1-888-310-4540 (main) / 1-888-707-6150 (support) info@spkaa.com
Select Page

A Quick Start Guide to Installing Ceph

Written by SPK Blog Post
Published on October 28, 2013

This seems to be the age of “Big Data”. Every sector seems to have a need for it — from biotechs doing genome sequencing, to financial providers mining market data. For many, the ability to store massive amounts of structured or unstructured data is the key to success, and accessing that data quickly is just as important. Traditionally, centralized storage was the go-to solution. You invested in an expensive Storage Area Network, and in return, it provided excellent performance and scalability.

From a small business perspective, a traditional SAN presents several challenges:

  1. Cost – A SAN is typically composed of a storage controller, some disk shelves, and a separate fiber channel network. Then you have some not-so obvious costs like SAN software & licensing (management software, replication software), and HBA costs.
  2. Administrative overhead – Ethernet switching and routing is ubiquitous. Fiber channel on the other hand, requires experience with FC switches, zoning, multipathing, etc. You’d be best suited to hiring a dedicated storage administrator.
  3. Scaling with respect to cost – You invest in the SAN equipment, increase your compute capacity, purchase more SAN equipment, rinse, repeat. As you grow your SAN, how do you plan for upgrades? How do you justify eventual forklifts?

Enter the new era – distributed filesystems. Ok, perhaps this isn’t so new. Google developed their own in house proprietary filesystem years ago, called BigFiles. It was designed to run on commodity servers, be resilient (since it runs on commodity servers), and perform well. No HBAs, no separate fiber infrastructure, no costly SAN. The idea is that as one unit of computing is added, you get an additional spindle or two of IO – so performance is linear as you scale.

Several open source distributed filesystems have gained in popularity recently. One of which I’ll be discussing today is Ceph. Developed as a drop-in replacement for Hadoop’s distributed filesystem, I’ll show you how you can quickly deploy it to serve as your primary storage. And even if you’re not sequencing any genomes, you likely either have; a VMware cluster, an Exchange installation, or users who simply like to store lots of files. Any of these situations can reap the benefits.

Click here to download our Quick Start Guide to Installing Ceph.

Latest White Papers

The Next Chapter of Jira Service Management

The Next Chapter of Jira Service Management

The service industry is only becoming more competitive as the years pass, making efficient delivery vital to success. Development and Operations teams need to work together to deliver aid and Jira Service Management can help achieve this. Explore the future of Jira...

Related Resources

Simplify Your Confluence Workflows with Integrated Approvals

Simplify Your Confluence Workflows with Integrated Approvals

As organizations continue to seek the most efficient solutions for increased compliance, new apps and add-ons have emerged on the market. AppFox is a leader in this field, creating add-on applications for increased capabilities. For businesses that currently use...

Seamlessly Transitioning from Rally to Jira Using OpsHub

Seamlessly Transitioning from Rally to Jira Using OpsHub

Migrating or integrating project management systems can be challenging, but it doesn’t have to be. While every tool comes with its own unique data structures and workflows, OpsHub Integration Manager offers an ideal solution. OpsHub allows businesses to continuously...