The initial setup required a lot of research and learning to understand Ceph storage's underlying technology. Once we had the right understanding and configurations, it was pretty straightforward.

However, this is not a traditional storage solution. It may not be straightforward for storage administrators, but easier for cloud administrators with good Unix/Linux knowledge.

The key things to consider while deploying Ceph, especially for block storage (also known as RBD) are:

• Use a higher number of disks to get more IOPS. (Ceph is a copy-on-write storage, so usage is less of a worry than providing the right number of IOPS.)
• Use SSD journal disks to improve write performance. (In fact, with the price of SSD drives coming down, use all SSD or NVME+SSD configurations - more IOPS makes a better solution.)
• Use SSD for Ceph MONITOR nodes
• Use networking speeds of at least 20 Gbits/sec or more since this is a network based storage on all clients as well as Ceph nodes. As you move to full SSD or NVME disks, the networking needs to match up.
• Select the right CRUSH map and Placement Group numbers based on your storage pool size and node distribution in the data center.

We use Kubernetes architecture to deploy Red Hat Ceph Storage. Its initial setup process is a bit complex.

Implementation is easy, but the problem is procuring the hardware and configuring all the networking. That is a bit time-consuming. So I would rate it six out of ten. The deployment takes around forty-five minutes.

The setup is complex. We follow the documentation to deploy the tool. The deployment takes about a day.

The installation is sometimes complex. Sometimes we have problems during the installation of the storage system. We'd like the process to be simplified. 

How long it takes to deploy the solution depends on the infrastructure. If you use maybe only one PB, it might take eight hours, in our experience. It could take a week if we need to config and install from the TMI.

During implementation, we set the topology first. We recommend and set how much storage is needed to convert into Ceph Storage. Then we can just run the script and then run the configuration on Linux and start integrating it with other CMs. We can create it as storage or as NFS.

We tend to use two to three people for the deployment part of the setup. They are engineers or system admins. An IT manager isn't involved right away. They come in later if there are issues or the company needs troubleshooting. 

We handle quarterly maintenance tasks. We'll check everything and handle any maintenance needed on the system for the client. 

The initial setup, including customization and optimization for performance, for Red Hat Ceph Storage, was not easy at the beginning, particularly when you need to dig a little bit deeper into the product. Sometimes, you'll also need some assistance from the technical support team.

The Red Hat Ceph Storage initial setup is complicated.

The initial setup is quite straightforward. The documentation describes it perfectly, and it's quite clear as long as you know what you want. We deployed in-house. The planning took a couple of days, making our choices, etc. and the effective deployment took half a day.

Red Hat Ceph Storage's installation is simple and takes around four to five days to complete. 

The initial setup was easy. It takes less than an hour to install this product. 

To perform maintenance, security experts and developers are needed. About three to four people are required for maintenance.

It is complex. Before the system is built, all your technical staff must research as much about CEPH technology as they can.

Initial setup is straightforward with automation tools.

The initial setup was pretty good, I deployed it completely in one day.

Ceph is complex, as with all distributed systems. It has a long learning curve but it pays for itself after that.

My first deployment was complex, connecting Ceph with all OpenStack modules, but that was  before I was testing Ceph and doing installations manually and with hard coding.

It is not a complex implementation, but you need to look into all the structure requirements and OSDS division.

The initial setup was straightforward without much effort.

The initial setup is very straightforward. We used the tool ceph-deploy, which is simple to use. The manual procedure is time consuming, but well-documented.

The initial setup is straightforward.