NetApp E-Series SANtricity with Kubernetes

Enterprise storage arrays with leading performance/price

Last update: June 2026

Agenda

• About NetApp E-Series
• E-Series with Kubernetes
• Single-host CSI drivers
• Cluster-aware CSI drivers
• Integrations and stacks

About NetApp E-Series

• Originally Engenio by LSI Logic Corporation
  • Engenio product line acquired by NetApp in 2011
• Reliable, high-performing block storage arrays with low learning curve
• Widely used for databases, HPC, analytics, big data, backup-to-disk and more
• Over 1,000,000 arrays sold

Why E-Series with Kubernetes

• Superior performance with sequential and random workloads
• Great for smaller Kubernetes clusters without dedicated storage switches
• Suitable for modern AI/Analytics stacks
  • Application/operator-driven HA, clustering, backup, replication - still benefits from fast, reliable, protected block targets
  • S3 as single source of truth translates into no need for complex block storage features
• Modern application packaging and operations means mandatory deployments on container orchestration platforms
• Various non-orchestrated solutions work, but lack HA (Docker, Podman)

Single-host CSI drivers

• TopoLVM is widely used
  • Doesn't require NetApp "support"
• Static provisioning without CSI is also possible
  • Static, but very robust solution is Terraform (see Terraform Provider SANtricity)
  • For low-churn environments, frees user from CSI management
• Application- or file-system replication, EC for HA for data and storage services
  • Kubernetes operators for application replication and HA (CNPG (PostgreSQL), etc.)
  • Storage replication (ZFS, Btrfs) also popular

Cluster-aware block CSI drivers

• NetApp has no CSI driver for E-Series
• Highly available PVCs may be needed when single host CSI drivers or replication isn't suitable
• Some HA CSI drivers that work with SANtricity rely on 3rd party software stacks
  • vSphere CSI, BeeGFS CSI
  • vSphere CSI works with all vSphere-compatible storage including E-Series
  • BeeGFS CSI (for NetApp's BeeGFS solution) supported on "best effort" basis
• CSI drivers with highly-available PVCs
  • IBM Block CSI Driver with SANtricity patch
  • SANtricity CSI

IBM Block CSI driver with SANtricity patch

• Community patch with SANtricity support (not associated with IBM)
• Patched driver tracks IBM's Block CSI driver
  • Python-based storage mediator (driver) for SANtricity, leverages SANtricity Client library
  • Implements common CSI features (create, delete, resize, snapshots), and filesystem (not block) mode
  • Discovered upstream bugs are submitted (or even fixed, if possible) to IBM Block CSI repository
• This driver benefits from IBM Block CSI driver's focus
  • (Upstream) tested with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Kubernetes
• IBM Block CSI with SANtricity patch targets iSCSI, NVMe/RoCE and FC
  • Patch developed and tested on classic Kubernetes with NVMe/RoCE

SANtricity CSI driver

• Community CSI driver focused solely on SANtricity
  • Focus on Ethernet storage protocols (iSCSI and NVMe/RoCE)
  • Stateless, Go-based
  • Implements basic CSI volume operations (create, delete, publish, expand)
  • Stores PVC metadata in SANtricity volume objects (metadata KV pairs)
  • Lacks snapshots & clones (both WIP) support
• "Cloud-native" distribution focus (classic Kubernetes, k0s, MicroK8s, Talos)

Volume replication (DR) for SANtricity HA CSI drivers

• It is recommended to use native application replication (Cloud Native Postgres, etc.)
• Filesystems (Btrfs, ZFS) replication usually used by single filesystem-focused CSI drivers
• Asynchronous replication for IBM Block CSI and SANtricity CSI possible with VolSync
  • Hardware-independent approach, works with any block storage
  • VolSync relies on CSI snapshots and rclone/rsync
  • Replication scheduled (e.g. every 5 minutes) or on-demand
  • See this walk-through with SolidFire
  • If you migrate workload to Kubernetes and use VolSync, you can remove SANtricity async replication

Integrations

• Monitoring
  • E-Series Performance Analyzer (EPA) 4 parses PVC metadata
  • IBM Block CSI uses cryptic SANtricity volume names; monitoring is possible but not as user-friendly
  • SANtricity CSI provides additional (optional) Prometheus-compatible CSI metrics
• Data Protection
  • IBM Block CSI driver with SANtricity patch tested with Kasten 8.5.8 and Velero 1.18
  • Barman Cloud CNPG-I plugin (continuous PostgreSQL backup to S3)
  • CSI snapshots are not required for data protection of modern databases and analytics stacks

Application stacks

• Stacks that consume CSI rarely rely on more than provisioning
  • Most require just basic features (create, delete, publish, extend)
  • Advanced storage services such as snapshots and clones usually consumed only by data protection applications
• Some of the applications tried without any issues
  • Splunk Operator for Kubernetes
  • Elasticsearch Kubernetes Cloud
  • Databases: Cloud-Native PostgreSQL, Qdrant and more
  • Versity S3 Gateway

Author

• github: @scaleoutsean
• blog: scaleoutsean.github.io
• x: @scaleoutsean
• license: CC BY 4.0