gcsfuse VS gcp-filestore-csi-driver

It uses FUSE and there's three types of Kernel cache you could use with FUSE (although, it seems like gcsfuse is exposing only one):

1. Cache of file attributes in the Kernel (this is controlled by "stat-cache-ttl" value - https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/gcsfuse/blob/7dc5c7ff...)

You're looking at Filestore because your software can only write to a mounted file system? If so, you could mount a Google Cloud Storage bucket with Fuse. I haven't used Fuse myself in production, but it may be worth trying out for your workload.

Is this the same gcsfuse that's been around for years, only now with official Google support?

https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/gcsfuse

I'm pretty sure the storage for a stopped VM vs a disk image will be the same. Cheaper if you can store your data in GCS bucket? Take a look at GCS-Fuse to mount storage buckets into a VM.

Currently being tracked here: https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/gcsfuse/issues/961

Hi Ofek,

I am a contributor who works on the Google Cloud Storage FUSE CSI Driver project. The project is partially inspired by your CSI implementation. Thank you so much for the contribution to the Kubernetes community. However, I would like to clarify a few things regarding your post.

The Cloud Storage FUSE CSI Driver project does not have “in large part copied code” from your implementation. The initial commit you referred to in the post was based on a fork of another open source project: https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/gcp-filestore-csi-driver. If you compare the Google Cloud Storage FUSE CSI Driver repo with the Google Cloud Filestore CSI Driver repo, you will notice the obvious similarities, in terms of the code structure, the Dockerfile, the usage of Kustomize, and the way the CSI is implemented. Moreover, the design of the Google Cloud Storage FUSE CSI Driver included a proxy server, and then evolved to a sidecar container mode, which are all significantly different from your implementation.

As for the Dockerfile annotations you pointed out in the initial commit, I did follow the pattern in your repo because I thought it was the standard way to declare the copyright. However, it didn't take me too long to realize that the Dockerfile annotations are not required, so I removed them.

Thank you again for your contribution to the open source community. I have included your project link on the readme page. I take the copyright very seriously, so please feel free to directly create issues or PRs on the Cloud Storage FUSE CSI Driver GitHub project page if I missed any other copyright information.

Any Kubernetes cluster requires persistent storage - whether organizations choose to begin with an on-premise Kubernetes cluster and migrate to the public cloud, or provision a Kubernetes cluster using a managed service in the cloud. Kubernetes supports multiple types of persistent storage – from object storage (such as Azure Blob storage or Google Cloud Storage), block storage (such as Amazon EBS, Azure Disk, or Google Persistent Disk), or file sharing storage (such as Amazon EFS, Azure Files or Google Cloud Filestore). The fact that each cloud provider has its implementation of persistent storage adds to the complexity of storage management, not to mention a scenario where an organization is provisioning Kubernetes clusters over several cloud providers. To succeed in managing Kubernetes clusters over a long period, knowing which storage type to use for each scenario, requires storage expertise.