Swift vs Ceph from an architectural standpoint(Christian Huebner) A Year with Cinder and Ceph at TWC(Craig Delatte, Bryan Stillwell) Building Your First Ceph Cluster for OpenStack – Fighting for Performance, Solving Tradeoffs (Gregory Elkinbard, Dmitriy Novakovskiy) Checkout the links or the schedule for dates and times of the talks. Check out popular companies that use Openstack Swift and some tools that integrate with Openstack Swift. OpenStack Swift Ceph Ceph clients connect directly to the Storage nodes eliminating any bottleneck. So, when it comes to the specialty of Swift, surely the choice is obvious. May 14, 2017 | By: SUSE. Ceph is an independent open source project. However, a solution with both components incurs additional cost, so it may be desirable to standardize on one of the options. Overview In this article we will configure OpenStack Swift to use Ceph as a storage backend. Supporting either has to be viewed as a win for the open source community overall. > First, a disclaimer. This leads to, what I believe is, the biggest fundamental difference between Swift and Ceph. Swift is an object storage protocol and implementation. Both Swift and Ceph are capable object storage systems. • Stable for production, great contributors • Ceph dominate the OpenStack block storage (Cinder) and shared file system driver in use. So, potentially, if Ceph client node is compromised, the attacker can see all traffic on the storage network. Ceph is viewed only as Object Store serving Objects via Swift REST API (not RADOS Objects), Ceph’s other interfaces which provide file and block based access are ignored here. Don’t ask the fans – the support of fans is simply not rational. It is one of the core software projects of OpenStack and has been tested and found stable and useful time and again. When engineers talk about storage and Ceph vs Swift, they usually agree that one of them is the best and the other a waste of time. We will use the OpenStack Mitaka release and Ceph 0.94 Hammer, the latest long term stable (LTS) release. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Ceph Object Storage uses the Ceph Object Gateway daemon (radosgw), which is an HTTP server for interacting with a Ceph Storage Cluster. With replication possible only from master to slave, you see uneven load distribution in an infrastructure that covers more than two regions. Ceph vs Swift from an architectural standpoint, this topic in depth on Monday, May 18 at 5:30 at the OpenStack Summit. Don't use minio, it's a toy for testing. In Ceph, you should only write to the master... but there is nothing to stop you from writing to the slave, which can mean poor execution, resulting in inconsistencies and, in extreme circumstances, complete corruption. We recommend users to update to this release. Representational state transfer (RESTful) gateways (ceph-rgw) exposes the object storage layer as an interface compatible with OpenStack Swift APIs. I think the author was specifically referencing the fact that if any Ceph node becomes compromised it can see and view the unencrypted traffic traversing that network and nodes. It's the Object specialist and part of OpenStack, and therefore the best choice when looking at this configuration, right? The general consensus is that Ceph is something of a ‘jack of all trades’, complete with the accompanying inference of ‘master of none’, whereas Swift does one thing well, but one thing only – giving it the polar opposite of inferences – that of the ‘one trick pony’ – SwiftStack is working on file-based services, they haven’t arrived yet. Swift was originally part of the Open Stack project – though the company that owns it, SwiftStack – is moving it on from this heritage. This is usually a non routable network to minimize latency while increasing security. For a casual outside observer, there’s a lot in common between Ceph and Swift: they are both open source projects, they have both enjoyed major and ongoing increases in the number of developers actively engaged in improving them, they are both mature, and they both have a legion of fans with serious engineering skills and live deployment experience. Your email address will not be published. © 2005 - 2020 Mirantis, Inc. All rights reserved. Published at DZone with permission of Jason Phippen, DZone MVB. Not a problem in Swift. Many people confuse object storage with block-level storage such as iSCSI or FibreChannel (SAN), but there is a great deal of difference between them. Each camp extolls the virtues of their preferred approach and acts as cheerleaders encouraging its adoption. • Instead of proxies like Swift, Ceph … Feature delta between OpenStack Swift and Ceph Object Store is ignored here. Kubernetes tutorials, product updates and featured articles. You might think Ceph or Swift are better, that's fine, but it's no toy. There can also be a security issue, as RADOS clients on the cloud compute node communicate directly with the RADOS servers over the same network Ceph uses for unencrypted replication