Data retention

IBM Storage Ceph stores user data, but usually in an indirect manner. Customer data retention may involve other applications, such as the OpenStack Platform.

Ceph Storage Cluster
The Ceph Storage Cluster, often referred to as the Reliable Autonomic Distributed Object Store or RADOS, stores data as objects within pools. In most cases, these objects are the atomic units representing client data, such as Ceph Block Device images, Ceph Object Gateway objects, or Ceph File System files. However, custom applications built on top of librados might bind to a pool and store data too.
Ceph Block Device
The most popular use of IBM Storage Ceph, the Ceph Block Device interface, also referred to as RADOS Block Device, or RBD, creates virtual volumes, images, and compute instances and stores them as a series of objects within pools. Ceph assigns these objects to placement groups and distributes or places them pseudo-randomly in OSDs throughout the cluster.
Ceph File System
The Ceph File System interface creates virtual file systems and stores them as a series of objects within pools. Ceph assigns these objects to placement groups and distributes or places them pseudo-randomly in OSDs throughout the cluster.
Ceph Object Gateway
From a data security and retention perspective, the Ceph Object Gateway interface has some important differences when compared to the Ceph Block Device and Ceph File System interfaces. The Ceph Object Gateway provides a service to users. The Ceph Object Gateway may store user authentication information, user data, and logging.

Parent topic: Data security and hardening