EKS with gp3 volumes

2025-02-01 198 words One minute

/site/eks-gp3-volumes/featured-image.webp

AWS encourages users to migrate from gp2 to gp3 for better performance and lower costs.

Simplified(very) comparison gp2 vs. gp3

Feature	gp2	gp3
Base Price (per GB)	$0.10	$0.08 (20% cheaper)
IOPS per GB	3 IOPS/GB (size-dependent)	3,000 IOPS included (fixed)
Max IOPS	16,000	16,000 (provisioned)
Max Throughput	250 MB/s (size-dependent)	1,000 MB/s (provisioned)
IOPS Scaling	Scales with size	Provisioned independently
Use Cases	Simpler workloads, costlier for small IOPS needs	Higher performance at a lower price

As a prerequisite it needs ebs-csi-controller, it can be installed with eksctl

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---
apiVersion: eksctl.io/v1alpha5
kind: ClusterConfig
#<...>

addons:
#<...>
- name: aws-ebs-csi-driver
  resolveConflicts: overwrite
  configurationValues: |-
    controller:
      nodeSelector:
        label: value

#<...>  

New StorageClass for gp3 must be created:

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cat > gp3.yaml<<EOF
---
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: gp3
provisioner: ebs.csi.aws.com
volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer
EOF

.. and deployed:

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kubectl apply -f gp3.yaml

Switch default StorageClass from gp2 to gp3

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#unset default flag for gp2
kubectl patch storageclass gp2 -p '{"metadata": {"annotations":{"storageclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class":"false"}}}'
#set default flag for gp3
kubectl patch storageclass gp2 -p '{"metadata": {"annotations":{"storageclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class":"true"}}}'