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Can Trident use ONTAP S3 Buckets as a Storage Backend in Kubernetes?

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Applies to

  • NetApp Trident (all supported versions as of Nov 2025)
  • NetApp ONTAP 9.8 and later (including 9.17.1)
  • Kubernetes clusters including MKE (Mirantis Kubernetes Engine)

Answer

No, Trident does not support using ONTAP S3 buckets as a storage backend.
  • You cannot create Trident backends or Kubernetes storage classes that provision persistent volumes from ONTAP S3 buckets
  • Only block and file protocols (iSCSI, NFS, SMB) are supported by Trident for dynamic provisioning

For more info:

Workaround:
  • For Kubernetes workloads requiring object storage:
    • Use S3-compatible object storage directly from your application, bypassing Trident
    • Applications should interact with S3 via SDKs, not as Kubernetes persistent volumes
  • For Kubernetes persistent storage:
    • Use Trident with supported ONTAP NAS (NFS) or SAN (iSCSI) backends

 

Additional Information

NetApp is tracking the development of COSI (Container Object Storage Interface) for future object storage integration with Kubernetes, but  there is no current GA support.
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