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Frequently asked questions (FAQ) about Azure Container Storage Preview

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Azure Container Storage is a cloud-based volume management, deployment, and orchestration service built natively for containers.

General questions

  • What's the difference between Azure Container Storage and Azure CSI drivers?
    Azure Container Storage is built natively for containers and provides a storage solution that's optimized for creating and managing volumes for running production-scale stateful container applications. Other Azure CSI drivers provide a standard storage solution that can be used with different container orchestrators and support the specific type of storage solution per CSI driver definition.

  • In which Azure regions is Azure Container Storage available?

    Azure Container Storage is only available for a subset of Azure regions:

    • (Africa) South Africa North
    • (Asia Pacific) Australia East
    • (Asia Pacific) East Asia
    • (Asia Pacific) Japan East
    • (Asia Pacific) Korea Central
    • (Asia Pacific) Southeast Asia
    • (Asia Pacific) Central India
    • (Europe) France Central
    • (Europe) North Europe
    • (Europe) West Europe
    • (Europe) UK South
    • (Europe) Sweden Central
    • (Europe) Switzerland North
    • (Middle East) UAE North
    • (North America) East US
    • (North America) East US 2
    • (North America) West US
    • (North America) West US 2
    • (North America) West US 3
    • (North America) Central US
    • (North America) North Central US
    • (North America) South Central US
    • (North America) West Central US
    • (North America) Canada Central
    • (North America) Canada East
    • (South America) Brazil South

  • What parameters can I specify for the storage pool that's created when Azure Container Storage is installed with the az aks create command?
    The following table lists the mandatory and optional storage pool parameters, along with their default values.

    Storage pool parameters for Azure Container Storage

    When Azure Container Storage is installed via the az aks create command, a storage pool is automatically created. The following table shows the parameters you can specify for this storage pool.

    Parameter Backing storage type Description Available values Mandatory (Y/N) Default value
    --enable-azure-container-storage All Storage pool type to enable during installation azureDisk, ephemeralDisk, elasticSan Y N/A
    --storage-pool-option Ephemeral Disk only Ephemeral Disk SKU to enable NVMe, Temp Y (only when using Ephemeral Disk) If this parameter isn't specified, the Ephemeral Disk SKU is local NVMe
    --azure-container-storage-nodepools All Names of the node pools on which to install Azure Container Storage Comma separated list of node pool names (if specifying multiple node pools) N nodepool1*
    --storage-pool-name All Storage pool name N/A N azuredisk, ephemeraldisk, elasticsan
    --storage-pool-size All Storage pool capacity Storage capacity in Gi or Ti N Azure Disks: 512 Gi

    Local NVMe: Full disk

    Temp SSD: 95% of disk capacity

    Elastic SAN: 1 Ti
    --storage-pool-sku Azure Disks, Elastic SAN only Storage pool SKU (performance/redundancy) Azure Disks: Premium_LRS, Standard_LRS, StandardSSD_LRS, UltraSSD_LRS, Premium_ZRS, PremiumV2_LRS, StandardSSD_ZRS

    Elastic SAN: Premium_LRS, Premium_ZRS    		 N Premium_LRS

    *If there are any existing node pools with the acstor.azure.com/io-engine:acstor label then Azure Container Storage will be installed there by default. Otherwise, it's installed in the system node pool, which by default is named nodepool1.

  • Which other Azure services does Azure Container Storage support?
    Currently, Azure Container Storage supports only Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) with storage pools provided by Azure Disks, Ephemeral Disk, or Azure Elastic SAN.

  • Does Azure Container Storage support read-write-many (RWX) workloads?
    Azure Container Storage doesn't support RWX workloads. However, Azure's first-party Files and Blob CSI drivers are great alternatives and fully supported.

  • Is there any performance impact when upgrading to a new version of Azure Container Storage?
    If you leave autoupgrade turned on (recommended), you might experience temporary I/O latency during the upgrade process. If you turn off autoupgrade and install the new version manually, there won't be any impact; however, you won't get the benefit of automatic upgrades and instant access to new features.

  • How do I remove Azure Container Storage?
    See Remove Azure Container Storage.

Billing and pricing

See also