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Introducing Ceph Storage

Ceph is an open source project that provides a solution for software-defined, network-available storage with high performance and no single point of failure. It is designed to be highly scalable to the exabyte level and beyond while running on general-purpose commodity hardware.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

The history and evolution of Ceph
What's new since the first edition of Learning Ceph
The future of storage
Ceph compared with other storage solutions

Ceph garners much of the buzz in the storage industry due to its open, scalable, and distributed nature. Today public, private, and hybrid cloud models are dominant strategies for scalable and scale-out infrastructure. Ceph's design and features including multi-tenancy are a natural fit for cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) deployments: at least 60% of OpenStack deployments leverage Ceph.

For more information regarding the use of Ceph within OpenStack deployments, visit https://keithtenzer.com/2017/03/30/openstack-swift-integration-with-ceph.

Ceph is architected deliberately to deliver enterprise-quality services on a variety of commodity hardware. Ceph's architectural philosophy includes the following:

Every component must be scalable
No individual process, server, or other component can be a single point of failure
The solution must be software-based, open source, and adaptable
Ceph software should run on readily available commodity hardware without vendor lock-in
Everything must be self-manageable wherever possible

Ceph provides great performance, limitless scalability, power, and flexibility to enterprises, helping them move on from expensive proprietary storage silos. The Ceph universal storage system provides block, file, and object storage from a single, unified back-end, enabling customers to access storage as their needs evolve and grow.

The foundation of Ceph is objects, building blocks from which complex services are assembled. Any flavor of data, be it a block, object, or file, is represented by objects within the Ceph backend. Object storage is the flexible solution for unstructured data storage needs today and in the future. An object-based storage system offers advantages over traditional file-based storage solutions that include platform and hardware independence. Ceph manages data carefully, replicating across storage devices, servers, data center racks, and even data centers to ensure reliability, availability, and durability. Within Ceph objects are not tied to a physical path, making objects flexible and location-independent. This enables Ceph to scale linearly from the petabyte level to an exabyte level.

The history and evolution of Ceph

Ceph was developed at University of California, Santa Cruz, by Sage Weil in 2003 as a part of his PhD project. The initial implementation provided the Ceph Filesystem (CephFS) in approximately 40,000 lines of C++ code. This was open sourced in 2006 under a Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL) to serve as a reference implementation and research platform. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory supported Sage's early followup work from 2003 to 2007.

DreamHost, a Los-Angeles-based web hosting and domain registrar company also co-founded by Sage Weil, supported Ceph development from 2007 to 2011. During this period Ceph as we know it took shape: the core components gained stability and reliability, new features were implemented, and the road map for the future was drawn. During this time a number of key developers began contributing, including Yehuda Sadeh-Weinraub, Gregory Farnum, Josh Durgin, Samuel Just, Wido den Hollander, and Loïc Dachary.

In 2012 Sage Weil founded Inktank to enable the widespread adoption of Ceph. Their expertise, processes, tools, and support enabled enterprise-subscription customers to effectively implement and manage Ceph storage systems. In 2014 Red Hat, Inc.,the world's leading provider of open source solutions, agreed to acquire Inktank.

For more information, visit https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/storage/ceph.

The term Ceph is a common nickname given to pet octopuses; Ceph and is an abbreviation of cephalopod, marine animals belonging to the Cephalopoda class of molluscs. Ceph's mascot is an octopus,referencing the highly parallel behavior of an octopus and was chosen to connect the file system with UCSC's mascot, a banana slug named Sammy. Banana slugs are gastropods,which are also a class of molluscs. As Ceph is not an acronym, it should not be uppercased as CEPH.

For additional information about Ceph in general, please visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceph_(software)

Ceph releases

Each release of Ceph has a numeric version. Major releases also receive cephalopod code-names in alphabetical order. Through the Luminous release the Ceph community tagged a new major version about twice a year, alternating between Long Term Support (LTS) and stable releases. The latest two LTS releases were officially supported, but only the single latest stable release.

For more information on Ceph releases please visit https://ceph.com/category/releases.

The release numbering scheme has changed since the first edition of Learning Ceph was published. Earlier major releases were tagged initially with a version number (0.87) and were followed by multiple point releases (0.87.1, 0.87.2, ...). Releases beginning with Infernalis however are numbered as shown:

The major release number matches the letter of the alphabet of its code name (for example I is the ninth letter of the English alphabet, so 9.2.1 was named Infernalis). As we write, there have been four releases following this numbering convention: Infernalis, Jewel, Kraken, and Luminous.

