Welcome to the Longhorn Basics course! This section provides step-by-step instructions for setting up the lab environment required to follow this course effectively.

Lab Environment Setup

Course Agenda

This section is divided into two main parts:

  1. Cluster Requirements
  2. Tools, Commands, and Utilities

Cluster Requirements

Cluster Specifications

For this course, we assume you already have a Kubernetes cluster up and running. While any certified Kubernetes distribution will work, we recommend using k3s or RKE2 for this course.

Setting Up a Cluster

If you don’t have a cluster, use the following guides to set one up:

RKE2 Cluster Details

For this course, we will use an RKE2 cluster with the following configuration:

  • Three nodes: Each node will serve all roles (control plane, etcd, and worker).
  • Minimum hardware requirements per node:
    • 2 vCPUs
    • 4GB RAM
    • 20GB of free disk space
  • Operating System: All nodes will run openSUSE Leap 15.2, but you can use any Linux distribution of your choice.

Important Notes

  • You must have root access to all nodes.
  • Ensure all nodes are accessible via SSH.

Tools, Commands, and Utilities

Required Tools

The following tools and utilities will be used extensively throughout this course:

  1. kubectl: The command-line tool for interacting with Kubernetes clusters.

  2. Helm: The package manager for Kubernetes, used to install Longhorn.

  3. SSH: For accessing and managing nodes in the cluster.

Running Commands

You can execute the commands from any Linux, macOS, or Windows machine. For consistency, all commands in this course will be run from the first node in the cluster using SSH.

With the lab environment set up, you’re ready to dive into the Longhorn Basics course! In the next section, we will explore the architecture and components of Longhorn.