Go-iRODSClient, iRODS FUSE Lite, and iRODS CSI Driver: Accessing iRODS in Kubernetes

As developers increasingly adopt the cloud-native paradigm for application development, Kubernetes has become the dominant platform for orchestrating their cloud-native services. To facilitate iRODS access in Kubernetes, we developed an iRODS CSI (Container Storage Interface) driver. The driver provides on-demand data access to the iRODS server using multiple connectivity modes and exposes a file system interface to Kubernetes Pods, thereby allowing cloud-native services to access iRODS without staging data within the containers. In this paper, we introduce the design and functionality of the iRODS CSI driver. We also introduce two sub-projects: GoiRODSClient and iRODS FUSE Lite. Go-iRODSClient is an iRODS client library written in Go. iRODS FUSE Lite is a complementary FUSE-based iRODS storage backend to the iRODS CSI driver that is implemented using GoiRODSClient to provide improved performance and enhanced capabilities compared to iRODS FUSE. We expect Go-iRODSClient, iRODS FUSE Lite, and the iRODS CSI driver to be indispensable tools for integrating iRODS into cloud-native applications.