Updated August 24, 2026
Persistent volumes are served by Longhorn running on dedicated storage nodes — enable them at cluster creation (2 or 3 nodes, 10–1000 GB data disk each, $0.08/GB/month).
- PVCs using the default
longhorn storage class get replicated block volumes; every volume is kept in 2 copies, so a storage-node failure keeps your data available from the remaining replica. Because of the 2 copies, usable capacity is half the raw capacity you provision (2 nodes × 100 GB = 100 GB usable; 3 × 100 GB = 150 GB usable).
- Worker root disks are ephemeral — anything a pod writes outside a PVC is lost when the node is replaced or scaled away.
- Apps from App Hub that need persistence (PostgreSQL, WordPress, NextCloud, …) require storage nodes to be present.
- Choose 3 storage nodes for production data; 2 is the minimum for replication.
Without storage nodes, the cluster has no default storage class and PVCs stay Pending. For object storage (S3), use Raff Object Storage from inside the cluster instead. Last modified on August 24, 2026
