Secure Longhorn UI on Kubernetes: Add Basic Auth and Enable HTTPS

In the Kubernetes ecosystem, Longhorn is a popular distributed block storage solution, but its UI lacks authentication and HTTPS by default, allowing anyone who knows the IP and port to access and manipulate the storage system.

This article shows how to add two essential security layers to the Longhorn UI: basic username/password authentication and HTTPS encryption.

Prerequisites

An Ingress‑controller service is already deployed (see the "Helm implementation of high‑availability Ingress" article).

cert‑manager is installed (see the "Kubernetes certificate automation: cert‑manager installation guide" article).

An httpd environment is available to generate the credential file.

Security Hardening

The hardening consists of two parts:

Require credentials to access the Longhorn UI.

Configure the Longhorn UI to use HTTPS.

1. Generate UI username and password

sudo yum -y install httpd
htpasswd -c /tmp/longhorn-basic-auth jiaxzeng
New password: 
Re-type new password: 
Adding password for user jiaxzeng

2. Create a secret containing the credentials

kubectl -n storage-system create secret generic longhorn-basic-auth --from-file=auth=/tmp/longhorn-basic-auth
secret/longhorn-basic-auth created

3. Install Longhorn with Ingress configuration (basic auth)

ingress:
  enabled: true
  ingressClassName: nginx
  host: longhorn.jiaxzeng.com
  annotations:
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/auth-type: basic
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/auth-secret: longhorn-basic-auth
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/auth-realm: 'Authentication Required '
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/proxy-body-size: 10000m

4. Configure HTTPS for the Longhorn UI

ingress:
  enabled: true
  ingressClassName: nginx
  host: longhorn.jiaxzeng.com
  tls: true
  tlsSecret: longhorn.jiaxzeng.com-tls
  annotations:
    cert-manager.io/cluster-issuer: ca-cluster-issuer
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/proxy-body-size: 10000m

5. Upgrade the Longhorn release

helm -n storage-system upgrade longhorn -f /etc/kubernetes/addons/longhorn-values.yaml /etc/kubernetes/addons/longhorn
Release "longhorn" has been upgraded. Happy Helming!
NAME: longhorn
LAST DEPLOYED: Wed Jun  4 23:17:27 2025
NAMESPACE: storage-system
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 2
TEST SUITE: None
NOTES:
Longhorn is now installed on the cluster!
Please wait a few minutes for other Longhorn components such as CSI deployments, Engine Images, and Instance Managers to be initialized.
Visit our documentation at https://longhorn.io/docs/

Verification

Check that the Ingress and certificate are correctly created:

k -n storage-system get ingress
NAME            CLASS  HOSTS                ADDRESS        PORTS   AGE
longhorn-ingress nginx  longhorn.jiaxzeng.com 10.109.195.237 80,443 109s

k -n storage-system get cert
NAME                     READY  SECRET                     AGE
longhorn.jiaxzeng.com-tls True   longhorn.jiaxzeng.com-tls  2m8s

Finally, access the UI via a browser; the screenshot below shows the secured Longhorn UI login prompt.

Conclusion

Security is critical in cloud‑native environments, and every exposed component can become an attack vector. This article demonstrated how to add basic authentication and enable HTTPS for the Longhorn UI, helping you harden the service for production use.