The Longhorn Documentation
Longhorn is a lightweight, reliable, and powerful distributed block storage system for Kubernetes.
Longhorn implements distributed block storage using containers and microservices. Longhorn 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.
Features
- 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 snapshot and backup
- Automated, non-disruptive upgrades. You can upgrade the entire Longhorn software stack without disrupting running storage volumes.]
- An intuitive GUI dashboard
Current status
Longhorn is beta-quality software. We appreciate your willingness to deploy Longhorn and provide feedback.
The latest release of Longhorn is v0.8.0.
Source code
Longhorn is 100% open source software under the auspices of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. The project's source code is spread across a number of repos:
| Component | What it does | GitHub repo |
|---|---|---|
| Longhorn Engine | Core controller/replica logic | longhorn/longhorn-engine |
| Longhorn Instance Manager | Controller/replica instance lifecycle management | longhorn/longhorn-instance-manager |
| Longhorn Share Manager | NFS provisioner that exposes Longhorn volumes as ReadWriteMany volumes | longhorn/longhorn-share-manager |
| Longhorn Manager | Longhorn orchestration, includes CSI driver for Kubernetes | longhorn/longhorn-manager |
| Longhorn UI | The Longhorn dashboard | longhorn/longhorn-ui |