Introduction to Ceph Storage

Ceph is a unified, distributed storage system designed for reliability and scalability. It manages data replication and provides high availability without a single point of failure.

Ceph employs algorithms like CRUSH to efficiently store and manage data. This ensures data is evenly distributed across the cluster and optimizes resource use.

At Ceph's core lies the Reliable Autonomic Distributed Object Store (RADOS). It enables the storage of objects on a distributed cluster, handling data replication, failure detection, and recovery.

Ceph uniquely scales out instead of up. You can add nodes to increase capacity and performance linearly, without downtime or service disruption, making it ideal for growing workloads.

Ceph offers three types of storage interfaces: block (RBD), file (CephFS), and object (RGW). This versatility allows seamless integration with a variety of applications and systems.

Ceph supports erasure coding, which is more space-efficient than traditional replication. It divides data into chunks, adds parity, and distributes it across the cluster, reducing the overall storage requirement.

Ceph's self-healing capabilities detect and repair data inconsistencies or failures. The system also automatically rebalances the data within the cluster to maintain performance and durability.