Thank you! I think I found a safer, more civil home here than that cesspool Twitter.

Using an operator permits active management of what you're deploying. You just left the operator read your CRD that specifies what you want and it (1) assembles the pieces, (2) fills in the gaps, and (3) continuously fixes if it breaks. Smart deploy vs Dumb deploy.

Yes, I do. Been deploying PVCs using the CSI driver for vSphere under VMware.