What is Rook used for?

Rook is a storage orchestrator that deploys and manages Ceph on Kubernetes to provide self-healing block, file and object storage. It is a good fit for persistent volumes for Kubernetes clusters and running object storage on your own hardware.

Yes. Rook is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at rook/rook and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. Rook is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Rook?

Yes. Rook can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.

What are some alternatives to Rook?

Similar open-source tools in the Infrastructure & Containers category include Longhorn, Kubernetes and Crane. SaaS products in the same category include Nutanix, Amazon EKS and Azure Kubernetes Service.

Is Rook actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Rook was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.20.8, published on 29 September 2026. The project has 14k stars on GitHub.

Rook: open-source infrastructure & containers

About Rook

Rook is an open-source cloud-native storage orchestrator for Kubernetes. It integrates Ceph, a distributed storage system that offers file, block and object storage, with the cluster itself, so storage can be requested and managed using the same declarative approach as other Kubernetes workloads.

The Rook operator builds on Kubernetes resources to deploy, configure, provision, scale, upgrade and monitor Ceph. The aim is storage services that manage, scale and heal themselves with little manual effort. The project describes its Ceph storage provider as stable and provides upgrade paths between releases to keep them backward compatible.

Rook is written in Go, released under the Apache-2.0 license and hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation as a graduated project. Installation, deployment and administration steps are covered in the documentation and a quick start guide. Security vulnerabilities are reported through a dedicated CNCF mailing address, and bugs and feature requests go to GitHub issues.

Key features

Automated Ceph deployment on Kubernetes
Block, file and object storage services
Self-scaling and self-healing storage
Operator-driven upgrades and monitoring
CNCF graduated project

Good fit for

→Persistent volumes for Kubernetes clusters
→Running object storage on your own hardware

Built with: Go; Kubernetes; Docker
Tags: kubernetes; storage; ceph; cloud-native; cncf; operator; self-hosted

Rook: questions and answers

What is Rook used for?: Rook is a storage orchestrator that deploys and manages Ceph on Kubernetes to provide self-healing block, file and object storage. It is a good fit for persistent volumes for Kubernetes clusters and running object storage on your own hardware.
Is Rook open source?: Yes. Rook is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at rook/rook and is written mainly in Go.
Is Rook free?: Yes. Rook is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Rook?: Yes. Rook can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.
What are some alternatives to Rook?: Similar open-source tools in the Infrastructure & Containers category include Longhorn, Kubernetes and Crane. SaaS products in the same category include Nutanix, Amazon EKS and Azure Kubernetes Service.
Is Rook actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Rook was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.20.8, published on 29 September 2026. The project has 14k stars on GitHub.