Version: 3.1

Create proxy volume PVCs

Portworx proxy volumes proxy an external data source onto a Portworx volume. The actual data for these volumes resides on the external data source and does not consume any storage from the Portworx storage pools.

note

Portworx does not support this feature for Windows NFS servers.

You can use proxy volumes to proxy an external NFS share onto your volumes. If you have an NFS share residing outside of a Kubernetes cluster and you wish to access it within an application pod, you can create a Portworx proxy volume that points to this external NFS share. Portworx acts as a medium and makes the external NFS data available to the pods running in Kubernetes.

Portworx uses the host’s NFS utilities to mount the external NFS share when a Pod using the proxy-volume PVC gets scheduled on a node. Depending on how you configure it, you can mount an entire NFS share to volumes, or you can mount only portions of the NFS share to volumes by specifying a directory sub-path.

You can access a full NFS share in Portworx as a proxy volume. Application using this spec will have access to the whole NFS share. If you wish to access only a sub directory within an NFS share, refer to the Accessing a sub-path of an external NFS share section. The examples in these instructions create a proxy volume for an nginx container.

Create a storage class spec for proxy volumes, specifying your own values for the following:
- parameters.proxy_endpoint: With the endpoint of the external NFS share Portworx is reflecting from.
  note
  The nfs:// prefix instructs Portworx to use the NFS protocol for reflecting an external datasource.
- parameters.proxy_nfs_exportpath: With the export path on the NFS server.
- parameters.mount_options: With the standard linux NFS mount options to use while mounting the NFS share.
```
kind: StorageClass
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: portworx-proxy-volume-volume
provisioner: kubernetes.io/portworx-volume
parameters:
  proxy_endpoint: "nfs://<nfs-share-endpoint>"
  proxy_nfs_exportpath: "/<mount-path>"
  mount_options: "vers=4.0"
allowVolumeExpansion: true
```

note

The example above uses NFS version 4. You can replace the "vers" field value with your desired NFS version.

Apply the spec:

kubectl create -f <storageclass-name>.yaml

Create the Portworx proxy volume PVC spec, specifying your own values for the following:

spec.accessModes: With the access mode you want to assign to your volumes.

spec.resources.requests.storage: With the amount of storage you want to allocate to a created volume.

kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: nfs-data
  labels:
    app: nginx
spec:
  storageClassName: portworx-proxy-volume-volume
  accessModes:
    - <access-mode>
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: <storage-amount>

Apply the spec:
```
kubectl create -f <pvc-name>.yaml
```

Create a Deployment spec that uses the proxy-volume PVC:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nginx
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: bitnami/nginx
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
        volumeMounts:
        - name: nginx-persistent-storage
          mountPath: /usr/share/nginx/html
      volumes:
      - name: nginx-persistent-storage
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          claimName: nfs-data

Apply the spec:
```
kubectl create -f <pod-name>.yaml
```

You can associate a sub-path of an NFS share with Portworx as a proxy volume. Under this approach, applications will have access to a specific sub-path within the NFS share. The examples in these instructions create a proxy volume for an nginx container.

Create a storage class spec for proxy volumes, specifying your own values for the following:
- parameters.proxy_endpoint: With the endpoint of the external NFS share Portworx is reflecting from.
  note
  The nfs:// prefix instructs Portworx to use the NFS protocol for reflecting an external datasource.
- parameters.proxy_endpoint: With the export path on the NFS server.
```
kind: StorageClass
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: portworx-proxy-volume-volume
provisioner: kubernetes.io/portworx-volume
parameters:
  proxy_endpoint: "nfs://<nfs-share-endpoint>"
  proxy_nfs_exportpath: "/<mount-path>"
allowVolumeExpansion: true
```

Apply the spec:

kubectl create -f <storageclass-name>.yaml

Create the Portworx proxy volume PVC spec, specifying your own values for the following:
- metadata.annotations.px/proxy-nfs-subpath: With the path to the sub-path directory. Volumes created from this PVC will only have access the sub-path, and none of the directories above it. If the sub-path does not exist, Portworx will create it in the NFS share.
  note
  From the external NFS share only the sub-path provided as the annotation will be accessible to this PVC. The parent NFS share or any other directories will not be accessible.
- spec.accessModes: With the access mode you want to assign to your volumes.
- spec.resources.requests.storage: With the amount of storage you want to allocate to a created volume.
```
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: nfs-data
  annotations:
    px/proxy-nfs-subpath: "<path>/<sub-path>"
  labels:
    app: nginx
spec:
  storageClassName: portworx-proxy-volume-volume
  accessModes:
    - <access-mode>
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: <storage-amount>
```
  note
  This PVC can only access the <sub-path> directory and its contents.

Apply the spec:

kubectl create -f <pvc-for-sub-path-name>.yaml

Create a Deployment spec that uses the proxy-volume PVC you created in the step above:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nginx
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: bitnami/nginx
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
        volumeMounts:
        - name: nginx-persistent-storage
          mountPath: /usr/share/nginx/html
      volumes:
      - name: nginx-persistent-storage
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          claimName: nfs-data

Apply the spec:
```
kubectl create -f <pod-name>.yaml
```

Access an external NFS share​

Accessing a sub-path of an external NFS share​

Access an external NFS share

Accessing a sub-path of an external NFS share