I use those HC2 nodes for my home Ceph cluster, but my setup only has to 
support the librados API, my software does HSM between regular XFS file systems 
and the RADOS api so I don’t need the other MDS and the rest so I can’t tell 
you if you’ll be happy in your configuration.



Steve Cranage

Principal Architect, Co-Founder

DeepSpace Storage

719-930-6960

[cid:image001.png@01D3FCBC.58FDB6F0]



________________________________
From: ceph-users <ceph-users-boun...@lists.ceph.com> on behalf of William 
Ferrell <wil...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, September 6, 2019 3:16:30 PM
To: ceph-users@lists.ceph.com <ceph-users@lists.ceph.com>
Subject: [ceph-users] Ceph for "home lab" / hobbyist use?

Hello everyone!

After years of running several ZFS pools on a home server and several
disk failures along the way, I've decided that my current home storage
setup stinks. So far there hasn't been any data loss, but
recovering/"resilvering" a ZFS pool after a disk failure is a
nail-biting experience. I also think the way things are set up now
isn't making the best use of all the disks attached to the server;
they were acquired over time instead of all at once, so I've got 4
4-disk raidz1 pools, each in their own enclosures. If any enclosure
dies, all that pool's data is lost. Despite having a total of 16 disks
in use for storage, the entire system can only "safely" lose one disk
before there's a risk of a second failure taking a bunch of data with
it.

I'd like to ask the list's opinions on running a Ceph cluster in a
home environment as a filer using cheap, low-power systems. I don't
have any expectations for high performance (this will be built on a
gigabit network, and just used for backups and streaming videos,
music, etc. for two people); the main concern is resiliency if one or
two disks fail, and the secondary concern is having a decent usable
storage capacity. Being able to slowly add capacity to the cluster one
disk at a time is a very appealing bonus.

I'm interested in using these things as OSDs (and hopefully monitors
and metadata servers):
https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-hc2-home-cloud-two/

They're about $50 each, can boot from MicroSD or eMMC flash (basically
an SSD with a custom connector), and have one SATA port. They have
8-core 32-bit CPUs, 2GB of RAM and a gigabit ethernet port. Four of
them (including disks) can run off a single 12V/8A power adapter
(basically 100 watts per set of 4). The obvious appeal is price, plus
they're stackable so they'd be easy to hide away in a closet.

Is it feasible for these to work as OSDs at all? The Ceph hardware
recommendations page suggests OSDs need 1GB per TB of space, so does
this mean these wouldn't be suitable with, say, a 4TB or 8TB disk? Or
would they work, but just more slowly?

Pushing my luck further (assuming the HC2 can handle OSD duties at
all), is that enough muscle to run the monitor and/or metadata
servers? Should monitors and MDS's be run separately, or can/should
they piggyback on hosts running OSDs?

I'd be perfectly happy with a setup like this even if it could only
achieve speeds in the 20-30MB/sec range.

Is this a dumb idea, or could it actually work? Are there any other
recommendations among Ceph users for low-end hardware to cobble
together a working cluster?

Any feedback is sincerely appreciated.

Thanks!
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