How StorPool compares to Ceph storage?

Ceph is a popular storage software aiming to cover all storage types (object, file and block storage) in one solution. It was originally designed as an object storage and has evolved to provide “unified storage”, meaning object, file and block. An elusive idea, that unfortunately requires very different architecture and code base. This approach has it merrits, but also imposes trade-offs.

StorPool took a different approach – it is specifically designed as a high performance, primary block storage. StorPool focuses on one thing and excels at it.

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To achieve these results, the team behind StorPool innovated on the fundamental architecture and solved some very difficult problems with regards to the practical implementation of the software. For example StorPool, unlike Ceph, is a fully distributed system, this means that StorPool does not require neither any dedicated metadata servers, nor journaling on special, (and very expensive) SSDs. StorPool has one StorPool Server per physical server/node, which handles all of the drives in this server, unlike Ceph storage, which powers up a separate OSD, (Ceph’s server software) and a file system, for each drive in a given server.

All of the innovations built into StorPool, result in a storage solution that is better in every way for this given use case, i.e. that of: providing block storage. In summary, StorPool is faster, simpler and more reliable and efficient.

  • End-To-End Data Integrity

    StorPool has the most advanced end-to-end data integrity functionality on the market. This means that from the moment the client/application gives data to be stored, StorPool calculates a checksum and stores it with the data.

    This includes protection not only on the storage system itself, but also on all components between the app and the storage system – i.e. network, firmware, bugs in virtualization, file systems, hypervisors, etc. Ceph has a partial data integrity mechanism, only protecting data on the drives, which is not enough for a distributed system to work reliably, especially at large scale.

  • Performance

    StorPool was designed to be a block storage system. StorPool’s architecture is streamlined in order to deliver fast and reliable block storage. StorPool has fewer components than Ceph, in order to eliminate pieces that do not add to the performance or reliability.

    As a result StorPool often replaces Ceph systems, which cannot deliver enough performance. By being lightweight and extremely capable, StorPool can deliver performance, which is simply impossible to achieve with Ceph. For example: a shared storage system with just 0.06 ms of random write and 0.15 ms of random read latency.

  • Efficiency

    StorPool was designed with efficiency in mind right from the very beginning. StorPool’s goal is to take up minimal resources on the server, so that StorPool can run on the application/compute nodes.

    StorPool typically takes just 2 or 3 CPU cores and 16-32 GB of RAM, while delivering 450,000 IOPS at 0.2-0.3 ms latency. This allows StorPool to deliver an all-flash array level of performance, whilst leaving 90-95% of the server’s resources, available for companies to run applications and VMs on the same servers in a hyper-converged fashion.

  • Fully Managed Solution

    StorPool is the only fully-managed solution on the market. Our team provides system design, installation, performance tuning. We do 24/7/365 mission-critical support and proactive monitoring, to save your team time and effort. We deliver a working storage service on your hardware, backed by a strict SLA (Service Level Agreement).

    If you are the type of company, which wants to spend time on building and managing a Ceph solution – this is fine. If you want someone to deliver an ultra-fast and always-on storage solution, so you can work on your core business – then StorPool is a natural choice.

Ceph storage

Another big plus when choosing StorPool is that our team is on your side to support you all the way. StorPool will help you to design the most optimal cloud architecture for your specific use case, will help with deployment, burn in tests and tuning of the system, and unlike Ceph storage, this is all included in the standard StorPool price.