Block Storage Feature Details

Block Storage – 3 Ways, Same System

Block storage is available by default to your virtual machines (VMs) or containers from within your private Cloud Core. In addition to the default, there are several options that you can take advantage of depending on the performance, cost per GB, or data redundancy levels you need. Since this is a fully private cloud with your own control plane, you can modify OpenStack Cinder or Ceph to fit your needs.

OpenMetal Storage Cloud

Highly Available Network Block Storage

All private Cloud Cores come by default with Ceph configured to provide block storage that is backed by a triplicate copy of your data. Each server has at least 1 drive that is within a Ceph pool. The pool is then made available by Ceph to OpenStack for your VMs or containers to mount as block storage. In the event a server or drive becomes unavailable, your Ceph and the block storage will continue to work for your VMs using that storage.

With network block storage, live migration, the ability to move VMs between hardware nodes with 1 or 2 ping drops, is supported. This technology, though not often used, can be very valuable in maintaining a healthy cloud without disruptions to in VM workloads.

Single Drive High IOPS NVMe Block Storage

On Cloud Cores with more than 1 workload drive or on additional servers added to your cluster, you can choose the configuration of those additional drives. A popular choice to get the most speed out of your NVMe drives is to use a single drive directly. In this scenario, there is not redundancy, and so redundancy, if needed, would be handled at the software layer. A replicated database, Galera for example, runs great when it has high IOPS and handles its own replication on other single drive backed VMs.

Live migration is not supported when using drives directly on a specific hardware node.  Migration can often be very fast with minimal disruption to the workload in the virtual machine, but this depends on the size of the storage being moved and how busy the VM is at that time.

RAID 1 High IOPS NVMe Block Storage

A variation of the single drive high IOPS NVMe block storage, the addition of a software RAID 1 above 2 drives brings in drive level redundancy with a small write penalty and a potential increase in read speeds.

Resilient and Scalable Block Storage

Achieve maximum flexibility while your cloud applications can scale on demand.

Highly Available

Suitable for performance-sensitive scenarios and allows you to scale to very serious workloads.

Component-Based Architecture

Quickly add new behaviors and increase the size of your block storage volume at any time.

Enterprise Class Performance

HDDs and NVMe drivers maximize performance, higher throughput, and latency, and lower your TCO.

Fault Tolerant

Failures are specifically designed against with a Ceph backed network block storage.

Network Block Storage from Ceph

All 3 servers provide one or more drivers, OSDs, joined into your hyper-converged Ceph cluster. The cluster replicates your data 3 times for data security and operational availability. Your cluster is considered highly available as it can continue serving as normal in the event that 1 cluster member or OSD fails. The performance of your block storage depends on if you have selected NVMe or SATA SSD for your private cloud core. Utilize your management dashboard to create VMs or containers while managing storage devices through API management.

Ceph Logo

Adding Block Storage to Your Private Cloud Core

In addition to what is provided from your initial private cloud core, you have several options for growing your block storage capacity:

Grow by adding a matching converged node that will increase your block storage, VM, and container capacity.

Create a separate storage cluster that can have different hardware and Ceph settings. The storage blended offers a balance of performance for both block and object storage. The storage large is typically for low-cost object storage but may be a good fit for block storage if write speeds do not need to be high.

With an agreement, a private Cloud Core Large can have additional disks added to the hardware and joined into the Ceph cluster.

Get Started With OpenMetal Cloud

An on-demand private cloud is just seconds away. Create a free account to test drive a cloud and more.

Launch Your Private Cloud

Provision OpenStack private clouds on demand. Go from zero to new VMs in about 45 seconds.

Test Drive/Proof of Concept Credits

Migrating a large deployment or pricing out a new project? Test drives and proof of concept credits available now!

Need Help?

Discuss your infrastructure requirements with the OpenMetal cloud team to get a personalized assessment.

Block Storage FAQs

Ceph provides the network storage including block storage, object storage, and, if needed, an NFS compatible file storage called CephFS. All OpenMetal clouds come with Ceph-based block and object storage supplied by the private Cloud Core. Read a support center article on Ceph storage.

In addition to our complimentary, paid, and self-guided training, your account manager can also connect you with skilled resources in the Ceph open source community. Options include support levels appropriate for small, medium, and large customers.

Ceph can employ five distinct daemons that are all fully distributed and can run on the same set of servers, allowing users to interact directly with them: Ceph monitors, Ceph managers, metadata servers, object storage devices, and representational state transfer. Object storage functionality has an interface that works with the Amazon Simple Storage Service(S3) RESTful API. Read a support center article on Ceph storage.

No, this is not recommended unless it is an emergency or a similar temporary situation. Those drives are not intended for heavy use and are not rated for high disk writes per day.

More OpenMetal Platform Components

Object Storage

S3 compatible, on-demand, enterprise-scalable object storage powered by Ceph. Immediately provision 1+ petabytes independent storage deployments.

Explore

Compute

Build, modify, and scale faster with virtual machines, containers, and high-performance NVMe SSDs to support any workload requirements.

Explore

Networking

Every OpenMetal cloud or IaaS deployment comes with integrated private networking powered by OpenStack.

Explore