Red Hat Ceph Storage Reviews

My main use case for Red Hat Ceph Storage is primarily for backend storage of OpenStack deployments. This is the most common case, along with archive storage. Another case is large size file system clusters for our tables.

Regarding open source, I primarily use Red Hat Ceph Storage as a safe block device for OpenStack storage. In a few cases, I use it as file system backbones and for 500 TB to 1 PB sized archival storage. These are the most common client cases. For my OpenStack deployments, I always prefer to deploy Red Hat Ceph Storage, even in the back of OpenShift as well.

In terms of features, I found the most valuable functions of Red Hat Ceph Storage to be limited because I didn't work with the OEM product; I worked with the open source version of it.

When it comes to the capabilities of Red Hat Ceph Storage such as object, block, and file storage, I am not fully satisfied. For the synchronous nature of Ceph, I naturally avoid its object storage scenarios and prefer OpenStack Swift for this purpose. This is a personal choice, not based on benchmarking. I tested both and found flexibility with Swift. But Red Hat Ceph Storage is also fine, without issues. I generally prefer Swift because I want to separate my backup storage from the primary storage. For OpenShift or other Kubernetes cases, Red Hat Ceph Storage is fine, and Radosgw is fine, without issues.

From my experience, the main benefit Red Hat Ceph Storage can provide to users is its performance and availability along with fault tolerance.

I would like to see improvements in Red Hat Ceph Storage not because I necessarily think it needs improvement, but because I generally prefer to do things manually rather than following the containerization part. Current deployments are based on containers, but I deploy manually with my scripts and controls. If there are no Kubernetes-like requirements, I often prefer to deploy a whole manual process.

I don't ask for improvements in the deployment model because Red Hat has its own philosophy about making things, but it's my personal choice that I prefer things manually. Some features are available only in the containerization part, so if those are also available in manual deployment, that will help.

I have been working with Red Hat Ceph Storage for almost 10 years.

For stability, I would rate it 8 out of 10.

For scalability purposes, I would rate Red Hat Ceph Storage an 8 out of 10.

Regarding technical support from Red Hat, for open source cases, Red Hat doesn't provide support. All my deployments are based on open source.

Positive

I can compare Red Hat Ceph Storage with products from other vendors; I explored quite a few, but I still find that Red Hat Ceph Storage is making the most disruption. I'm attached to Red Hat Ceph Storage the most.

In general, the setup process for Red Hat Ceph Storage is simple, but it is very hard to make users understand why it creates benefits.

I think the pricing for Red Hat Ceph Storage is quite high. I'm not the right person to rank it because I don't work with the OEM products; I mostly work with open source. However, I have heard from clients that the price is quite high.

I would recommend Red Hat Ceph Storage for mid to large companies.

I am quite happy with Red Hat Ceph Storage. I have a very big deployment, and for my cases, it is fulfilling all these needs. I would rate Red Hat Ceph Storage 8 or 9 out of 10.

As for TierZoo, we are not a partner with Red Hat; we are just users of the product.

A typical use case for Red Hat Ceph Storage is for reliability compared to others.

We do not use just Red Hat storage; our customers use Red Hat because of security, reliability, and performance. Stratus allows more reliability than all the other types of computers available.

Compared to Red Hat Ceph Storage, it offers very high reliability since even if the CPUs, RAM, or some other hardware failure occurs, the system can still handle that, which is uncommon with other systems.

For example, other systems use software-based redundancy. When you add Stratus with Red Hat, Stratus is another company that has equipment capable of handling hardware failures while the computer is running.

Even if one of the CPUs stops, the processing does not stop; thus, the reliability of Red Hat plus Stratus is very high, the highest of all.

If you look at Stratus as a company, it provides solutions with Red Hat to give the highest reliability of all systems, no other system is more reliable than that because it can also handle hardware failures without stopping work during issues.

Areas of Red Hat Ceph Storage that have room for improvement include more promotion. Many people do not know about the Stratus case, which is one of the most reliable systems available in the world, but they are not aware that a system can keep working even if there is a hardware failure.

