NAS volume overview

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If your workloads need shared file storage across multiple pods — with POSIX-compatible access, automatic capacity scaling, and high reliability — use File Storage NAS (NAS) volumes in your Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) cluster.

NAS is a distributed file storage service that provides simultaneous read/write access from multiple pods or nodes. A single NAS file system can be mounted by many compute resources at once. Storage capacity scales automatically as you add or remove files, with no manual resizing required. NAS uses POSIX-based APIs and is compatible with standard operating systems, so existing applications that rely on the local file system API work without modification. NAS provides shared access, ensures data consistency, and implements mutual exclusion by using locks.

Storage types

NAS provides five file system types:

File system type
General-purpose Performance
General-purpose Premium
General-purpose Capacity
Standard Extreme
Advanced Extreme

For detailed selection guidance, see How do I select file systems?

Use cases

  • Shared configuration and data: Mount a NAS file system as a statically provisioned persistent volume (PV) to share data across pods in diverse scenarios.

  • ACK Serverless clusters: Only statically provisioned NAS volumes are supported. Dynamic provisioning is not available. For setup instructions, see Mount a statically provisioned NAS volume.

Usage notes

Mount target lifecycle

  • Do not delete a mount target while its NAS file system is still mounted. Deleting an active mount target may cause the operating system to hang.

  • After creating a mount target, wait until its status changes to Available before mounting.

Protocol and driver

  • Use the NFSv3 protocol.

  • Update FlexVolume to the latest version before using NAS volumes.

  • Extreme NAS file systems support only NFSv3. Include the nolock parameter in your mount options when mounting Extreme NAS file systems.

Persistent volume claims

  • A persistent volume claim (PVC) backed by a NAS file system is shared storage: multiple pods can use the same PVC simultaneously.

Billing

For NAS pricing details, see Billing of General-purpose NAS file systems.

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