The world is at an inflection point. Companies of all kinds continually produce more and more data, from the massive data lakes that fuel AI to huge archives of past records, yet the cost of data storage is rising.
According to Martin Verges, co-founder and CEO of croit, businesses can deploy a free, open-source data storage solution called Ceph. “Ceph has matured to the point that it has become an ideal general-purpose, multi-protocol, highly scalable, secure, reliable storage platform,” he says. “It just lacks an intuitive management framework.”
That’s where croit.io comes in. The company’s simple software fulfills those needs, making Ceph the perfect storage solution for enterprises of all kinds.
Making Ceph accessible
“We want to enable people to use smart technologies,” Verges says, “and croit empowers people to do this by making data storage simple and reliable. We chose to focus on Ceph because it’s an excellent solution for current and future data storage. We also had over five years of experience with Ceph at that time, and wanted to leverage that background to help other organizations use it.”
Initially developed by Sage Weil, Ceph is now managed by the Ceph Foundation, a group of organizations that support the open-source project with funding, marketing, and outreach efforts. Not only is croit GmbH a founding member of the Ceph Foundation, but also an active contributor to the Ceph code.
Ceph provides a highly scalable, low-cost, general-purpose object, file, and block storage solution that supports every virtualization platform, including Kubernetes. Yet, the platform is too complex for many organizations to deploy and operate. That’s why croit developed its flagship software, which manages Ceph on a Linux operating system.
Fast installations, non-disruptive updates
“We can be compared to Red Hat (News - Alert),” Verges says. “They have a commercially packaged Linux operating system solution, and we’ve got one for Ceph. Our system simplifies the installation of storage facilities, as well as everyday management and periodic upgrades.”
No other software can deliver the same functionality as croit. “Our software installs and upgrades the Linux and Ceph stack in minutes, and allows just one Linux administrator to manage 20 Petabytes of storage,” Verges says. “We validate every new release of Linux and Ceph before we include them in our upgrade process to make sure there will be no problems.”
But that’s not all — according to Verges, croit for Ceph installs this software stack in only five minutes on bare metal servers (aka physical computers). If updates are needed, croit implements these automatically and completes them in minutes, without disrupting the applications that are using Ceph storage.
Unparalleled reliability
If that wasn’t enough, it’s nearly impossible to lose data with croit’s solution. “Our software manages clusters that can use either or both data replication or erasure coding to avoid or eliminate data loss,” Verges says.
Data replication works by writing complete copies of the data to multiple drives in different servers, racks, rows, and even data centers at the same time. “This storage redundancy means that multiple copies of the data could be destroyed, and it still wouldn’t be a problem,” Verges explains. “Imagine a complete data center being destroyed. With croit, you’d still be able to use the original data without interruption.”
Erasure coding costs less, but may reduce performance in some cases. “This method uses parity to reduce the cost of replication redundancy, such that fewer drives are needed to reconstruct the lost data,” Verges explains.
A low-cost storage solution
Speaking of cost, croit.io allows organizations to take advantage of several economies. “Our solution doesn’t require any special hardware such as RAID controllers, for example,” Verges says. “Ordinary hard drives or flash drives will do just fine. If anything, we recommend people use commodity servers available from many OEMs, since these are inexpensive to replace as necessary.”
In other words, you can buy standard hardware from one of the server vendors, and install croit for Ceph to power a global data universe for your organization. “This solution costs a lot less than other commercial storage solutions,” Verges says. “Sometimes, a croit for Ceph storage solution costs just a fraction of a penny per GB per month amortized across 36 to 60 months, including software, hardware, people, data center costs, and support.”
In addition, croit makes managing Ceph storage so simple and easy that organizations only need one Linux administrator for every 20 Petabytes of storage. . Moreover, that single staff member only needs to have the skill level of a Linux administrator. “It even becomes feasible to manage an Exabyte of storage globally with a relatively small staff,” Verges says, “which means lower labor costs.”
Next-generation data storage
As a result of croit’s innovations, organizations of all kinds have been benefiting from Ceph’s free, open-source storage. “We have hundreds of customers all over the world,” Verges says. “They’re all different sizes, from small family concerns to global multinationals.”
At croit, customers come first. “Since we have a worldwide staff, we can provide support at all times,” Verges says. “We strive not to have any issues, but if any emerge, we resolve them quickly. We’re also dedicated to adding capabilities and contributing to the Ceph open-source base.”
With croit’s Ceph solution, your organization can start reaping the benefits of next-generation data storage, too.
