The Ceph Storage Cluster is a feature available on the Proxmox platform, used to implement a software-defined storage solution.
Ceph is an embedded feature in Proxmox and is completely free to use.
Prerequisites
Before starting the installation of Ceph Storage Cluster, you need to create a Proxmox cluster by adding the nodes required for your configuration.
Three is the minimum number of nodes to configure a working Proxmox cluster.
If you don't have a Proxmox cluster available on your network, follow this procedure to configure a new one.
Create a Ceph Storage Cluster
To create a new storage cluster, you need to install Ceph on all nodes within the Proxmox cluster. Using your preferred browser, login to the Proxmox nodes.
Ensure that all nodes have the latest updates installed. Select the node you want to upgrade, then navigate to the Updates section. Click Refresh, and then click Upgrade to install the available updates for the selected node.
Repeat same operation for all nodes within the Proxmox cluster.
Install Ceph service
Before installing the Ceph service, make sure that each node in the Disks section can detect the disks you plan to assign to the Ceph Storage cluster. As a best practice, the disks used should be of the same size (100GB, 100GB, etc.) rather than different sizes (100GB, 50GB, etc.).
Connect to node 1 and select the Proxmox cluster. Access the Ceph section and click Install Ceph.
This article has been written for StarWind blog and can be found in this page. It covers the full procedure to configure a Ceph Storage Cluster in Proxmox VE.
Test the Ceph Storage Cluster
To verify if the Ceph Storage Cluster is working as expected, create a new VM and specify the new storage accordingly.
The VM creation requires some settings to be configured. Type the VM Name and click Next.
The tab we need to focus on is the Disks tab. Select the datastore01 you just created as the Storage to use.
Once created, the new VM is up and running where the virtual disks are stored in the datastore configured as Ceph Storage Cluster.
The VM running on node 1 has its virtual disk stored on datastore01.
By checking the other nodes, you can verify that the VM has copies of its data distributed across datastore01 on the different nodes.
If one node fails, the VM can remain operational by configuring High Availability and leveraging the distributed copies in the Ceph Storage Cluster.
Proxmox VE is available to download as free open-source solution.
Read the full article on StarWind blog.
