Ceph (software)

Ceph (pronounced /ˈsɛf/) is a free and open-source software-defined storage platform that provides object storage, block storage, and file storage built on a common distributed cluster foundation. Ceph provides distributed operation without a single point of failure and scalability to the exabyte level. Since version 12 (Luminous), Ceph does not rely on any conventional filesystem and directly manages HDDs and SSDs with its own storage backend BlueStore and can expose a POSIX filesystem.

Ceph replicates data with fault tolerance, using commodity hardware and Ethernet IP and requiring no specific hardware support. Ceph is highly available and ensures strong data durability through techniques including replication, erasure coding, snapshots and clones. By design, the system is both self-healing and self-managing, minimizing administration time and other costs.

Large-scale production Ceph deployments include CERN, OVH and DigitalOcean.