Longhorn vs OpenEBS

Longhorn is a free, open-source distributed block storage system for Kubernetes. It replicates storage across nodes and data centers to increase availability, with V1 replicated, V2 replicated and V2 sharded with erasure coding volume types. Teams can schedule recurring snapshots and backups to NFS or S3-compatible secondary storage, and create disaster recovery volumes for recovery in a second Kubernetes cluster. A GUI dashboard is included, and the management UI is described as free. The software stack can be upgraded without disrupting running storage volumes. Installation options include kubectl, Helm, Fleet, Flux and ArgoCD. Longhorn supports mTLS for securing and encrypting gRPC communication between its control and data planes, but mTLS is disabled by default. Components need root access with privileged permissions for volume operations and management. Backups require an NFSv4 client, while ReadWriteMany volumes require NFSv4.1. Longhorn runs on Linux and supports API, web and self-hosted use. It is a CNCF incubating project; SUSE Storage is described as a Longhorn-based distribution with additional support, security, lifecycle management and certified integrations.

OpenEBS is open-source Kubernetes storage software for developers and platform SREs deploying stateful workloads. It turns storage on Kubernetes worker nodes into local or distributed persistent volumes and operates in userspace rather than relying on Linux kernel-dependent software. Its engines include Replicated PV Mayastor and local volumes using Hostpath, LVM, ZFS, or experimental Rawfile. Mayastor can synchronously replicate volumes across Kubernetes zones. Kubernetes-native operations provide copy-on-write snapshots and clones, while Velero plugins support backup and restore to AWS S3, GCP Object Storage, or MinIO. Volumes expose metrics including IOPS, throughput, latency, and traffic patterns for Prometheus and Grafana. OpenEBS also exposes declarative APIs through Kubernetes custom resources and can be installed with Helm 3.2 or newer. Mayastor disk pools support data-at-rest encryption with user-defined AES-XTS keys. Listed use cases include self-managed databases, observability stacks, CI/CD, object storage, websites, and ML pipelines. Mayastor DiskPools are limited to one block device, and encryption keys cannot be rotated.