Homelab Kubernetes with Kubespray, Part 3: Storage with Rook (Ceph) and Local Path
Standardize storage with Rook Ceph for shared, resilient volumes and Local Path Provisioner for fast, simple single-node workloads.
Goals
- Explain the two-tier storage strategy: Rook Ceph vs. Local Path.
- Provide actionable installation steps for both.
- Define StorageClasses for RBD, CephFS, and Local storage.
Series outline
- Part 1 — Architecture and bootstrap
- Part 2 — Cilium, Istio, and ExternalDNS baseline
- Part 3 — Storage with Rook (Ceph) and Local Path Provisioner
- Part 4 — Tooling: Velero, Hubble UI, Jaeger, Kiali, Tailscale, K9s
- Part 5 — ECK Stack (Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes)
Planned next (optional):
- Monitoring Stack (Prometheus/Grafana)
- GitOps with Argo CD
- Security, backup, and upgrades
1) Tier 1: Local Path Provisioner (Fast & Simple)
Local Path uses the node's local disk. It is ideal for disposable workloads, build caches, or single-node databases where performance is more critical than high availability.



