Inktank Ceph Enterprise 1.2: A chat with Colleen Corrice

Please note: Inktank Ceph has a new name: Red Hat Ceph Storage. Learn more about it, and Red Hat Gluster Storage, here: http://red.ht/1Hw7gYb

We're here today with Colleen Corrice, marketing communications director at Inktank, to talk about the much anticipated, recently released Inktank Ceph Enterprise 1.2.

Q: So Colleen, explain Inktank Ceph Enterprise 1.2 to us.

A: At a very high-level, Inktank Ceph Enterprise 1.2 is a distributed storage solution with three major components:

1. The most stable version of Ceph for object and block storage
2. A Ceph management platform, Calamari v1.2 ,which we just recently open sourced
3. Integrated tools and support

Q: So for this new release of 1.2, what new product features and benefits will you be introducing?

A: With v1.2, we’re expanding to include new, powerful features for cold storage and archiving. Some of the new features worth highlighting include:

• Support for erasure coded storage pools, which reduces the cost of storage per gig while maintaining a necessary level of durability
• Cache tiering to manage hot-to-cold data migration, which provides for the most critical data to be served by the highest-performing storage media
• Calamari, an on-premise Ceph management platform, which makes it easier for administrators to perform common monitoring and configuration tasks

(What is cold storage? Wikipedia has your answer!)

Q: Tell us why you decided on these new product features and benefits? How did this come about exactly?

A: Cloud storage was our first target use case for Inktank Ceph Enterprise, but we felt it was important to also provide capabilities for administrators who have cold-storage needs—the market needs open source solutions in that space. Inktank Ceph Enterprise 1.2 is now appropriate for cold storage, due to the new erasure coding and cache tiering features, while remaining a good backend for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform.

Want to learn more about Inktank Ceph Enterprise? Check it out here.