Getting Started with the LINBIT Deployment Tool
The LINBIT® deployment tool is a graphical tool that steps you through the process of installing and configuring LINSTOR® in a cluster of nodes. LINSTOR is a software-defined storage (SDS) solution that you can use to build high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) solutions for critical applications and data. By using the deployment tool, […]
Securing the LINSTOR REST API with Token Authentication
LINSTOR® 1.34 introduces bearer token authentication, a straightforward way to restrict access to its REST API. Before this release, securing the API required setting up LDAP integration or mutual TLS client certificates, both of which add operational complexity. Token authentication gives you the same access control with far less setup. A single command enables it, […]
Hidden Software Gems
This week, I want to write about hidden software gems. My first example is an NFS server. When you search the internet for NFS server and Linux, inevitably, you will end up reading about the kernel-NFS server integrated with the Linux kernel. But there is a second implementation that gets much less attention: the NFS-Ganesha […]
Launching the Deployment Tool: Effortless Cluster Setup
Last month I discussed how AI enabled me to bring my dream of a simpler way to deploy LINBIT software to a reality. Now after much testing and deliberation, I am pleased to announce our LINBIT deployment tool, or “Nightfury” for those on the inside who remember the project’s first working title. Although the vision of […]
GitLab High Availability With DRBD & Pacemaker
GitLab is a DevOps platform that many organizations and developers rely on around the clock, nearly every day of the year. You can install it as a self-managed, standalone web application, but a single instance is always a single point of failure. This article guides you through installing and configuring a highly available (HA) GitLab […]
Using Volume Group Snapshots with LINSTOR in Kubernetes
Version 2.10.0 of the LINSTOR® Operator for Kubernetes, developed by LINBIT®, introduces support for volume group snapshots, a feature that enables crash-consistent, point-in-time snapshots of multiple persistent volumes simultaneously. Kubernetes 1.36 promoted the VolumeGroupSnapshot API to General Availability (GA) under the groupsnapshot.storage.k8s.io/v1 API group. Before volume group snapshots, a Kubernetes operator could only take snapshots of one persistent […]
Becoming More Accessible to Windows Users
I have recently seen two internal presentations on LINBIT SDS for Windows. The first was about Hyper-V virtual machines running with their virtualized backing disks on WinDRBD, the VMs managed by drbd-reactor, and a live migration controlled by drbd-reactor. The second demonstration was about MS SQL Server Express, also running on a WinDRBD volume, and made […]
LINSTOR in OpenShift: A Red Hat Certified OperatorHub Offering
The LINSTOR® Operator for managing the LINSTOR life cycle in Kubernetes is a Red Hat certified offering available through the OperatorHub in the OpenShift Container Platform. An Operator is a Kubernetes pattern that uses Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) and Kubernetes principles such as the control loop to automate tasks. You might think of an Operator […]
Creating ReadWriteMany Persistent Volumes in Kubernetes by using LINSTOR
With the release of LINSTOR® Operator 2.10.0 for Kubernetes, users can create ReadWriteMany (RWX) Persistent Volume Claims (PVCs) directly using the LINSTOR Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver. This feature enables multiple pods to mount and write to the same LINSTOR-backed persistent volume simultaneously. RWX support is a hard requirement for applications that require shared storage, […]
Running a Local LLM in Kubernetes with vLLM & LINSTOR
Running large language model (LLM) workloads in-house rather than consuming them through managed API services is a growing trend. Managed API services are convenient, but token costs grow quickly at scale, latency can be unpredictable, and routing sensitive data through public endpoints raises compliance concerns. A hybrid approach (running open source models locally for high-volume […]
