Availability of IBM Storage Ceph 8.0

By Marcel Hergaarden, product manager, IBM Storage

IBM Corp. releases IBM Storage Ceph version 8.0. This blogpost contains a summary of the new features, functions and enhancements, made available with this new major release of IBM Storage Ceph, version 8.0.

About IBM Storage Ceph
IBM Storage Ceph is IBM’s -for enterprise usage- supported distribution of the open-source Ceph platform that provides massively scalable object, block, and file storage from a single solution.

IBM Storage Ceph is an Open Source-Software Defined Storage (SDS) solution, offering enterprise level client support, provided by IBM. Storage Ceph is part of the company’s storage portfolio and SDS since January of 2023. IBM Storage Ceph runs on industry-standard x86 server hardware and can start small and then scale-out to Petabytes scale.

IBM Storage Ready Nodes for Ceph
IBM optionally offers IBM Storage Ready Nodes for IBM Storage Ceph clients.
Storage Ready Nodes concern server hardware, which has been fully tested and qualified for IBM Storage Ceph implementation and production use cases. Ready Nodes for Ceph enable IBM clients for a complete storage software- and hardware solution experience.

Storage Ready node feature- and capacity choices are available with multiple configuration choices and options, depending on a client’s use cases and use patterns. On-site implementations are feasible by IBM expert labs consulting services.

What’s new in IBM Storage Ceph 8.0 release:

Storage Ceph RADOS core updates

Storage Ceph RBD Snapshot improvements
Reduced CPU usage and reduced latency. Improvements are realized for snapshot intensive workloads.
Storage Ceph BlueStore compression
BlueStore is IBM Storage Ceph backend and natively supports data compression.
Better storage efficiency without requiring additional layers of software. Performance improvements realized by tuning and optimization.
Storage Ceph Crimson backend (tech preview)
Crimson is a next generation backend for Storage Ceph and provides a more efficient and performant implementation of Ceph object storage capabilities. Crimson leverages modern programming techniques and technologies.
Enhanced network-based Block storage for VMware
IBM Storage Ceph 8.0 offers enhanced NVMe/TCP access to Ceph (RBD) block storage.
NVMe/TCP enables access to Ceph RBD block storage with non-Linux clients. This functionality enables VMware vSphere to connect with IBM Storage Ceph and use Ceph block storage as VMware VMFS storage resourcing.

NVMe/TCP block storage enhancements, delivered in Storage Ceph 8

VMware vSphere plug-in enhancements
Software upgrades, multi Storage Ceph cluster support.
Broadened abilities, to create non-default IBM Storage Ceph RBD Pools and non-default IBM Storage Ceph RBD subsystems.
NVMe/TCP cluster-wide multi-tenancy
Ability to isolate tenants on namespace level.
Clients are treated as different tenants, in different namespaces which are isolated from each other.
Migration assistance from FC to NVMe/TCP
Process/methodology to migrate clients from traditional Fiberchannel SAN LUNs to Storage Ceph RBD backed NVMe/TCP namespaces. Specifically for non-VMware workloads.
NVMe/TCP gateway load balancing
Methodology to balance network request load across all gateways in a group.
Rebalancing starts when gateways scale up or scale down.
Workflow for NVMe/TCP block storage
Available in the IBM Storage Ceph Dashboard UI.
Create/Configure/Delete NVMe Service, NVMe Subsystem, NVMe Gateway NVMe Listener, NVMe Namespace,
Create Ceph RBD Image and attach it to a Namespace and add/remove initiator NQN masking per NVMe subsystem.
NVMe/TCP scalability enhancements
Increased number of NVMe/TCP Gateway Groups, from 1 to 4+
Broadened capacity, support for 8+ NVMe/TCP Gateways per Gateway Group.
Enabling for enterprise workload capacity, support for up to 1024+ namespaces per Gateway/Gateway group.
Increased number of NVMe/TCP subsystems: from 16 to 128.

CephFS file storage updates, delivered in Storage Ceph 8

Extended NFS support for CephFS
CephFS filesystem access for non-native Ceph clients.
NFS functionality has been extended with support for NFSv4.2, clustered NFS.

Clients can create, edit, and delete NFS exports from within the Ceph dashboard after configuring the Ceph filesystem. CephFS namespaces can be exported over NFS protocol, using NFS v4.1, NFS v4.2 or NFS v3 service.
Server Message Block (SMB) support for CephFS (Tech-Preview)
CephFS filesystem access as a MS Windows file share.
This allows Windows clients to connect with IBM Storage Ceph filesystem shares.
The functionality includes support for MS Active Directory and Windows ACLs.
Tech-preview functionality in Storage Ceph 8, expected GA in a next minor release version.

