Feature Overview (aka. Goal Summary)  

We have multiple customers that are asking us to disable the vsphere CSI driver/operator as a day 2 operation. The goal of this epic is to provide a safe API that will remove the vSphere CSI/Operator. This will also silent the VPD alerts as we received several complaints about VPD raising to many.

in OCP 4.17 we added TP support, this feature tracks the graduation to GA.

Goals (aka. expected user outcomes)

Customers want to disable vSphere CSI because this requires several vsphere permissions that they don't want to allow at the OCP level, not setting these permissions ends up with constant and recurring alerting. These customers don't want to use vsphere CSI usually because they use another storage solution.

The goal is to provide an API that disables vSphere storage integration as well as the VPD alerts which will still be present in the logs but not raise (no alerts, lower frequency of checks, lower severity).

Requirements (aka. Acceptance Criteria):

vsphere CSI/Operator is disabled and no VDP alerts are raised. Logs are still present.

Anyone reviewing this Feature needs to know which deployment configurations that the Feature will apply to (or not) once it's been completed.  Describe specific needs (or indicate N/A) for each of the following deployment scenarios. For specific configurations that are out-of-scope for a given release, ensure you provide the OCPSTRAT (for the future to be supported configuration) as well.

Use Cases (Optional):

As an admin I want to disable the vsphere CSI driver because I am using another storage solution. 

As an admin I want to disable the vsphere CSI driver because it requires too many vsphere permissions and keep raising OCP alerts.

Questions to Answer (Optional):

What to do if there is existing PVs?

How do we manage general alerts if VPD alert are silenced?

What do we do if customer tries to install the upstream vsphere CSI?

Out of Scope

Replace the Red Hat vSphere CSI with the vmware upstream driver. We can consider this use case in a second phase if there is an actual demand.

Public availability. To begin with this will be only possible through RH support.

Background

Several customers requests asking to disable vsphere CSI drivers.

see https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RFE-3821

Customer Considerations

Understand why the customer wants to disable it in the first. Be extra careful with pre-flight checks in order to make sure that it is safe to proceed with.

Documentation Considerations

Should be limited to removing the TP banner.

Interoperability Considerations

Applies to vsphere only