Ceph as a backup solution

We have been using RAID systems for redundancy and data backup purposes. With Ceph as the storage platform, data redundancy and recovery is managed using the RADOS storage system. RADOS has features like selfhealing and self-managing, which help in recovering the data from lost OSD nodes using instant replication and rebalancing. Ceph also allows taking an incremental snapshot of block storage using RBD.

OpenStack has a Ceph backup driver, which is an intelligent solution of VM volumes. It backs up the volumes to Ceph’s backend storage, and regularly performs an incremental backup on the volumes to maintain consistency.

CloudBerry Backup for Ceph is a popular tool, which helps in versatile control over Ceph’s backup and recovery mechanism.

According to several research organisations like Gartner Inc., Ceph has made a strategic entry into the enterprise IT space and will prove to be the next big evolution in storage technology. With the current adoption rate, Ceph will soon surpass the existing storage solutions at enterprises. There is a lot of development expected to happen with Ceph, which will bring about significant performance improvements to match the current proprietary solutions. Even if you don’t take future enhancements into consideration, Ceph is a storage platform that definitely needs to be looked at for your next big deployment.