azure_files_enable

Description

The azure_files_enable parameter enables Azure Files NFS volumes for shared persistent storage across service replicas. This creates a Premium FileStorage account and an NFS StorageClass in your AKS cluster.

Default Value

The default value for azure_files_enable is false.

Use Cases

• Shared Service Volumes: Enable multiple service replicas to access the same file system simultaneously, supporting access modes like ReadWriteOnce (RWO), ReadOnlyMany (ROM), and ReadWriteMany (RWM).
• Persistent Storage: Use Azure Files for applications requiring shared access to files across distributed instances and restarts.
• ML Model Storage: Store large model weights on a shared NFS volume accessible by all replicas without downloading on each startup.

Setting Parameters

To enable Azure Files volumes, use the following command:

$ convox rack params set azure_files_enable=true -r rackName
Setting parameters... OK

This command enables the Azure Files NFS volume feature for your rack.

Additional Information

Azure Files provides a scalable file storage solution using the NFS protocol. It uses a Premium FileStorage account for the performance required by NFS shares, with a minimum share size of 100GiB.

AKS includes the Azure Files CSI driver (file.csi.azure.com) by default — no additional driver installation is needed.

Example Configuration

To configure your services to use Azure Files for persistent storage, set up your convox.yml as follows:

services:
  web:
    build: .
    port: 3000
    volumeOptions:
      - azureFiles:
          id: "shared-data"
          accessMode: ReadWriteMany
          mountPath: "/mnt/data/"
      - azureFiles:
          id: "models"
          accessMode: ReadOnlyMany
          mountPath: "/mnt/models/"
          shareSize: "200Gi"

Enabling Azure Files provides shared, persistent NFS storage for your applications running on Azure AKS.