Kubes are incredibly dynamic. Therefore, handling workloads with ReadWriteMany requirements becomes complicated. Shared storage is necessary for applications demanding concurrent read and write access from multiple pods.

Typically, you could utilize an external storage solution. However, by doing so, you invite additional complexity and massive bills.

Let’s investigate a novel idea of insourcing NFS PVCs. This idea’s crux is creating shared storage within your Kubernetes cluster. Stay tuned for some Kube basics, a mini insourcing guide, and some best practices.

A Walk Down Kube Lane

A Network File System (NFS) is a distributed file system protocol with a client-server model. Clients (users) can interact with files in a shared directory - like they were stored locally.

A Persistent Volume Claim (PVC) is a storage request by a user. Similar to pods on a Kube network, PVCs also consume PVC resources. You can mount a PVC via various access modes:

• ReadWriteOnce
• ReadOnlyMany
• ReadWriteMany
• ReadWriteOncePod

Why is ReadWriteMany Special?

ReadWriteMany (RWX) is a unique feature that enables multiple pods to read from and write to a shared storage volume concurrently. RWX is yo...