Mount storage in Workbench sessions
Workbench sessions can mount external storage volumes so your notebooks and scripts can read and write data on shared file systems. This guide covers attaching PVCs, NFS shares, and CephFS volumes to a session.
Prerequisites
- A Kubernetes cluster in ready status
- At least one storage volume created (see Work with PVCs, Work with NFS, or Work with CephFS)
Mount storage during session creation
- Navigate to Workbench and click Sessions, then click + New session.
- Configure the preset, image, and compute settings as usual.
- In the Storage section of the creation dialog:
- Home volume -- choose Create new (default ~5 GiB) or Mount existing to attach a PVC you already created.
- Data volumes -- click + Add volume to mount additional PVCs, NFS shares, or CephFS volumes. Each volume requires a mount path (for example,
/data/shared). You can set volumes as read-only.
- Click Launch session.
The mounted volumes appear at the paths you specified inside your notebook environment.
Mount storage on an existing session
- Open the session detail page and click Edit (the session must be paused first).
- In the Storage section, add or remove data volume mounts.
- Click Save, then Resume the session.
Storage type considerations
| Type | Best for | Access |
|---|---|---|
| PVC | Single-namespace workloads | Mount path in one session at a time (ReadWriteOnce) or multiple (ReadWriteMany, if supported) |
| NFS | Cross-namespace sharing | Multiple sessions can mount the same share simultaneously |
| CephFS | High-throughput parallel access | Multiple sessions across many nodes |