I documented my journey setting up a Raspberry Pi Cluster with Longhorn for simplified cloud-native persistent block storage. The process took 30 minutes and assumed a functional Raspberry Pi Cluster. I prepared the environment by installing Helm, Calico CLI, and optionally, Kubernetes Dashboard. Then, I detailed the installation of Longhorn with Helm, including verification steps. Accessing Longhorn involved port-forwarding to the frontend service. The result: a highly available persistent storage solution for my Raspberry Pi Cluster, as depicted in the Longhorn dashboard. I addressed troubleshooting issues related to Calico and Longhorn uninstallation, ensuring a smooth experience.

Expanding my Raspberry Pi Cluster's storage with an external 640GB USB hard disk took 35 minutes. After mounting the external storage and addressing troubleshooting issues, I configured MicroK8s default storage to utilize the added space. Despite encountering errors, a reset and careful configuration solved the problem. Adding leaf nodes for MicroK8s and troubleshooting service unavailability for the dashboard completed the setup. I also disabled and re-enabled addons, ensuring a smooth integration of external storage with my MicroK8s cluster. Accessing the Kubernetes dashboard and checking nodes confirmed a successful expansion.

Repurposing my Raspberry Pi 3B into a NAS server using OpenMediaVault (OMV) was a 90-minute project. I opted for Raspberry Pi OS Lite, ensuring its integrity with MD5 & SHA checksums. Win32DiskImager facilitated OS installation on a 16GB SD card. After powering up, I updated the OS, configured settings, and initiated OMV installation using commands provided by developers. Post-installation, I accessed OMV through the Pi's IP address, configured settings, added a user, mounted an external HDD, created a shared folder, and enabled SMB/CIFS service. Following these steps, I successfully owned a personal OMV on Raspberry Pi!