--- title: Vision for Namespaces, Horizontal Scalability | daily.dev description: A design proposal outlines how OpenBao's upcoming Namespaces feature and its new Horizontal Scalability Working Group can work together to offer an open-source... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/vision-for-namespaces-horizontal-scalability-gua2fqhzs twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Vision for Namespaces, Horizontal Scalability | daily.dev og:description: A design proposal outlines how OpenBao's upcoming Namespaces feature and its new Horizontal Scalability Working Group can work together to offer an open-source... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/vision-for-namespaces-horizontal-scalability-gua2fqhzs og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/gua2FqHzs.png og:image:alt: Vision for Namespaces, Horizontal Scalability og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Vision for Namespaces, Horizontal Scalability **[OpenBao](https://daily.dev/sources/openbao)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A design proposal outlines how OpenBao's upcoming Namespaces feature and its new Horizontal Scalability Working Group can work together to offer an open-source alternative to Vault Enterprise's Performance Secondary and Disaster Recovery clustering. It covers scaling reads via standby nodes servicing read-only requests, scaling writes through per-namespace storage segments (separate database schemas or disk directories per tenant), disaster recovery using Raft non-voter nodes and PostgreSQL replicas, an offline recovery mode enabled by per-namespace seal mechanisms and non-hierarchical namespaces, and lazy loading of namespaces/mounts to support large numbers of infrequently-accessed tenants. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How can OpenBao scale write operations across a cluster since only the active Raft node can write? OpenBao's proposed approach is per-namespace storage segments, where each namespace gets its own storage location (a separate PostgreSQL schema or Raft/BoltDB directory), allowing each namespace to have a different active node and distributing writes across the cluster. Cross-namespace operations remain limited mostly to namespace creation, deletion, and mount moves. A single mount, like one PKI mount, still cannot have its writes distributed. _Track how OpenBao's namespace-based write scaling design evolves by following secrets management architecture on daily.dev._ ### How do Raft non-voter nodes help with disaster recovery in OpenBao? Non-voter nodes in Raft do not count toward quorum, so they let writes commit faster while still receiving replicated updates from the leader, at the cost of extra traffic from the leader. Placing non-voter nodes in secondary data centers, combined with the ability to promote them to leader, enables failover during an outage of the primary cluster with minimal data loss. _Engineers designing disaster recovery for distributed secrets stores can follow this kind of architecture work on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Announcing OpenBao v2.6\! – Open Source Security Foundation](https://daily.dev/posts/announcing-openbao-v2-6-open-source-security-foundation-2a9rrvhey) · OpenSSF · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Announcing OpenBao v2.7\!](https://daily.dev/posts/announcing-openbao-v2-7--emwrpj82p) · OpenBao · 32 upvotes · 2 comments - [Running OpenBao on Kubernetes with a CloudNativePG PostgreSQL backend](https://daily.dev/posts/running-openbao-on-kubernetes-with-a-cloudnativepg-postgresql-backend-y9jzjlzm1) · CNCF · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Let's Build PlanetScale From Scratch: Infrastructure](https://daily.dev/posts/let-s-build-planetscale-from-scratch-infrastructure-nfohkldk4) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Scaling the data storage layer in system design](https://daily.dev/posts/scaling-the-data-storage-layer-in-system-design-80lqs6gec) · The Polymathic Engineer · 16 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#secrets-management](https://daily.dev/tags/secrets-management) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/vision-for-namespaces-horizontal-scalability-gua2fqhzs) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Vision for Namespaces, Horizontal Scalability","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/vision-for-namespaces-horizontal-scalability-gua2fqhzs","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/vision-for-namespaces-horizontal-scalability-gua2fqhzs"},"datePublished":"2026-08-23T12:21:46.482Z","dateModified":"2026-08-23T12:44:54.154Z","description":"A design proposal outlines how OpenBao's upcoming Namespaces feature and its new Horizontal Scalability Working Group can work together to offer an open-source...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/789c088b01e45c3338fe0d40b1e0075b?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/789c088b01e45c3338fe0d40b1e0075b?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"OpenBao","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"OpenBao","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--a91pfYlL--/c_limit,w_256/f_auto,q_auto/v1787487459/logos/openbao?_a=BAMAMicg0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/openbao"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/vision-for-namespaces-horizontal-scalability-gua2fqhzs","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"secrets-management","timeRequired":"PT7M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"OpenBao","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/openbao"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Vision for Namespaces, Horizontal Scalability"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/vision-for-namespaces-horizontal-scalability-gua2fqhzs#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How can OpenBao scale write operations across a cluster since only the active Raft node can write?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"OpenBao's proposed approach is per-namespace storage segments, where each namespace gets its own storage location (a separate PostgreSQL schema or Raft/BoltDB directory), allowing each namespace to have a different active node and distributing writes across the cluster. Cross-namespace operations remain limited mostly to namespace creation, deletion, and mount moves. A single mount, like one PKI mount, still cannot have its writes distributed. Track how OpenBao's namespace-based write scaling design evolves by following secrets management architecture on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"How do Raft non-voter nodes help with disaster recovery in OpenBao?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Non-voter nodes in Raft do not count toward quorum, so they let writes commit faster while still receiving replicated updates from the leader, at the cost of extra traffic from the leader. Placing non-voter nodes in secondary data centers, combined with the ability to promote them to leader, enables failover during an outage of the primary cluster with minimal data loss. Engineers designing disaster recovery for distributed secrets stores can follow this kind of architecture work on daily.dev."}}]} ```