End-to-End Kubernetes with Rancher, RKE2, K3s, Fleet, Longhorn, and NeuVector

When to Use Longhorn?

Longhorn is best suited for Kubernetes environments where you require a lightweight, user-friendly distributed block storage solution, particularly in bare-metal and self-managed clusters without access to external storage infrastructures like SAN or NAS.

It offers resilience by replicating data across nodes, guaranteeing that volumes remain accessible even if a node fails. Longhorn simplifies storage management with an intuitive GUI and integrates easily with Kubernetes via its CSI driver, enabling features like automated backups to S3-compatible storage and efficient disaster recovery. For teams running stateful workloads in environments with limited resources or where deploying and maintaining a dedicated storage system like Ceph is an over-engineered solution, Longhorn provides a cost-effective and manageable alternative that can be deployed in minutes and provides the necessary features for most use cases.

However, Longhorn’s strengths come with some trade-offs. It excels in many scenarios but may not deliver the performance or scalability required for high-throughput databases or write-intensive applications, especially when the requirements