Ceph and Apache CloudStackDavid Nalleyke4qqq@apache.org@ke4qqq

#whoamiDistributed storage junkie

Recovering sysadmin

Member, Apache Software Foundation

PMC Member, Apache CloudStack

Employed by Citrix in the Open Source Business Office

Setting the stageApache CloudStack is...

● an open source IaaS platform

● proven in production at massive scale

● awesome

Gorgeous UI

API● Native: http://cloudstack.apache.org/docs/api

● EC2

A brief history of cloud-y storage● Most would say it started early 2006 with S3 launch

● This really set the stage and everyone's assumptions.

● Cloud-y storage == S3 == Object Storage

● Incredibly useful - typically able to scale well past traditional filesystem levels

● Super simple - to consume.

A brief history of cloud-y storage● Since then, we've had a number of open source and

proprietary object storage alternatives emerge: – OpenStack Swift

– Riak CS

– Ceph (has an object storage option)

– Caringo

But we have largely ignored....● EC2 - used ephemeral storage initially

● Introduced EBS – Apparently zone-wide block storage

So object storage is nice but...● Doesn't fill the void for EBS-like storage

● Neither does traditional storage

● NAS/SANs aren't economically scalable

Rados Block Device● Ceph provides RBD

● Exposes a block storage device - like a SAN

● Easily scales for both performance and capacity

Rados Block Device - Features● Thin-provisioning

● Snapshotting

● Caching

Let's talk about today● CloudStack primarily is a consumer of storage

● Historically we've made storage the fault line– Concerns were IOPS, SPOF, Cost

– Typically no more than 16 hypervisors per a single storage resource

– So you needed lots of storage resources.....or just use local disk

● Distributed storage gives better scalability. – Mimics EBS requires data-center wide capabilities

– Reduces costs, and constraints.

What else is coming..● Support for format 2 RBD

● Snapshots

● Datacenter wide storage resources.

● Removal of need for legacy storage

What else is coming..XenServer support

http://xenserver.org/blog/entry/tech-preview-of-xenserver-libvirt-ceph.html

Resources● http://ceph.com/docs/master/rbd/rbd-cloudstack/

● http://blog.widodh.nl/

Questions

Contact● Project

– http://cloudstack.apache.org

– #cloudstack on irc.freenode.net

● Me– ke4qqq on irc.freenode.net

– ke4qqq@apache.org

– @ke4qqq on Twitter