I'm reading the longhorn documentation and looking over the CSI Persistent Volume example. I see the spec.csi.volumeHandle parameter as pointing to an already created longhorn volume and trying to understand the usage of the csi section. What I've been trying to find is a reference of the options that are possible under the spec.csi section - I figured there must be a reference somewhere but can't find one, just examples but not a formal spec. I've even tried reading the Go code and haven't found where that section is parsed. Can someone steer me in the direction of a definitive reference for this section?

Persistent Volumes and PV Claims are core Kubernetes, have you looked at the docs there?

@creamy-pencil-82913 I do have a general understanding of pv and pvc's, but what I'm trying to understand now is the only example using CSI specifies an already created volume in Longhorn and I haven't found anything that says it uses CSI to let the system provision the volume. But CSI sounds like a general driver interface. I see the docs you're pointing to at https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/kubernetes-api/config-and-storage-resources/volume/, but there's no mention of the volumeHandle parameter there so that's why Google didn't return it in my search.

yes, because that example there binds a PV to an existing longhorn volume named

existing-longhorn-volume

. If you just want a new volume created for you you shouldn’t set that.

Since normal Kubernetes workloads cannot directly use an existing volume, and they would recognize PVC/PV only. To utilize the existing volumes, we need to create PVC/PV for it then the workload can pick it up. This is why we provide the example.

Yeah I think that’s the source of the confusion though. You don’t have to use an existing volume.

@creamy-pencil-82913 @famous-shampoo-18483 Thanks both. I think one reason for the confusion is that in the examples section you have the block volume example which does create a new longhorn volume followed right by the CSI Persistent Volume section with the only clue that this example requires a manually configured volume that it is named "existing-longhorn-volume" which is actually pretty subtle for documentation to indicate that other steps are required to run that example. I'd suggest a quick paragraph or comment above that example to make that more explicit. But my other bit of confusion is over CSI - does the block volume example above it really NOT use the CSI driver? I see that the CSI Persistent Volume section has the csi section, but does this really mean that completely different drivers are being used? I finally did find this discussion where someone else had the same confusion I did, so maybe the documention could more directly address this to help others? https://github.com/longhorn/longhorn/discussions/2190

the block volume example doesn’t use a Volume at all, just a PVC with the StorageClass and volumeMode set correctly. You don’t need to manually create a volume or a PV at all, no

@creamy-pencil-82913 That's why I'm suggesting that maybe a comment would make it easier to understand. I really did try to read the docs to understand what was going on, but that was a bit subtle.