New Volume Types | KubeVirt.io

Introduction

Recently three new volume types were introduced, which can be used for additional VM disks, and allow better integration of virtual machines with well known Kubernetes resources.

ConfigMap and Secret

Both ConfigMaps and Secrets are used to provide configuration settings and credentials to Pods. In order to use them in your VM too, you can add them as additional disks, using the new configMap and secret volume types.

ServiceAccount

Kubernetes pods can be configured to get a special type of secret injected, which can be used for accessing the Kubernetes API. With the third new volume type serviceAccount you can get this information into your VM, too.

Example

We assume that you already have a Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster running with KubeVirt installed.

Step 1

Create a ConfigMap and Secret, which will be used in your VM:

$ kubectl create secret generic mysecret --from-literal=PASSWORD=hidden
secret "mysecret" created
$ kubectl create configmap myconfigmap --from-literal=DATABASE=staging
configmap "myconfigmap" created

Step 2

Define a VirtualMachineInstance which uses all three new volume types, and save it to vmi-fedora.yaml. Note how we add 3 disks for the ConfigMap and Secret we just created, and for the default ServiceAccount. In order to automount these disks, we also add a cloudInitNoCloud disk with mount instructions. Details on how to do this might vary depending on the VM’s operating system.

apiVersion: kubevirt.io/v1alpha2
kind: VirtualMachineInstance
metadata:
  name: vmi-fedora
spec:
  domain:
    devices:
      disks:
        - name: registrydisk
          volumeName: registryvolume
        - name: cloudinitdisk
          volumeName: cloudinitvolume
        - name: configmap-disk
          serial: configmap
          volumeName: configmap-volume
        - name: secret-disk
          serial: secret
          volumeName: secret-volume
        - name: serviceaccount-disk
          serial: serviceaccount
          volumeName: serviceaccount-volume
    resources:
      requests:
        memory: 1024M
  volumes:
    - name: registryvolume
      registryDisk:
        image: kubevirt/fedora-cloud-container-disk-demo:latest
    - name: cloudinitvolume
      cloudInitNoCloud:
        userData: |-
          #cloud-config
          password: fedora
          chpasswd: { expire: False }
          bootcmd:
            # mount the disks
            - "mkdir /mnt/{myconfigmap,mysecret,myserviceaccount}"
            - "mount /dev/disk/by-id/ata-QEMU_HARDDISK_configmap /mnt/myconfigmap"
            - "mount /dev/disk/by-id/ata-QEMU_HARDDISK_secret /mnt/mysecret"
            - "mount /dev/disk/by-id/ata-QEMU_HARDDISK_serviceaccount /mnt/myserviceaccount"
    - name: configmap-volume
      configMap:
        name: myconfigmap
    - name: secret-volume
      secret:
        secretName: mysecret
    - name: serviceaccount-volume
      serviceAccount:
        serviceAccountName: default

Step 3

Create the VMI:

$ kubectl apply -f vmi-fedora.yaml
virtualmachineinstance "vmi-fedora" created

Step 4

Inspect the new disks:

$ virtctl console vmi-fedora

vmi-fedora login: fedora
Password:

[fedora@vmi-fedora ~]$ ls -R /mnt/
/mnt/:
myconfigmap  mysecret  myserviceaccount

/mnt/myconfigmap:
DATABASE

/mnt/mysecret:
PASSWORD

/mnt/myserviceaccount:
ca.crt	namespace  token

[fedora@vmi-fedora ~]$ cat /mnt/myconfigmap/DATABASE
staging

[fedora@vmi-fedora ~]$ cat /mnt/mysecret/PASSWORD
hidden

[fedora@vmi-fedora ~]$ cat /mnt/myserviceaccount/namespace
default

Summary

With these new volume types KubeVirt further improves the integration with native Kubernetes resources. Learn more about all available volume types on the userguide.