Chainguard Container for mesosphere-vsphere-csi-driver

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/mesosphere-vsphere-csi-driver:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

This image is a drop-in replacement for the upstream vSphere CSI Driver container (csi-vsphere/driver).

Follow the Broadcom/VMware deployment documentation for vSphere Container Storage Plug-in (vSphere CSI) 3.x, substituting the image reference for the driver container only. All other sidecars and supporting containers (syncer, provisioner, attacher, resizer, node-driver-registrar, liveness-probe, snapshotter, etc.) should remain as documented.

Namespace: The vSphere CSI stack should run in the vmware-system-csi namespace — do not install into kube-system.

Versioning: Select a driver version compatible with your vSphere and Kubernetes versions using the official compatibility matrix.

Prerequisites

• Supported vCenter Server and ESXi environment.
• Supported Kubernetes version for the driver release you choose.
• vSphere CPI (out-of-tree cloud provider) installed and configured in the cluster.
• vCenter user account with the required privileges as defined in the upstream docs.
• Network/DNS reachability from all cluster nodes to vCenter.

Usage

Prepare the Namespace

# Create the namespace for vSphere CSI components
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/vsphere-csi-driver/v3.0.0/manifests/vanilla/namespace.yaml

Create the vSphere Config Secret

Prepare a configuration file named csi-vsphere.conf:

[Global]
cluster-id = "your-unique-cluster-id"
cluster-distribution = "native"

[VirtualCenter "vcenter.example.com"]
user = "administrator@vsphere.local"
password = "REDACTED"
port = "443"
datacenters = "DC1"
insecure-flag = "1"
# thumbprint = "AA:BB:CC:...:ZZ"

Create the Kubernetes Secret in the vmware-system-csi namespace:

kubectl -n vmware-system-csi create secret generic vsphere-config-secret \
  --from-file=csi-vsphere.conf

Deploy the vSphere CSI Driver

Follow the upstream deployment manifests for your environment. When editing the controller Deployment and node DaemonSet, replace the driver and/or syncer container images only.

Example - Controller Deployment snippet:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: vsphere-csi-controller
  namespace: vmware-system-csi
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      containers: # modify the image only for the following containers
      - name: vsphere-csi-controller
        image: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/mesosphere-vsphere-csi-driver
      - name: vsphere-syncer
        image: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/mesosphere-vsphere-csi-syncer
      # other containers and rest of containers above should remain unchanged

Example - Node DaemonSet snippet:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: DaemonSet
metadata:
  name: vsphere-csi-node
  namespace: vmware-system-csi
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      containers: # modify the image only for the following container    
      - name: vsphere-csi-node
        image: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/mesosphere-vsphere-csi-driver
      # other containers and rest of container above should remain unchanged

This can be changed either in the manifests before applying them, or using kubectl edit to change existing deployments.

Verify the Installation

kubectl get deployment -n vmware-system-csi vsphere-csi-controller
kubectl get daemonset -n vmware-system-csi vsphere-csi-node

Both should show pods in the READY state across control-plane and worker nodes as appropriate.

Another way to check it is to use kubectl wait and kbuectl rollout status commands to wait for Deployment and DaemonSet accordingly - such as:

kubectl wait --for=condition=Available -n vmware-system-csi deployment/vsphere-csi-controller --timeout=120s

kubectl rollout status daemonset -n vmware-system-csi vsphere-csi-node

Verify

Create a StorageClass using the upstream example.

Create a PersistentVolumeClaim that uses this StorageClass.

Attach the PVC to a test Pod and verify provisioning works.

References:

• Upstream Mesosphere vSphere CSI Driver repository
• Kubernetes-sigs vSphere CSI Driver repository
• VMware vSphere Container Storage Plug-in Deployment Docs

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard Containers are minimal container images that are secure by default.

In many cases, the Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Containers are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a -dev variant.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to leverage the -dev variants, copying application artifacts into a final minimal container that offers a reduced attack surface that won’t allow package installations or logins.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Containers, please visit Chainguard Academy and Chainguard Courses.

In addition to Containers, Chainguard offers VMs and Libraries. Contact Chainguard to access additional products.

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