traffic. Ceph vs Swift – An Architect’s Perspective. The security problem is a bit of a straw man, as best practice demands a separate network, and in any case, I’m knit picking the problems – working hard to find the cons. Swift focuses purely on object storage, while Ceph provides object, block and filesystem storage. Very interesting post. That was really the primary point in our purchase decision, back when we initially deployed. OpenStack Object Storage (Swift). This is the 8th backport release in the Octopus series. , with its closed off replication network, is preferable if speed isn’t the deciding factor and security is a bigger issue. Mirantis OpenStack offers it as a backend for both Glance and Cinder; however, once larger scale comes into play, Swift becomes more attractive as a backend for Glance. notacoward on Mar 20, 2018. But, really, none of these pros and cons are relevant. OpenStack Swift or Ceph with Ceph Object Gateway. To use Ceph, follow the below given steps. > > Both Swift and Ceph are capable object storage systems. Please note: Mirantis has realigned its portfolio and renamed several products. Ceph provides a scalable, consistent object store and a bunch of interfaces to access it, including native access, an http REST API, block devices and a filesystem-type interface. Who can rationally choose the lower number of use cases? Swift, with its closed off replication network, is preferable if speed isn’t the deciding factor and security is a bigger issue. Anybody in the proprietary camp will tell you that the money you save by avoiding software costs can come back in additional engineering skills costs: paying for the support contracts or skilled headcount required, and keeping that skilled headcount up to speed with developments comes at a cost. Its multi-region support, while often cited as an advantage, is also a master-slave model. About me •Vincenzo Pii ... •Two OpenStack clouds (stable and experimental) •One cluster dedicated to storage research Jul 24, 2014 GÉANT eduPERT meeting . Swift for OpenStack Object Storage Ceph is good at doing a bunch of things, while Swift is great at doing one. This release fixes a security flaw in CephFS and includes a number of bug fixes. Swift provides a scalable, highly available object store, that is available through a HTTP REST interface (only). Before I get to that, let’s take a shallowish dive into the major differences – just for the sake of form. Rather than choosing one over the other, it may make sense to have both Swift and Ceph alternatives in the same cloud infrastructure. In the Swift vs. Ceph race for OpenStack storage, it would seem that Ceph is winning -- at least right now. It's not that simple. When you’re in the shop getting ready for the camping trip, who even checks? In a single-region deployment without plans for multi-region expansion, Ceph can be the obvious choice. Swift for OpenStack Object Storage, Developer There are two strong reasons to prefer Ceph to Swift – reasons which those legions of fans (on both sides) overlook because they have pretty much nothing to do with engineering virtues and everything to do with human behavior, the efficient use of skilled engineering resources, and support contract cost management in the enterprise. Install the RADOS object server: sudo python setup.py install Modify your object-server.conf to use the new object server: [app:object-server] use = egg:swift_ceph_backend#rados_object; Set the user and pool for Ceph in the [DEFAULT] section in the same file: [DEFAULT] rados_user = swift rados_pool = swift One reason is that Ceph writes only synchronously and requires a quorum of writes to return successfully. Because Swift is busy working on proprietary APIs that not only differ from Ceph, but also from Amazon Simple Storage System, it can potentially lead to widespread resistance to ‘yet another storage interface’. Nevertheless, there is point I disagree with (unless I missed something): You say that “Another drawback to Ceph is security. In addition, Ceph Storage can be a drop-in replacement for OpenStack Object Storage (Swift). Ceph is a Swiss army knife, complete with the Swiss army knife’s array of potential use cases: corkscrew, screwdriver, saw, bottle opener, even a needle. ceph - A free-software storage platform. However, they … Your email address will not be published. I even called out Zettar on my blog back in the day. If cloud infrastructure is well-protected and security is a lower priority, that situation favors Ceph. Swift also requires a write quorum, but the write_affinity setting can configure the cluster to force a quorum of writes to the local region, so after the local writes are finished the write returns a success status. Ceph delivers unified storage, supporting File, Block, and Object. This is called the “cluster network”, while the client uses the “public network”. Its multi-region capabilities may trump Ceph’s speed and stronger consistency model. 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