Ceph Object storage, RADOS Gateway (RGW) updates

Policy based data archive migration
New option to retrieve objects from S3 cloud endpoints (AWS/IBM Cloud) using the S3 API or a transparent read-through workflow.
A new ‘RestoreObject’ API allows operations team/admins to retrieve an Object from an external S3 cloud tier object storage class.

Read-affinity implementation, topology aware for reads
Ceph RGW read-affinity when responding to ‘get object’ requests.
Reduces inter-site WAN or cross-Availability Zone traffic while using IBM Storage Ceph RGW.
Multitenancy: IAM Accounts (Tech-Preview)
Delegate IBM Storage Ceph RGW administrative responsibilities to specific users/departments/dev groups without having to provide root access. The tenants are fully isolated from another.
New sync replication headers to determine actual replication status of multi-site objects

Amazon Web Services S3 offers a header to observe replication status:
‘x-amz-replication-status’
IBM Storage Ceph now also supports this command and can query the header to get an Object replication status.
In addition, the following commands are now also available:
‘x-rgw-replicated-from’
A header to replicated objects to identify the source zone and any intermediate zones in the replication path.
‘x-rgw-replicated-at’
Per-bucket enable/disable replication option in the IBM Storage Dashboard UI.

Other RADOS Gateway updates

Additional S3 checksums
To verify data integrity during data migration or transfer.
This ensures data is error-free and not altered or corrupted when destinations are reached.
S3 API service enhancement
‘GetObjectAttributes’ to retrieve only metadata from an object, without returning the object itself. Helpful to indentify or examine object’s metadata. For backup applications, to efficiently check on objects rather than retrieve the entire object content for every object.

IBM Storage Ceph Dashboard UI features and enhancements
UI capabilities for IBM Storage Ceph cluster interactions and administrative insights.

Granular per-bucket multi-site replication, UI configurable
Dashboard UI ability to replicate a selected bucket or group of buckets to a different IBM Storage Ceph cluster.
Labeled Sync Performance Counters
Provides easy insight on sync status and multi-cluster synchronization performance. Real-time information about the replication health between zones.

List, Delete and Apply S3 Bucket Lifecycle policies
Ability to read, delete and apply S3 bucket life cyle policies to involved buckets, directly from the dashboard UI.

Security enhancements

NGINX dashboard webserver
Extended single-sign on functionality to underlying services, available from the dashboard UI.
NGINX replaces the CherryPy webservice, which was used before.
OAuth 2.0 support
OAuth 2.0 authentication and authorization capabilities for web applications and APIs.
Reverse Proxy
NGINX offers abilities to act as reverse proxy server, load balancer, and HTTP cache.
Automatic configuration of multi-site replication from the Dashboard UI
Establishment of replication between different site locations in a convenient way.
Select Storage Ceph clusters to configure multisite replication on, and configuration steps to establish a multisite environment will be executed automatically.
Audit log and Operations log reporting to centralized logging
UI option to enable RADOS Gateway audit log and operations log to report to centralized logging.
S3 SSE-KMS supportability
IBM Guardium Key Lifecycle Manager
Thales CipherTrust

About Cephadm
The Cephadm utility deploys and manages a Ceph storage cluster. Tightly integrated with both the command-line interface (CLI) and the IBM Storage Ceph Dashboard web interface. Cephadm can manage IBM Storage Ceph clusters from within either environment.

New Cephadm features in Storage Ceph 8.0

Erasure Code backend pool for RGW
Automated Erasure Code and Device Class RGW data pool configuration with an ability to select a desired EC profile for the RGW data pool.
Production-ready deployment of RGW and Loadbalancer.
Rados Gateway deployment resulting in a production-ready deployment, with SSL/TLS, Data Pool Erasure Coding.

Technology preview
Here below mentioned functionalities/features are currently introduced in Technology Preview state and can become general available in future releases of IBM Storage Ceph.
Technology Preview features are not supported with IBM production service level agreements (SLAs), might not be functionally complete, and IBM does not recommend using them for production. These features provide early access to upcoming product features, enabling customers to test functionality and provide feedback during the development process.

Tech preview features

SMB filesharing for CephFS, including Active Directory support.
S3 API service for access logging
IAM Multitenancy for RADOS Gateway
CRIMSON Ceph RADOS backend

Summarizing
IBM has released IBM Storage Ceph 8.0 GA, with new features and functionalities.
The main significant highlights of this release are:

RBD Block
NVMe/TCP block storage for VMware enhancements and new features.
CephFS
NFS v3, v4.1 and v4.2, enabling file access for non-native Ceph clients.
SMB v2 and SMB v3 Windows file access (Tech Preview)
Including MS Active Directory and ACLs support.
RADOS gateway
Extended AWS compatibility, new multitenancy feature with IAM and other functional features.
Dashboard UI
Extended UX functionalities, new cluster configuration options and security enhancements.