The ability to provide block storage and object storage from the same storage cluster is very valuable for us.

We are using Ceph as back-end storage for our OpenStack cloud. Ceph provides:

• Block storage for storing the OpenStack images or VM templates
• Block storage for OpenStack Cinder volume service
• Block storage for OpenStack Nova VM compute service boot volumes
• Object storage for the OpenStack Swift service

Without Ceph, we would have ended up with at least two storage systems: One for block storage and another for providing Swift Objectstore.

The other big advantage is that Ceph is free software. Compared to traditional SAN based storage, it is very economical.

Most of the features are beneficial and one does not stand out above the rest.

The product can be integrated with any storage and we can create it like block storage and then ISO storage. We keep our files in storage. They can be anything from video to PDF. The flexibility in the storage is good.

What I found most valuable from Red Hat Ceph Storage is integration because if you are talking about a solution that consists purely of Red Hat products, this is where integration benefits come in. In particular, Red Hat Ceph Storage becomes a single solution for managing the entire environment in terms of the container or the infrastructure, or the worker nodes because it all comes from a single plug.

I like the distributed and self-healing nature of the product. 

We are using Ceph internal inexpensive disk and data redundancy without spending extra money on external storage.

The most valuable feature is the stability of the product. 

Data redundancy, since it can survive failures (disks/servers). We didn’t lose our data or have a service interruption during server/disk failures.

When going open-source, there is actually not much of a choice. Ceph was chosen to maintain exact performance and capacity characteristics for customer cloud.

I/O into replicated and erasure coded pools (librados).

By being open source, Ceph is not tied to the whim or fortunes of any one vendor. The community of Ceph code contributors and admins is large and active. Ceph’s ability to adapt to varying types of commodity hardware affords us substantial flexibility and future-proofing.

The best features are performance, open measure for hardware options, and scalability.

The ability to present Rest API, POSIX filesystem, and block devices from the same distributed object storage back-system (RADOS) is of major value to me.

• We can reuse servers of any type and include them in the deploy of the solution.
• radosgw and librados provide a simple integration with clone, snapshots, and other functions that aid in data integrity.

• High reliability with commodity hardware

• There is no cost for software

Its reliability. I have experienced failures and human mistakes. However, Ceph was able to recover automatically the data with a special procedure.

The configuration of the solution and the user interface are both quite good.

• RADOS
• Swift
• S3
• Replication
• Compression