Is is safe to switch between addon and helm chart distribution of aws-ebs-csi-driver?

Hello,

Thank you for posting on AWS re:Post!

I understand you are inquiring whether it is possible to switch between an installation of Amazon EBS CSI driver (aws-ebs-csi-driver) managed by Helm and an installation managed as an EKS addon. I am pleased to confirm that this is indeed possible!

When an EBS-backed persistent volume claim is created, the Amazon EBS CSI driver automatically mounts the EBS volume to the node so it can be used by your pods. However, once the volume is mounted, the Amazon EBS CSI driver is not required to access data on the volume. In short, the Amazon EBS CSI driver is only required when making changes to persistent volume claims, not to access the data within them.

Therefore, your pods will remain able to read and write to their persistent volume claims if you uninstall the Amazon EBS CSI driver and then re-install it in another way. However, you must bear in mind that if there are any worker node events (e.g. a pod needs to be replaced or a service is auto-scaled) then these operations could be delayed while the Amazon EBS CSI driver is being re-installed.

I hope you find this information helpful. Please feel free to comment below if there is anything you would like me to elaborate on further!

Regards,

Marrick.