The scalability of Red Hat Ceph Storage can be rated as seven.

We have not actually used the technical support from Red Hat, since we are working at a level where we solve the issues ourselves.

Usually, we do not require direct Red Hat support, but we communicate issues that need fixing if we detect something they have not addressed.

Positive

It usually takes about two hours to deploy Red Hat Ceph Storage if you have experience.

Generally, a system does not take more than two hours to deploy, and when we implement any system, we set it up to address potential disasters or replacements so that all data can be restored within two hours, which is our normal standard.

If you consider ROI, then compared to solutions from Dell or other ready-made hardware types or EMC, the ROI from Red Hat Ceph Storage is higher than those.

The price of Red Hat Ceph Storage is not very high compared to other solutions in the market.

I do not have experience working with solutions such as Red Hat Ceph Storage and StorPool.

I have plenty of experience related to storage, such as with Ceph.

My customers use Ceph, so I am familiar with Red Hat and network storage solutions.

I do not have hands-on experience working with the Red Hat Ceph Storage solution, but I understand the concept.

I have some experience working with solutions such as ZFS and others.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Red Hat Ceph Storage a 9.

We have a customer using NFS from NetApp, although it's not meeting our requirements. I also have a few customers running Ceph, however, no one is currently using Pure Storage software.

I really like that Red Hat Ceph Storage can be used as a total solution without any storage area network components. You can use bare metal with disks as a basis. It is cloud-native and scalable, offering a robust API and cloud-native features like block storage, shared file systems, and object storage.

I've heard the integration with OpenShift is great, however, the licensing cost is excessively high. This is a significant issue from my perspective.

My first experience started in 2015. After a period of limited interaction, I have gained two to three years of up-to-date experience with Ceph Storage.

I rate the stability around seven or eight. We've encountered some issues, however, these seem related to specific use cases like running on virtual machines or using SC Linux contexts, which aren't optimal for Ceph.

You can start relatively small and scale as needed without impacting the customer. It can scale to significant proportions, however, it's important to separate systems to prevent incidents from affecting all clients.

I'd give customer service a seven out of ten. They are knowledgeable and eager to help resolve issues.

Positive

Preparation was required for machines and infrastructure. Once ready, the initial Ceph deployment took about an hour with the help of documentation and running the playbook.

It's hard to quantify financial ROI as we are building a new platform with Ceph as a major component, enabling developer teams. The real value is in the cloud-native platform.

I'm more involved on the technical side than financial, however, it seems overpriced. This pricing concern is something to consider.

I've been looking at other vendors, however, none cover all use cases as comprehensively as Ceph.

I would definitely recommend Red Hat Ceph Storage. It is a complete solution for cloud-native storage needs. Migrating applications to cloud-native platforms is straightforward, however, managing stateful workloads like databases next to these is essential. 

Ceph fixes storage requirements in this environment effectively. 

I would rate the overall solution as an 8.

We have integrated traditional storage solutions such as Pure, Dell, and PowerMax with Ceph Storage. We operate sixty hosts in production, utilizing automation and infrastructure as code solutions.

Ceph Storage allows us to add value related to cost and offers a unique experience compared to traditional storage. We appreciate the scalability of the open-source solution, allowing us to address our growing data needs without encountering major issues. Having used it as a pilot system in Brazil, we gained significant knowledge and the ability to manage our infrastructure as code.

While the documentation for Ceph Storage is helpful, it could be improved. There are instances where we needed to consult additional online forums and communities for solutions to particular issues.

I have used the solution for approximately five to six months.

Our perception of Ceph Storage is highly positive because we have had no stability issues in production.

We do not have problems with scalability, although I would need to confirm with my team for detailed insights. However, it is scalable enough to support our increasing data needs.

I have not utilized customer service or support personally, though my team has a basic level of expertise in managing Ceph Storage.

Positive

The competitive landscape shows that traditional storage options are currently more cost-effective compared to Ceph Storage, influencing our strategic decisions.

The initial setup was carried out with Ceph Storage distributions using Ceph charts. This deployment was straightforward but required significant effort and expertise.

