The VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 and vSphere with Tanzu documentation describes the Container Storage Interface (CSI) as follows:
“The vSphere CSI driver allows vSphere storage to be exposed as persistent storage to containerized applications running on Kubernetes clusters. The driver implements the Kubernetes CSI specification and enables dynamic provisioning, attach/detach, and snapshot operations for persistent volumes.”
Key points from the documentation:
CSI is not limited to vSphere object storage (A). It works with vSAN, VMFS, NFS, and other vSphere-supported datastores.
Its purpose is to provide persistent storage (B), so containerized workloads have data that outlives pod lifecycles.
CSI is not restricted to “cloud native storage only” (C); it is the standard interface for Kubernetes persistent storage.
CSI is not used for ephemeral storage (D); ephemeral storage is provided by local container runtimes and does not require CSI.
Therefore, the correct description is that CSI is a plug-in that allows providers to expose storage as persistent storage to Kubernetes workloads running in vSphere Supervisor clusters.
[References:, VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 – vSphere with Tanzu Storage Documentation., vSphere CSI Driver Guide (Persistent Volume provisioning, dynamic storage for Kubernetes workloads)., , , ]
