Identify performance use case
One of the most important steps in a successful Ceph deployment is identifying a price-to-performance profile suitable for the cluster’s use case and workload. It is important to choose the correct hardware for the use case. For example, choosing IOPS-optimized hardware for a cloud storage application increases hardware costs unnecessarily. This is as opposed to selecting capacity-optimized hardware for its more attractive price point in an IOPS-intensive workload likely leads to unhappy users complaining about slow performance.
The following lists the primary use cases for Ceph.
- IOPS optimized
- IOPS optimized deployments are suitable for cloud computing operations, such as running MYSQL or MariaDB instances as virtual machines on OpenStack. IOPS optimized deployments require higher performance storage such as 15k RPM SAS drives and separate SSD journals to handle frequent write operations. Some high IOPS scenarios use all flash storage to improve IOPS and total throughput.
- Throughput optimized
- Throughput-optimized deployments are suitable for serving up significant amounts of data, such as graphic, audio and video content. Throughput-optimized deployments require networking hardware, controllers, and hard disk drives with acceptable total throughput characteristics. In cases where write performance is a requirement, SSD journals substantially improve write performance.
- Capacity optimized
- Capacity-optimized deployments are suitable for storing significant amounts of data as inexpensively as possible. Capacity-optimized deployments typically trade performance for a more attractive price point. For example, capacity-optimized deployments often use slower and less expensive SATA drives and colocate journals rather than using SSDs for journaling.
Use the information that is detailed within General principles for selecting hardware and its subsections provides examples of IBM tested hardware suitable for these use cases.