Our strategy has adapted to the current environment where traditional storage solutions are cheaper.

We evaluated traditional storage solutions like Pure, Dell, and PowerMax.

I am not in a position to confidently recommend Ceph Storage to others, as my perspective is based solely on its use in our organization. My perception rates it as a ten out of ten due to its performance in our production environment.

We provide cloud services called 'made to order', which are public cloud services done by CDAC Chennai. We work for end users and offer Ceph storage for critical applications. For other normal users, we provide different storage.

The replication feature is crucial. Even if we provide a portion of storage, in cases of failures, having three replicas makes it easy to recover. The scalability feature is used by all users and is critical for our operations.

I have not identified any drawbacks, however, the response to public platform inquiries could be faster.

I have been using the solution for about two years.

The storage services are always stable in our cloud, with no issues experienced so far.

We primarily use the scalability feature, rating it an eight out of ten. It hasn't been fully tested, but it meets our needs.

If troubleshooting is needed, the response should be faster. I rate it an eight out of ten.

Positive

The setup is very easy, deserving a ten out of ten.

The tool is reasonably priced for our customers. I do not have specific knowledge of the license costs.

Those wanting to use Red Hat Ceph storage should understand their storage needs. Use Ceph storage only when necessary. 

My total rating for Ceph storage is nine out of ten.

We use the product for archive storage, video surveillance systems, and media storage.

Red Hat Ceph Storage is difficult to maintain. We use CLI tools for maintenance, and the concept seems challenging. Additionally, it is difficult to expand the product due to balancing errors. It takes some time to re-balance the storage in case of server failure. They could improve the speed of the process.

We have been using Red Hat Ceph Storage for four years.

We have not encountered any stability issues for the product.

Our organization has 10 to 12 developers using Red Hat Ceph Storage. I rate its scalability a seven out of ten.

The contractor helps escalate the issues to the technical support team.

We use Kubernetes architecture to deploy Red Hat Ceph Storage. Its initial setup process is a bit complex.

I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten.

I rate Red Hat Ceph Storage a seven out of ten.

The use case is for our Red Hat customers. We are the distributor for that product and we sell some solutions like OpenShift and OpenStack. If the client needs a storage ecosystem from Red Hat, we offer Ceph Storage.

The product can be integrated with any storage and we can create it like block storage and then ISO storage. We keep our files in storage. They can be anything from video to PDF. The flexibility in the storage is good.

If you use for any other solution like other Kubernetes solutions, it's not very suitable. It's very good if you have a customer that is using a Red Hat deployment like OpenStack or OpenShift. It's not great if you aren't. They need to adjust the product in order to have compatibility with other solutions also.

The installation of the software could be simplified. 

I'm just a new hire in the company, however, we have been exploring Ceph Storage for two years.

The solution is pretty stable. I'd rate the reliability seven out of ten. 

Our user actually uses it as a standalone cluster. There is no scaling happening. 

Right now, I'd rate the overall scalability at a four out of ten. 

We have about ten companies using the solution right now. 

Technical support is very responsive. We have the customer portal and are communicating with them through that. We can create a ticket through the customer portal or via phone. They're very communicative and also very helpful in terms of sorting our problems.

Positive

We deal with various Red Hat products. 

The installation is sometimes complex. Sometimes we have problems during the installation of the storage system. We'd like the process to be simplified. 

How long it takes to deploy the solution depends on the infrastructure. If you use maybe only one PB, it might take eight hours, in our experience. It could take a week if we need to config and install from the TMI.

During implementation, we set the topology first. We recommend and set how much storage is needed to convert into Ceph Storage. Then we can just run the script and then run the configuration on Linux and start integrating it with other CMs. We can create it as storage or as NFS.

We tend to use two to three people for the deployment part of the setup. They are engineers or system admins. An IT manager isn't involved right away. They come in later if there are issues or the company needs troubleshooting. 

We handle quarterly maintenance tasks. We'll check everything and handle any maintenance needed on the system for the client. 

