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vSphere CSI

Purpose: For platform engineers, virtualization teams, documents the vSphere CSI service in openCenter-gitops-base.

vsphere-csi provides Kubernetes persistent storage integration for VMware vSphere. In this repository it is installed as a Helm release in vmware-system-csi.

What This Repo Deploys

  • Namespace/vmware-system-csi with privileged Pod Security labels

  • HelmRelease/vsphere-csi

  • Base values Secret: vsphere-csi-values-base

  • Optional override Secret: vsphere-csi-values-override

When to Use It

  • You run Kubernetes on vSphere and want CSI-native persistent storage.

  • You need snapshots, expansion, and cloning on VMware-backed volumes.

  • You need topology-aware provisioning aligned to vSphere failure domains.

Key Integration Points

  • vSphere CPI should already be installed so nodes have ProviderIDs.

  • external-snapshotter and snapshot classes are required for Velero CSI workflows.

  • Cluster-local secrets provide vCenter connectivity details.

Example

apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: vsphere-gold
provisioner: csi.vsphere.vmware.com
allowVolumeExpansion: true

Configuration Surfaces

  • Service path: applications/base/services/vsphere-csi/

  • Namespace: vmware-system-csi

  • Flux object: HelmRelease/vsphere-csi

  • Base values Secret: vsphere-csi-values-base

  • Override values Secret: vsphere-csi-values-override

  • ../../operations/services/vsphere-csi.md[vSphere CSI Configuration Guide]

  • ../../operations/services/velero-with-swift-vsphere-csi.md[Velero with Swift and vSphere CSI]

Upstream References