The Ceph open source community: Powering Red Hat’s data services portfolio

One of the unique things about Red Hat is that everything we do is open source. Every product we offer is rooted in one or more “upstream” open source projects. And since each of these projects has its own sets of participants, practices, timelines, and motivations coming together in a bottom-up, self-organizing sort of way--its own community--it is deeply insightful to look at Red Hat products from the perspective of their constituent communities. For Red Hat Data Services, one of our most important communities is Ceph, which has exciting developments underway.

Laying the foundation

Over the years, we’ve built out a portfolio of Red Hat Data Services solutions such as Red Hat Ceph Storage and Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation based on a rock-solid Ceph core. As the portfolio has grown, Ceph also has grown, ever strengthening a tradition of excellence in software-defined storage (SDS), not just in the commercial marketplace but across the open source world.

According to 2021 upstream Ceph user survey results, more than three quarters of users chose Ceph for its scalability and high availability. But more than 90 percent noted open source as an important factor in their choice. That a vibrant, thriving community is such a draw substantiates that Ceph is much more than “just SDS” and underscores the power of the Red Hat approach.

Embracing the diversity-boosted innovation of the open source way

In today’s hybrid cloud world, leading-edge technologies like Ceph—ones supported by strong, established communities—are no longer nice-to-haves. They’re virtually requirements. 

One of the reasons for this is innovation. We hope our partners, collaborators, customers, non-customers, and competitors alike join us in the Ceph ecosystem because, with an open source community, more participation is truly more. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

More than just code—a new community initiative

It takes more than just code to make a community successful. That's why we’re excited to be part of the newly formed Ceph Market Development Group launched recently by the Ceph Foundation. The Ceph Foundation was formed in 2018 to bring together stakeholders in the Ceph community, as well as financial resources, to support development and adoption of Ceph technology.

The Ceph Market Development Group, which includes other organizations interested in the success of Ceph, is designed to help raise the awareness and understanding of Ceph’s benefits. 

It’s a cause we’re excited to help drive because it is exactly this sort of diverse, multi-stakeholder collaboration that makes open source projects like Ceph really flourish and outshine single-vendor, proprietary technologies. 

Like Linux, Kubernetes, Ansible, Apache Kafka, and hundreds of other open source projects we contribute to, Ceph benefits from broad use and collaborative upstream contribution, creating additional value that we (and others!) can bring to our customers as part of our enterprise open source-based offerings.

“Ceph Month” and a bevy of new materials

As part of its founding, throughout the month of June—Ceph Month—the Ceph Market Development Group hosted sessions in which multiple group members provided updates on project initiatives as well as insights and education about Ceph and its development and use cases. 

Be sure to tap into the entire Ceph Month repository, which includes links to presentations and other materials. Ceph is a strong and vibrant community with a bright future. See you there!