S3-Compatible Object Storage
S3-compatible object storage via RADOS Gateway (RGW) for scalable cloud storage, automated backups, media archives, and data lake infrastructure
Three Ceph Storage Types: Object, Block & File System
RBD Block Storage
RBD (RADOS Block Device) block storage for virtual machines, high-performance databases, and applications requiring direct disk access with low latency
CephFS File System
CephFS POSIX-compliant distributed file system with shared access across multiple servers, applications, and containerized workloads
Enterprise Ceph Features & Capabilities
Self-Healing Infrastructure
Automatic detection and recovery from hardware failures with intelligent data rebalancing and reconstruction without manual intervention or downtime
Automatic Data Replication
Configurable data replication (2x, 3x, or more) across multiple nodes ensures data durability, high availability, and protection against node failures
Erasure Coding
Space-efficient erasure coding (similar to RAID 5/6) reduces storage overhead by up to 50% while maintaining data protection and resilience for cold storage
Horizontal Scalability
Scale storage capacity and performance linearly by adding nodes to the cluster without downtime, service interruption, or data migration
Ceph Cluster Deployment Requirements
Minimum 3 Server Nodes Required
Production Ceph clusters require a minimum of 3 server nodes for reliable operation, data redundancy, and quorum. Each node should have dedicated 10Gbps+ network connectivity and high-performance storage devices (NVMe SSD or HDD depending on workload).
Recommended configuration includes separate networks: public network for client traffic and cluster network (private) for replication traffic to ensure optimal performance and security.
Ideal Ceph Use Cases & Applications
Private Cloud Storage Platform
Build your own S3-compatible object storage infrastructure for cloud-native applications, microservices, and multi-tenant environments
VM & Container Infrastructure
Provide resilient RBD block storage for virtualization platforms like OpenStack, Proxmox, VMware, or Kubernetes persistent volumes
Big Data & Analytics
Store and process massive datasets with horizontal scalability for data lakes, Hadoop, Spark, and analytics workloads
Media & Content Delivery
Store large media files (video, images, audio) with high availability and performance for streaming platforms and CDN origin storage
Backup & Disaster Recovery
Create resilient backup infrastructure with erasure coding for space-efficient long-term data retention and compliance archiving
Kubernetes Persistent Storage
Provide persistent storage for containerized applications via Rook operator, CSI driver integration, and dynamic volume provisioning