View source for Work in progress sofree.us 2025Q3 Ceph handson

== Timeframe == 
Per the title, Q3 of 2025.  Some Saturday.  Probably August or September.

== Goals ==
Learners will install/configure a working Ceph cluster and gain some knowledge of its components.  The hard way.  No automatic container deployment or similar.
* Generate a cluster UUID
* Select server IP addresses
** A quick diversion into public and cluster (private) networks as used by Ceph
* Install Ceph application packages
* Create a very basic cluster config file
* use monmaptool to create a single entry cluster monitor map (monmaptool --create --fsid UUID-FROM-ABOVE 
* deploy a single monitor for the cluster (ceph-mon --mkfs ...)
* Start the monitor up, check on cluster state
* Add additional monitors on other nodes
* Install manager components
* Add OSD components (At last, some actual storage!)
* Create some storage pools.
* On another (client) system, make use of some of that storage.  RBD is the easiest to demonstrate.  RGW needs additional components.
* Choose your own adventure:
** RGW, the Ceph S3 object gateway (and also OpenStack Swift)
*** Install radosgw
*** Create a user (radosgw-admin)
*** Make sure it is available over the internet (this is going to be pre-work on Aaron's part)
*** Install a client program
** CephFS
*** Install MDS components
*** Create a filesystem
*** Create some client identities
*** Put client keyring on a client server
*** Mount the filesystem and start writing files
* Stretch goals
** Replicate RBD data from one cluster to another
** Replicate RGW data from one cluster to another
** Replicate CephFS data from one cluster to another

== Hardware available ==
The following is at Aaron's home data center, currently unused:
* 6x Dell R630 servers, each with:
** 2x Intel Xeon E5-2630v4 processors
** 64 Gibytes of RAM
** 2x 800Gbyte SAS SSDs (for OS, applications, and Ceph Bluestore WAL/DB devices)
** 4x 1.8Tbyte SAS HDDs (Ceph cluster data disks)
** 1x 2-port Mellanox 56Gbits/sec Ethernet card (and sufficient switch ports and cabling for these)
** 2x Intel 10GbaseT twisted pair Ethernet ports (I do not have switch ports for 10GbaseT, but have plenty of 1000baseT)
** 2x Intel 1000baseT twisted pair Ethernet ports (and sufficient switch ports and cabling)
* 3x Dell R720XD servers, each with:
** 2x (1x?) Intel Xeon E5-26?? processors
** 32 Gibytes of RAM
** 2x 120Gbyte SATA SSDs (rear-mounted) for the OS and applications
** 6 or 7x 3Tbyte SAS HDDs (Ceph cluster data disks)
** 2x 400Gbyte SAS SSDs (Ceph Bluestore WAL/DB devices)
** 2x 10Gbits/sec SFP+ (fiber optic) Ethernet adapters (and sufficient switch ports and cabling for these)
** 2X 1000baseT twisted pair Ethernet ports (and sufficient switch ports and cabling)

== Potential Cluster end states ==
* '''Option 1: '''A single cluster with all 9 servers as members.  This would probably make most sense with only 2 or 3 learners.
* '''Option 2: '''Two clusters.  One with mixed hardware consisting of 3x R630 servers and 3x R720 servers.  And a second cluster of 3x R630 servers.  Makes sense with 4-6 learners in groups of 2 or 3.  And demonstrates Ceph's flexibility in building from non-identical servers.
* '''Option 3: '''Two clusters.  But this time all nodes in each cluster are similar.  6x R630s in one cluster.  And 3x R720s in the second cluster.  Makes sense with 4-6 learners in groups of 2 or 3.
* '''Option 4: '''Three clusters.  Each cluster with consistent hardware.  Makes most sense with a third group of learners.