1. Proposed title of this feature request

Support local_filesystem as a Production-Ready Storage Backend for Single-Node, Non-HA Deployments

 2. What is the nature and description of the request?

This RFE proposes that Red Hat Quay officially supports the local_filesystem storage driver for production use, strictly limited to single-node, non-HA deployments (e.g., standalone RHEL, SNO). 

This provides a lightweight, low-cost, and low-footprint alternative to object storage, directly addressing the needs of edge and other resource-constrained environments.

 3. Why does the customer need this? (List the business requirements here)

• Enable edge use cases: The "Disconnected Edge" use case requires a registry on a single, resource-constrained node. These customers cannot deploy multi-node object storage (Ceph/ODF).

• Competitive parity: Competitors (Harbor, JFrog) offer local filesystem as a standard, supported option.  Lacking this makes Quay a non-starter in evaluations focused on simplicity.

• Reduce total cost of ownership (TCO): Eliminates the need for a separate, complex object storage layer, reducing hardware and operational overhead for small-scale use cases.

3.1 Describe your problem

When deploying Quay in a disconnected edge environment on a single RHEL or SNO node, there is no officially supported production-grade storage option.

• Recommended object stores (Ceph/ODF) are too heavy and require multi-node setups.
• The local_filesystem driver is documented as "non-production" and "unsupported."

This forces customers to either use a competitor's product or run Quay in an unsupported configuration.

3.2 Describe the impact to you or the business

The primary impact is lost sales and market share in the edge computing space. 

Internal Red Hat teams and customers are blocked from using Quay as the standard registry for edge solutions, forcing them to adopt and support competitor products.

3.3 In what environment are you experiencing this behavior?

• Single-node RHEL servers (standalone VM or bare-metal).
• Single Node OpenShift (SNO).
• Small-scale lab or development environments.

4. List any affected packages or components.

• Quay (core application)
• Quay Operator (for any new OCP-specific configurations and warnings)
• Red Hat Quay Product Documentation