Amazon EKS — Storage Issues

Storage Issues

PVCs stuck in Pending, mount failures, and CSI driver problems.

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PVC Not Binding

$ kubectl get pvc
NAME      STATUS    VOLUME   CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS
my-data   Pending                                       gp3

$ kubectl describe pvc my-data
# Look at Events:
Events:
  waiting for a volume to be created, ...

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Common PVC Issues

Symptom	Cause	Fix
PVC Pending	No StorageClass	Create or set default StorageClass
PVC Pending	CSI driver not installed	Install EBS/EFS CSI driver
PVC Pending (EBS)	Pod and PVC in different AZs	Use volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer
Mount error	Wrong fsType	Match fsType to volume format
Permission denied	Pod user can’t write	Set fsGroup in securityContext

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CSI Driver Debugging

# Check EBS CSI driver pods
$ kubectl get pods -n kube-system -l app=ebs-csi-controller
$ kubectl logs -n kube-system -l app=ebs-csi-controller -c ebs-plugin

# Check EFS CSI driver pods
$ kubectl get pods -n kube-system -l app=efs-csi-controller

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AZ Mismatch (Most Common EBS Issue)

Problem:
  Pod scheduled on node in us-east-1a
  EBS volume created in us-east-1b
  → Volume can't attach across AZs!

Solution:
  Use WaitForFirstConsumer binding mode:
  
  storageClassName: gp3
  volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer
  
  This delays volume creation until a pod is
  scheduled, so the volume is created in the
  same AZ as the pod.

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Common Mistakes

Mistake	Impact
Using Immediate binding with EBS	AZ mismatch errors
Missing IRSA for CSI driver	Can’t create volumes
Not setting fsGroup	Permission denied on writes

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What’s Next?

Quick reference: Common Errors.