this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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I really want to run ceph because it fits a number of criteria I have: gradually adding storage, mismatched disks, fault tolerance, erasure encoding, encryption, support out-of-the-box from other software (like Incus).

But then I look at the hardware suggestions, and they seem like an up-front investment and ongoing cost to keep at least three machines evenly matched on RAM and physical storage. I also want more of a single-box NAS.

Would it be idiotic to put a ceph setup all on one machine? I could run three mons on it with separate physical device backing each so I don't lose everything from a disk failure with those. I'm not too concerned about speed or network partitioning, this would be lukewarm storage for me.

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[–] tedvdb@feddit.nl 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why then not just use ZFS or BTRFS? Way less overhead.

Ceph's main advantage is the distribution of storage over multiple nodes, which you're not planning on doing?

[–] jkrtn@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mean, yeah, I'd prefer ZFS but, unless I am missing something, it is a massive pain to add disks to an existing pool. You have to buy a new set of disks and create a new pool to transition from RAID z1 to z2. That's basically the only reason it fails the criteria I have. I think I'd also prefer erasure encoding instead of z2, but it seems like regular scrub operations could keep it reliable.

BTRFS sounds like it has too many footguns for me, and its raid5/6 equivalents are "not for production at this time."

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

LVM, mdraid, dm-crypt? LVM will let you make volumes and pools of basically any shape or size.

[–] anamethatisnt@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Found an interesting read regarding the matter here:
https://old.reddit.com/r/ceph/comments/mppwas/single_node_ceph_vs_zfsbtrfs/
Most seem to recommend going for ZFS instead if using a single machine but there is a person discussing his first hand experience with single node Ceph.

[–] jkrtn@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

This was really neat, kinda boils down to "you don't want to deal with the complexity and it's horrifically slow."

[–] jkrtn@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Neat! Thank you

[–] Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
LVM (Linux) Logical Volume Manager for filesystem mapping
RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage
ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity

3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.

[Thread #581 for this sub, first seen 7th Mar 2024, 17:15] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

Create 3 VM's and pass-through disks to each VM. Boom ceph cluster on a single computer.

ZFS/BRTFS might still be better, but if you really want Ceph this should work and provide expansion and redundancy at a block device level, though you wont have any hardware redundancy regarding power/nodes.

[–] brygphilomena@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Since you are talking mismatched disks, I have gone to unraid after running a ceph cluster. I found it easy to keep adding and upgrading disks in unraid where it made more sense than maintaining or adding nodes. While I like the concept of being able to add nodes for very large storage arrays. My current unraid server is 180tb.

It is super simple to add/upgrade the storage one disk at a time.

[–] jkrtn@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh, neat, I'll have to look into that more. It's able to have some redundancy and does some sort of rebalancing on disk failures?

[–] brygphilomena@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

It has parity disks, which always need to be the largest disks in your array. You can run with either a single one double parity disk.

It seems to work well, as that's how I've had to replace a dozen disks in the last year upgrading from 8tb disks to 18 or 22tb disks.

[–] False@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ceph is a huge amount of overhead, both engineering and compute resources, for this usecase.

[–] Mautobu@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I did it for a while and last everything. Go for it if your have adequate backups.