Exploring Isilon as storage for rancher/K8S

Hi, I am trying to find out how to best connect our rancher 2.4.x Kubernetes v1.17.6 to an Isilon storage system.

Currently we use nfs-client-provisioner to get storage from a simple Linux NFS server exporting NFS with no-root-squash. We have Postgres helm charts running on that setup, so I am happy so far.

My first idea was to 1) create a dedicated NFS export on the isilon and continue with the nfs-client-provisioner.

Alternatively, we 2) recently discovered https://github.com/dell/csi-isilon which sounds both powerful and slightly complex to setup. I can't yet judge if the proper CSI driver has just more features or would be considered better overall. Comments welcome.

I read the CSI Driver for Dell EMC Isilon Product Guide.pdf and I am unsure which approach to try first: 2a) the more classic "Install the CSI driver for Dell EMC Isilon" or 2b) the newer "Install the CSI driver for Dell EMC Isilon using the Operator" available on https://github.com/dell/dell-csi-operator

I found https://www.dell.com/community/Containers/Unable-to-chown-files/m-p/7435520 where @cocampbe reports halfway-successful deployment on rancher, which is not officially supported. Question: Did you install via Helm 2 ? Helm 3 ? WIth the rancher apps catalogue that can handle (many) normal helm charts in github repos ? Or the Operator thing ? This post is the only one here mentioning rancher. He got great responses by @Zack.Zhang and @SJ-CSI .

Someone was reporting "lessons learned" in the rancher forum at https://forums.rancher.com/t/lesson-learned-nfs-server-allow-mounting-sub-dirs/13811. That post is the only one on the rancher forums mentioning an Isilon. It was not (yet) mentioned what exactly was used to configure the StorageClass.

Question: Is there a recommendation on which approach to try (first) among the above 1) , 2a) or 2b) ?

Sorry for the lengthy post, it is (also) meant to serve as pointers for people in a similar situation as me (now or later).

Yours,
Steffen