Creators of the most widely used Kubernetes management platform, Rancher Labs, unveiled Longhorn. Longhorn directly answers the need for an enterprise-grade, vendor-neutral persistent storage solution that supports the easy development of stateful applications within Kubernetes. Longhorn makes persistent storage easy-to-deploy with a single click.
Longhorn’s enterprise storage features
The new solution also reduces the resources required to manage data and operate environments, enabling teams to focus on shipping code faster, and delivering better applications.
- Thin-provisioning, snapshots, backup, and restore
- Non-disruptive volume expansion
- Cross-cluster disaster recovery volume with defined RTO and RPO
- Live upgrade of Longhorn software without impacting running volumes
- Full-featured Kubernetes CLI integration and standalone UI
Longhorn allows users to create distributed block storage mirrored across local disks. It also serves as a bridge to integrate enterprise-grade storage with Kubernetes by enabling users to deploy Longhorn on existing NFS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel storage arrays and on cloud storage systems. Sheng Liang, CEO at Rancher Labs said,
“As enterprises deploy more production applications in containers, the need for persistent container storage continues to grow rapidly. Longhorn fills the need for a 100% open source and easy-to-deploy enterprise-grade Kubernetes storage solution. Our support of Longhorn does not change our partnership with our storage partners who offer numerous additional capabilities beyond Longhorn. We believe, by being 100% open source and easy-to-deploy, Longhorn will help bring additional persistent workloads into the Kubernetes ecosystem and help drive further demand for advanced storage systems.”