OpenEBS Container Storage

OpenEBS is an open-source container-attached storage (CAS) solution that provides persistent storage for Kubernetes, implementing storage as a containerized service rather than relying on traditional shared storage systems. Originally developed by MayaData (founded by Jeffry Molanus and Evan Powell, headquartered in San Jose, California) and now a CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) sandbox project, OpenEBS was first released in 2017. Key features: container-attached storage architecture where each storage volume is managed by its own containerized storage controller, providing per-volume isolation, portability, and scalability without shared storage infrastructure. Storage engines: LocalPV for high-performance local persistent volumes (direct-attached storage with no network overhead, ideal for databases like PostgreSQL and Cassandra), cStor (ZFS-based with snapshots, clones, thin provisioning, and data integrity), and Jiva (replicated block storage using Longhorn's architecture). Dynamic provisioning: automatic volume creation and attachment to pods via Kubernetes PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs) and StorageClasses. Snapshots and clones: volume snapshots and clones for backup, testing, and data migration, integrated with Kubernetes VolumeSnapshot CRD. Backup and restore: integration with Velero for backing up volumes to S3-compatible object storage. Data resilience: synchronous replication for cStor and Jiva volumes across nodes for high availability. Capacity management: thin provisioning and automatic capacity expansion. Tiered storage: support for SSD and HDD tiers. Monitoring: integration with Prometheus and Grafana for volume-level metrics (IOPS, throughput, latency). RAID support via ZFS RAID-Z. Encryption: volume-level encryption. Multi-arch: ARM64 and x86_64 support. CSI (Container Storage Interface) compliant. Used by organizations including Bloomberg, Siemens, and Comcast for Kubernetes-native persistent storage. Open source under Apache-2.0.