Learn more about ESXi datastore on Ceph Cluster Storage from our experts. Our Server Management Support team is here to help you with your questions and concerns.

ESXi datastore on Ceph cluster storage

In the world of storage solutions, CEPH stands tall. It is a great choice for deploying large amounts of storage. Its flexibility and cost-effectiveness make it a popular option. In fact, it is very popular among those who wish to avoid vendor lock-ins and prefer off-the-shelf components.

However, like any technology, CEPH comes with its own set of challenges. This includes the high storage latency issue.

Advantages of CEPH Storage

One of the key advantages of CEPH is its ability to be installed on ordinary servers. It offers a powerful iSCSI target that stays strong against component failures without disrupting storage operations.

Furthermore, we can easily scale its capacity by adding more servers to the cluster. In other words, CEPH can grow with our needs, making it a highly flexible and reliable option.

Moreover, CEPH can work with commodity servers and components. So we do not have to invest in expensive brand-name storage appliances. Instead, we can build CEPH storage wit regular servers, SSDs, HDDs, NICs, etc. This leads to lower hardware costs and greater deployment flexibility.

High Storage Latency – The Achilles’ Heel of CEPH

The affordability of CEPH often comes at the expense of storage performance. While the drives are cheaper on a per GB basis, they are slower, resulting in poorer CEPH performance.

Furthermore, CEPH’s replication logic, also adds overhead. Even if we opt for an all-SSD CEPH setup, storage latencies are still higher compared to big-brand SSD arrays.

How to Optimize CEPH for VMware vSphere with VirtuCache

We can boost CEPH performance with VirtuCache. This host-side caching software is installed in the VMware host alongside an SSD. This allows VirtuCache to automatically cache frequently used data from CEPH to the local SSD or RAM of the VMware host.

Hence, this ensures that CEPH, when connected to VMware vSphere using iSCSI, achieves the same low latencies and high throughput as major-brand, all-flash arrays.

ESXi servers can only mount block storage, iSCSI and NFS. In other words, there is no native support for mounting Ceph on ESXi.

A workaround would be to run a virtual storage appliance running on ESXi that uses virtual disks running on a datastore and have that virtual appliance offer up Ceph to other VM’s.

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Conclusion

In summary, our Support Techs introduced us to the ESXi datastore on Ceph cluster storage