The pace at which data is multiplying is huge. Every second, tonne of data is generated, and the fact that this data is of paramount importance, safeguarding or protecting the same is desirable. Cloud Hosting is emerging to be the most reliable hosting type when it comes to data storage, backup,  recovery and security. Cloud Hosting providers are keen on adopting measures to ensure data security.

One way is to ensure that your data is safe and even if the data gets corrupted, you will have an alternative in hand. This is when we introduce the concept of backup and automatic recovery. Storage today is one such aspect that neither the business professional nor the clients can afford to avoid.

To start, it should be rigorously planned and executed meticulously in a way that the system performance stands unaffected. While there are a plethora of ways to back up data, CEPH storage is the most efficient.

What is CEPH Storage – All You Need to Know About

There are multiple ways that facilitate data storage. Of these, CEPH emerges as the object store-based storage platform that is both reliable and easy to use. Draining unstructured data from various applications and pooling all of them as a unified system is what CEPH does.

CEPH – Performing A Check

The entire structure of CEPH can be categorized and segmented in four different elements:

1. Users: The ones that use the data.
2. Metadata Servers: These servers perform the task of caching, organizing and synchronizing the distributed metadata.
3. Object Storage Cluster: The storage clusters are the ones that will store the data as well as the metadata in the form of objects.
4. Cluster Monitors: Keep track of the cluster map and perform all the monitoring functions.

Key Components Of CEPH

CEPH as the object store facilitates the job of strong data as an object, as a block and even as a file, implying that you can use CEPH as the unified platform for data storage. The key components within a CEPH include:

1. RADOS: Self-healing and self-managed distributed storage node of CEPH. RADOS comprises of two different nodes, namely:
2. Ceph Monitor: checks for node availability and maintains the cluster map status.
3. Ceph OSD: Stores data, synchronizes with other OSD and then renders the information to the CEPH monitor.
4. LIBRADOS: Facilitates direct communication of an application with RADOS.
5. RGW: A service gateway on the top of the RADOS, it routes API services to RADOS and LIBRADOS.
6. RBD: Integrates cloud to map the needs of block storage. Also promotes interaction with LIBRADOS.
7. CEPHFS: A distributed file system that initiates the interaction between object and block storage.

CEPH: Backup & Data Recovery

RADOS facilitates the backup process in CEPH. As a self-healing solution, the RADOS storage system is capable of recovering the data that might have been lost from the OSD nodes. The rebalancing and instant replication services further make it easier to track back the lost data.

Several tools such as OpenStack and Cloudberry acts as intelligent solutions and perform a backup of the CEPH storage data across all volumes to maintain the overall consistency.

It is believed that CEPH would soon take over the traditional form of storage across all business verticals. Even though the technology has room for improvement, the existing solution holds tremendous potential with regards to our data storage and backup and a must for all Cloud Hosting provider.