeExpansion: true
mountOptions:
- nconnect=4
- noresvport
- actimeo=30
parameters:
  protocol: nfs
  skuName: Standard_LRS
provisioner: file.csi.azure.com
reclaimPolicy: Delete
volumeBindingMode: Immediate

Restriction: NFS is the only supported protocol for the Azure File storage on Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO).

This storage class must be set for the file-based dynamic storage class in the storage configuration for your CP4BA starter deployment.