We can install the product ourselves. We have something like a remote center where we can test the product in an environment, and after we test it we can install it into our customer's environment.

I'm not sure of the exact cost. It's based on the amount of storage needed. As an open-source solution, it's possible users may just need to pay for support. 

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using. It might be around version four. 

We're a reseller.

I'd recommend the solution to other users if they have a Red Hat ecosystem.

I'd rate the solution a five out of ten since it can be complex to install. 

The solution is used for block storage for an OpenStack environment. I'm the Information Team Lead.

The product allows our OpenStack environment to move away from the classic network type of backend storage. It enables increased resilience using commodity hardware pricing and that is a major benefit. In comparison to a solution such as FlashBlade, for the capacity and performance you get, Ceph Storage is half the price.

I like the distributed and self-healing nature of the product. 

Ceph Storage lacks RDMA support for inter-OSD communication. That is a huge loss in terms of performance. It's also very intensive on the backend network and takes a lot of resources from the network. I'd like to see a higher performing CephFS, which is the file system part of Ceph.

The company has been using this solution for the past five years, I've been using it for 12 months. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable, but if you've chosen erasure coding, migrating to a different configuration is difficult and requires some knowledge.

We haven't dealt with technical support, any issues are dealt with in-house. 

The initial setup is quite straightforward. The documentation describes it perfectly, and it's quite clear as long as you know what you want. We deployed in-house. The planning took a couple of days, making our choices, etc. and the effective deployment took half a day.

Red Hat Ceph is an open-source product so it's self-supported in our environment.

My suggestion is to try before you buy so you know it's the right solution. It's not one-size-fits-all. The product has plenty of potential for growth, but the parts where we would like to see growth are not necessarily where the vendor is focusing its attention.

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

We worked with Red Hat Ceph Storage, but mainly we recommended it to special customers with special use cases. For example, when customers purchase the Red Hat OpenShift platform, one of the licensing models is to work with Red Hat Ceph Storage as a storage for the container platform, so this is when we also worked with the solution for our customers. The main use case for Red Hat Ceph Storage was as a container platform for Red Hat OpenShift.

What I found most valuable from Red Hat Ceph Storage is integration because if you are talking about a solution that consists purely of Red Hat products, this is where integration benefits come in. In particular, Red Hat Ceph Storage becomes a single solution for managing the entire environment in terms of the container or the infrastructure, or the worker nodes because it all comes from a single plug.

What could be improved in Red Hat Ceph Storage is its user interface or GUI.

Red Hat Ceph Storage is a stable product. We've deployed it twice and we didn't have problems from it.

Red Hat Ceph Storage is a scalable product.

I've never contacted technical support for Red Hat Ceph Storage.

The initial setup, including customization and optimization for performance, for Red Hat Ceph Storage, was not easy at the beginning, particularly when you need to dig a little bit deeper into the product. Sometimes, you'll also need some assistance from the technical support team.

The licensing model for Red Hat Ceph Storage was for two hundred terabytes if I remember correctly.

My company is an implementer of Red Hat Ceph Storage. The solution was implemented for two or three customers in the FinTech field, but I don't recall using Red Hat Ceph Storage that often.

My advice to others who may want to start using the solution is that its value is good, especially if you have an entire Red Hat environment, as that is when you'll have the best integration.

My rating for Red Hat Ceph Storage is seven out of ten.

We use the product as a backend storage cluster, especially for Kubernetes and OpenShift clusters.

The high availability of the solution is important to us. It is a quick tool. The cluster structure is important. We can add and remove nodes.

Some documentation is very hard to find. The documentation must be quickly available.

I have been using the solution for about five years.

The tool has the best stability. It is reliable. I rate the stability a ten out of ten.

The tool is scalable. I rate the scalability an eight out of ten. We install the tool for our customers’ environments. We have ten customers. We have six engineers in our technical team.

The setup is complex. We follow the documentation to deploy the tool. The deployment takes about a day.

The deployment can be done in-house.

When we face a problem, we search the documents to fix the issue. The solution does not crash. It is reliable and scalable. Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.