Tuesday Tech Tip - Intro to Ceph Clustering Part 1 - When to Consider It

Each Tuesday, we will be releasing a tech tip video that will give users information on various topics relating to our Storinator storage servers.

This week, co-founder Doug Milburn talks about when to consider upgrading from a single server infrastructure to a storage cluster with Ceph software. This is part 1 of a 4 part series surrounding Ceph storage clustering.

The scalability, availability, and future-proofed nature of clusters come into play whether it is a large, multi-petabyte deployment, or for a less than a 150TB entry-level cluster. With 45 Drives, you can get a (US)$20,000 storage cluster that will be able to provide you with a solution that will continually grow with your business needs. And, this will give you access to possibly the most well-rounded storage software ever designed.

Be sure to watch next Tuesday, when we give you another 45 Drives tech tip.

[Jordan-hzwr]

"Maintenance? Pull the plug on the thing!"
SOLD

[atrowell]

Extremely relevant, basically told my organizations history. :-)

[sigreer]

thanks. I found this really useful. I actually had a pretty good grasp about how CEPH works before watching this. What I was interested to understand is how the architecture translates to real-life benefits, what types of organisations would qualify as candidates for adoption and how the features are reflected in actual use cases. I got all of that from this short video and also took note of your whiteboarding style which is top drawer. Except for the line-drawing. Bit wonky on that front :-)

[nickway_]

I am a homelab user looking at doing a 8-12bay TrueNAS server. Why am I watching this? Because it's awesome, that's why. I love the idea behind this. I'm already thinking how I can do a micro cluster. Hmm....

[dayo]

Hello 45Drives, thank you for this video!
I'm considering to create a small ceph cluster (3 nodes, 4 OSD per node) to separate my compute and storage stack.
I understood that ceph clustering requiere 10gbe at least, but what about the client access network (from the compute stack, like proxmox, to the ceph cluster) ? Is1 gbe enought or should I have a dual 10 gbe nic on each ceph node (access and cluster).
Thank you 😃

[Spooferish]

Question, so you don't need raid on the server. Will be adding normal drives without any raid or virtual volumes?

Since if you do raid 0, I'm case of single disk failure whole ceph node has to be rebuilt. And in case of raid 5, you will loose one HDD on each server..


Also does it support cache disk as well?

[BigBadDodgex]

What about power consumption and heat production? Does CEPH keep ALL the spinners spinning OR does it only spin up as needed? I started with UNRAID because it allowed me to have a server with 30 spinners and a cache pool of SSD. All new data gets written the the cache, then once a day it moves data to spinners. Basically keeping the spinners off till needed. (in my use and application 95% of the time data is written, it is hardly accessed once written. ). Lets say I have 5 CEPH servers all with spinners, and after a year, the data is equally on them all. So, now when a backup runs, it needs to spin up most all the drives to confirm what data is there. 3.5" drives produce most the heat, the less they are on the better. Is Ceph have a solution to limiting spinning up disks, such as pools or file cache to RAM? THANKS!

[manit]

You really need 4 nodes min for high availability.

[Unselfless]

So, you're RAIDing servers instead of just RAIDing drives. Sounds like a good idea to me

[ragtop]

Very interesting. What do you have for small businesses who don't necessarily have 20K to spend on a storage solution? Please don't tell me to reach out to one of your people. This video is posted on a public site with a public comments section. Be transparent and share the info with everyone here. Thanks.

[zyxwvutsrqponmlkh]

OMFG you want $20, 000 for 140 tb of usable space? Highway banditry. I can get the three servers from HP or Dell and install ceph myself for less than half of that. I can do it for maybe $6k using new drives but used ebay servers, and hell I'd even throw in 100gbe nics at that price. And I still don't understand why you need 3 as a minimum instead of 2.