Canonical Implements Ceph Storage in Ubuntu

Canonical
Ltd. and Inktank Storage, Inc.
announced a collaboration to provide an integrated and supported
implementation of Ceph storage technology
with OpenStack on Ubuntu.

While Ceph has been packaged as part of
the OS for some time, this agreement enables the customers who have
purchased Ubuntu Advantage cloud Infrastructure to get production
support for both OpenStack and Ceph from Canonical. The Advantage
subscribers will also get Ceph support backed by Inktank as part of
their subscription.

"We are working with many
OpenStack users who are looking for comprehensive, sophisticated, and
cost effective storage solution options," said Mark
Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu and Canonical. "Ceph is fast
becoming the favoured choice for next-generation storage solutions
with OpenStack because it is the only software-defined storage
software that provides both object and block storage fully integrated
with OpenStack. This partnership with Inktank enables Canonical to
provide support for the leading cloud and storage technologies to our
customers as a single, integrated solution."

Ceph will be delivered alongside
OpenStack releases via package archives and will be installed and
managed using Juju, the company’s service orchestration and
deployment tool. Adding Ceph to an OpenStack cloud is using
the Juju GUI or command line interfaces.

"The cloud demands Software
Defined Storage. This is being proven out every day by the
accelerating demand for Ceph object and block storage for
OpenStack on Ubuntu," said Bryan Bogensberger, CEO of
Inktank. "By extending the existing partnership between
Inktank and Canonical to offering formalized products as part of
Ubuntu Advantage, customers gain the peace of mind that they can get
proven, world-class support for their entire cloud stack from
Canonical, fully backed by Inktank."

The integration and support is focused
on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with Ceph. As both OpenStack and Ceph are
developing, the integrations will be updated with each release and
delivered in the same way that Ubuntu cloud Archive releases are made
available in special archives for Ubuntu 12.04.  Each release of
OpenStack and Ceph will be supported in accordance with Ubuntu
Advantage support policies: 18 months for interim releases and five
years for LTS releases, which happen every other year. The program
covers support of all the OpenStack components as well as the server
OS. The addition of Ceph to the components supported is of value to
customers using Ceph with OpenStack.