Longhorn is a lightweight, reliable, and powerful distributed block storage system for Kubernetes. Longhorn (henceforth LH) implements distributed block storage using containers and microservices. LH creates a dedicated storage controller for each block device volume and synchronously replicates the volume across multiple replicas stored on multiple nodes. The storage controller and replicas are themselves orchestrated using Kubernetes. The main features are:

• Enterprise-grade distributed block storage with no single point of failure
• Incremental snapshot of block storage
• Backup to secondary storage (NFS or S3-compatible object storage) built on efficient change block detection
• Recurring snapshots and backups
• Automated, non-disruptive upgrades. You can upgrade the entire LH software stack without disrupting running storage volumes.
• An intuitive GUI dashboard

Installation

LH can be installed on a Kubernetes cluster in several ways: Rancher catalog app, kubectl, Helm. In this guide we will focus on the installation via Helm chart. However, for further details, please refer to the official guide.

Requirements