Ceph as a Secret Weapon for HPC

Ceph is open source software defined storage (SDS) designed to provide highly scalable object-, block- and file-based storage under a unified system, setting it apart from other SDS solutions. It allows decoupling data from physical hardware storage, using software abstraction layers, providing scaling and fault management capabilities. As a distributed storage framework, Ceph has typically been used for high bandwidth, medium latency types of applications, such as content delivery, archive storage, or block storage for virtualization. Its inherent scale-out support allows an organization to build large systems as demand increases. Additionally, it supports enterprise-grade features such as erasure coding, thin provisioning, cloning, load-balancing, automated tiering between flash and hard drives, and simplified maintenance and debugging.