The early versions of each major release have a type of 0 in the second field, which indicates active pre-release development status for early testers and the brave of heart. Later release candidates have a type of 1 and are targeted at test clusters and brave users. A type of 2 represents a general-availability, production-ready release. Point releases mostly contain security and bug fixes, but sometimes offer functionality improvements as well.

Ceph release name	Ceph package version	Release date
Argonaut	0.48 (LTS)	July 2012
Bobtail	0.56 (LTS)	January 2013
Cuttlefish	0.61	May 2013
Dumpling	0.67 (LTS)	August 2013
Emperor	0.72	November 2013
Firefly	0.80 (LTS)	May 2014
Giant	0.87	October 2014
Hammer	0.94 (LTS)	April 2015
Infernalis	9.2.1	November 2015
Jewel	10.2.3 (LTS)	April 2016
Kraken	11.2.0	January 2017
Luminous	12.2.0 (LTS)	August 2017
Mimic	13.2.0	2018
Nautilus	14.2.0	2019

Note that as this book was being readied for publication in October 2017 Sage announced that the release cycle has changed. Starting with Mimic there will no longer be alternating LTS and stable releases. Each release henceforth will be LTS at a roughly 9 month cadence. For the details visit

https://github.com/ceph/ceph/pull/18117/files

Key benefits

•Explore Ceph's architecture in order to achieve scalability and high availability

•Learn to utilize Ceph efficiently with the help of practical examples

•Successfully implement Ceph clusters to scale-out storage solutions along with outstanding data protection

Description

Learning Ceph, Second Edition will give you all the skills you need to plan, deploy, and effectively manage your Ceph cluster. You will begin with the first module, where you will be introduced to Ceph use cases, its architecture, and core projects. In the next module, you will learn to set up a test cluster, using Ceph clusters and hardware selection. After you have learned to use Ceph clusters, the next module will teach you how to monitor cluster health, improve performance, and troubleshoot any issues that arise. In the last module, you will learn to integrate Ceph with other tools such as OpenStack, Glance, Manila, Swift, and Cinder. By the end of the book you will have learned to use Ceph effectively for your data storage requirements.

What you will learn

•The limitations of existing systems and why you should use Ceph as a storage solution

•Familiarity with Ceph s architecture, components, and services

•Instant deployment and testing of Ceph within a Vagrant and VirtualBox environment

•Ceph operations including maintenance, monitoring, and troubleshooting

•Storage provisioning of Ceph s block, object, and filesystem services

•Integrate Ceph with OpenStack

•Advanced topics including erasure coding, CRUSH maps, and performance tuning

•Best practices for your Ceph clusters

What do you get with Print?

Instant access to your digital eBook copy whilst your Print order is Shipped

Paperback book shipped to your preferred address

Download this book in EPUB and PDF formats

Access this title in our online reader with advanced features

DRM FREE - Read whenever, wherever and however you want

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Bryan S. May 29, 2018

A big improvement over the original! Lots of useful information that will help you avoid costly mistakes when building your first Ceph cluster.

Amazon Verified review

Jessica M. Nov 10, 2017

This book is so well organized and thought out. It was so easy to read and really was key in helping me manage my ceph clusters. Highly, highly recommend for anyone learning ceph!!

Barefoot IT Apr 06, 2018

Mostly useless. Ceph online documentation is much better.

Learning Ceph: Unifed, scalable, and reliable open source storage solution , Second Edition

What do you get with Print?

Learning Ceph

Introducing Ceph Storage

The history and evolution of Ceph

Ceph releases

New since the first edition

Page 1 of 6

Key benefits

Description

Who is this book for?

What you will learn

Product Details

What do you get with Print?

Product Details

Frequently bought together

Table of Contents

Recommendations for you

Customer reviews

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About the 4 authors

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Learning Ceph: Unifed, scalable, and reliable open source storage solution , Second Edition

What do you get with Print?

Key benefits

Description

Who is this book for?

What you will learn

Product Details

What do you get with Print?

Product Details

Packt Subscriptions

Frequently bought together

Table of Contents

Recommendations for you

Customer reviews

People who bought this also bought

About the 4 authors

FAQs