Red Hat Ceph Storage Reviews

I am involved with Ceph and OpenStack as an integrator. I set it up or consult with clients for private cloud deployments. Ceph is my storage of choice for OpenStack and general object-storage needs.

Ceph has simplified my storage integration. I no longer need two or three storage systems, as Ceph can support all my storage needs. I no longer need OpenStack Swift for REST object storage access, I no longer need NFS or GlusterFS for filesystem sharing, and most importantly, I no longer need LVM or DRBD for my virtual machines in OpenStack.

The ability to present Rest API, POSIX filesystem, and block devices from the same distributed object storage back-system (RADOS) is of major value to me.

Ceph lacks a little bit only in performance. It needs to scale a lot and needs very fast and well-orchestrated/configured hardware for best performance. This not a downside though, it is a challenge. Ceph only improves the given hardware.

I have encountered issues with stability when replication factor was not 3, which is the default and recommended value. Go below 3 and problems will arise.

Ceph has no issues with scalability but needs proper planning regarding the hardware.

Technical support from the mailing lists is very good but you always need to get your hands dirty. However, if you pay for a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage, support is a big advantage.

I have used many solutions but not as extensively as Ceph. I switched to Ceph because of its architecture and because it is a one-stop shop when it comes to storage.

Ceph is complex, as with all distributed systems. It has a long learning curve but it pays for itself after that.

If you can afford a product like Red Hat Ceph Storage then go for it. If you cannot, then you need to test Ceph and get your hands dirty.

I have been using Ceph since 2015, in both SOHO and bigger private cloud installations.

Ceph, as a distributed storage solution, is amazing and I can only rate it a 10 out of 10. However, being distributed and complex, Ceph needs engineers with a good understanding of its internals and Linux, for it to shine.

Overall, it is a great product.

We used Ceph as back-end storage for our internal cloud, based on OpenStack.

Our environment was a small open-source OpenStack cloud, on 10 Dell servers, each with two 1TB disks. We installed Ceph on each server to handle those disks and integrated OpenStack Cinder with Ceph to be used as cloud storage instances.

Scale out storage and storage redundancy.

Data redundancy, since it can survive failures (disks/servers). We didn’t lose our data or have a service interruption during server/disk failures.

Rebalancing and recovery are a bit slow.

I used it for about two years. We had no service interruption and no loss of data.

I have used (or know) the following distributed/shared file systems: Gluster, NFS, GFS2, and Ceph. For me, Ceph is one of the best.

We are using it in a Proxmox Cluster.

Without any extra costs, I was able to provide a redundant environment. After I built the first cluster, other departments notice the performance and redundancy, then they started building their own clusters. I helped them to design and build their cluster. Now, we have four Ceph Clusters running, three in production and one in the test environment.

We are using Ceph internal inexpensive disk and data redundancy without spending extra money on external storage.

This product uses a lot of CPU and network bandwidth. It needs some deduplication features and to use delta for rebalancing. 

After adding new OSD, e-balancing is an huge issue if not properly configured, as it can cause huge performance issues.

I use Ceph as OpenStack and Kubernetes storage back-end solution.

It has helped to save money and scale the storage without limits. 

We did not depend on expensive hardware to start using it and can upgrade it if our demand grows.

Its reliability. I have experienced failures and human mistakes. However, Ceph was able to recover automatically the data with a special procedure.

Geo-replication needs improvement. It is a new feature, and not well supported yet. 

No stability issues.

No scalability issues.

The community support is very good. I have never used the paid support.

The initial setup is very straightforward. We used the tool ceph-deploy, which is simple to use. The manual procedure is time consuming, but well-documented.

No advice, as we never used the paid support.

We evaluated GlusterFS (POCs), but Ceph provides better block device storage.

I would recommend the product.

We’re using Ceph storage to provide allocation space to instances (VMs) in an OpenStack environment.

The product spawned a new vision of storage deployment, as well as a strong interest in reusing equipment and increasing ROI. We have some legacy servers that can be associated with this structure. With Ceph, we can rearrange these machines and reuse our investment.

• We can reuse servers of any type and include them in the deploy of the solution.
• radosgw and librados provide a simple integration with clone, snapshots, and other functions that aid in data integrity.

In the deployment step, we need to create some config files to add Ceph functions in OpenStack modules (Nova, Cinder, Glance). It would be useful to have a tool that validates the format of the data in those files, before generating a deploy with failures.

No current issues. Almost all our difficulties were related to implementation. After that, everything ran well.

Most times that I have implemented Ceph, I have used some type of deployment tool, like RDO (Red Hat Director). With these tools, I can make the environment scale in or out without issues. An attention point is looking for a journal and disk separation on the YAML file.

It is possible that you only have support if you partner with a vendor like Red Hat. However, you can find many articles in forums or GitHub.

We had no previous solution. My first contact with ephemeral storage is through Ceph.

My first deployment was complex, connecting Ceph with all OpenStack modules, but that was  before I was testing Ceph and doing installations manually and with hard coding.

It is not a complex implementation, but you need to look into all the structure requirements and OSDS division.

Most of time, you can get Ceph with the OpenStack solution in a subscription as a bundle.

No.

I rate it at nine out of 10. It is a product which is constantly undergoing improvements.

We use it as cloud storage, connected to OpenNebula cloud system for one of our customers. System includes 56 Supermicro nodes that are specially configured to be used as a hyperconverged system. Same nodes used for storage and virtualization.

It opens doors for completely open-source cloud. No monthly charges, no revenue share policy. It just works.

When going open-source, there is actually not much of a choice. Ceph was chosen to maintain exact performance and capacity characteristics for customer cloud.

Ceph is not a mature product at this time. Guides are misleading and incomplete. You will meet all kind of bugs and errors trying to install the system for the first time. It requires very experienced personnel to support and keep the system in working condition, and install all necessary packets.

The system needs some polishing to be stable enough for a production environment.

CEPH is scalable to almost infinity.

We didn’t use Red Hat services, due to bad experience with them in the past. They usually play email ping pong, while you solve the problems yourself.

None. This was a pilot project and it has worked out.

It is complex. Before the system is built, all your technical staff must research as much about CEPH technology as they can.

We tried Scality. It is the perfect solution, but was out of budget.

Think twice.

Cloud. 

• Speed of storage
• Flexible

• RADOS
• Swift
• S3
• Replication
• Compression

Please create a failback solution for OpenStack replication and maybe QoS to allow guaranteed IOPS.

Everything is perfect.

Ceph has allowed us to deploy block storage for our users in a reliable, performance, and easy to manage fashion without vendor lock-in.

By being open source, Ceph is not tied to the whim or fortunes of any one vendor. The community of Ceph code contributors and admins is large and active. Ceph’s ability to adapt to varying types of commodity hardware affords us substantial flexibility and future-proofing.

Routing around slow hardware.

Ceph is more stable than many proprietary solutions.

Ceph is a scale-out solution designed to be free of scale limitations common when using proprietary storage solutions. Ceph will continue to scale meeting our needs for years to come.

Red Hat’s technical support is valuable, but with Ceph, one can often do well with community resources.

I have used traditional storage on much smaller scales: ZFS, SVM, VxVM, and NetApp. They do not fit the use case and demands of a growing Cloud infrastructure.

Initial setup is straightforward with automation tools.

Not applicable.

Ceph is de facto for mixed modality of cloud storage.

Pick up a copy of this excellent book: Learning Ceph - Second Edition.