Detecting swap usage by Ceph daemons

Detecting swap usage by Ceph daemons TL;DR: In good Ceph architectures we prefer daemons to be killed, instead of being swapped. This behaviour is much more predictable, detectable and usually informs you about where to fix the actual problem. We use this method to detect whether Ceph daemons are being swapped by the kernel. To […]

A LOKI case study

What is LOKI? Loki is a god in Norse mythology; he is known as a troublemaker and a shapeshifter. In the Marvel franchise he is known as a fictional character portrayed by Tom Hiddleston, though his character is based on the Norse mythological god of the same name. In the open source industry we know […]

Getting started with Ceph?

Getting started with Ceph? Let’s discuss some frequently asked questions by Ceph starters. We, at 42on are in love with Ceph and if you are thinking about whether to run your storage on Ceph as well, there are a few things to consider. To help you fall in love with Ceph as well, we have […]

Deploying a Ceph cluster with cephadm

Cephadm deploys and manages a Ceph cluster. It does this by connecting the manager daemon to hosts via SSH. The manager daemon is able to add, remove, and update Ceph containers. In this blog, I will provide you with a little more information about deploying a Ceph cluster using cephadm. Cephadm manages the full lifecycle of a […]

About RBD, Rados Block Device

For anybody enjoying Latin pop in the 2000s, RBD was a popular Mexican pop band from Mexico City labeled by EMI Virgin. The group achieved international success from 2004 until their separation in 2009 and sold over 15 million records worldwide, making them one of the best-selling Latin music artists of all time. The group […]

Managing containerized Ceph clusters with cephadm

Cephadm is a great new feature of Ceph v15.2.0 (Octopus). By using cephadm, users have more freedom and flexibility to think about the future migration paths. But what is cephadm it exactly? Well, the goal of cephadm is to provide a fully-featured, robust, and well-maintained installation method. It deploys Ceph in containers while not depending […]

Improving some aspects on your Ceph cluster

As performance optimization research might cost too much time and effort, here are some steps you might first want to try to improve your overall Ceph cluster. The first step is to deploy Ceph on newer releases of Linux and deploy on releases with long-term support. Secondly, update your hardware design and service placement. As […]

Migration options for SUSE Enterprise Storage (SES) users

A few weeks ago, I posted a blog about how SUSE pulled the plug on SUSE Enterprise Storage (SES). SES is a Linux-based computer data storage product developed by SUSE and built on Ceph technology. A quick recap on the matter is that in 2020, SUSE acquired Rancher Labs, a Kubernetes management software vendor, and […]

Running headless VirtualBox inside Nested KVM

For the Ceph training at 42on I use VirtualBox to build Virtual Machines. This is because they work under MacOS, Windows, and Linux. For the internal Git at 42on we use Gitlab and I wanted to use Gitlab’s CI to build my Virtual Machines automatically. As we don’t have any physical hardware at 42on (everything […]

Safely backing up your Ceph monitors

So you might wonder: Why do I need to make a backup of my Ceph monitors? I have multiple monitors. That’s true, but would you run into the very unfortunate situation where you loose all you monitors, you loose all your data. The monitors contain very important metadata (pgmap, osdmap, crushmap) to run your cluster. […]