Phil;

I like to refer to basic principles, and design assumptions / choices when 
considering things like this.  I also like to refer to more broadly understood 
technologies.  Finally; I'm still relatively new to Ceph, so here it goes...

TLDR: Ceph is (likes to be) double-redundent (like RAID-6), while dual power 
(n+1) is single-redundant.

Like RAID, Ceph (or more precisely a Ceph pool) can be in, and moves through, 
the following states:

Normal --> Partially Failed (degraded) --> Recovering --> Normal.

When talking about these systems, we often gloss over Recovery, acting as if it 
takes no time.  Recovery does take time though, and if anything ELSE happens 
while recovery is ongoing, what can the software do?

Think RAID-5; what happens if a drive fails in a RAID-5 array, and during 
recovery an unreadable block is found on another drive?  That's single 
redundancy.  If you use RAID-6, the array goes to the second redundancy level, 
and the recovery continues.

As a result of the long recovery times expected of modern large hard-drives, 
Ceph pushes for double-redundancy (3x replication, 5-2 EC).  Further, it 
decreases availability the more redundancy is degraded (i.e. when the first 
layer of redundancy is compromised, writes are still allowed.  When the second 
is lost, writes are disallowed, but reads are allowed.  Only when all three 
layers are compromised are reads disallowed).

Dual power feeds (n+1) is only single-redundant, thus the entire system can't 
achieve better than single-redundancy.  Depending on the reliability of the 
power, and your service guarantees, this may be acceptable.

If you add ATSs, then you need to look at the failure rate (MTBF, or similar) 
to determine if your service guarantees are impacted.

Dominic L. Hilsbos, MBA 
Director – Information Technology 
Perform Air International Inc.
dhils...@performair.com 
www.PerformAir.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Regnauld [mailto:p...@x0.dk] 
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2020 12:59 AM
To: Hans van den Bogert
Cc: ceph-users@ceph.io
Subject: [ceph-users] Re: CEPH failure domain - power considerations

Hans van den Bogert (hansbogert) writes:
> I would second that, there's no winning in this case for your 
> requirements and single PSU nodes. If there were 3 feeds,  then yes; 
> you could make an extra layer in your crushmap much like you would 
> incorporate a rack topology in the crushmap.

        I'm not fully up on coffee for today, so I haven't yet worked out why
        3 feeds would help ? To have a 'tie breaker' of sorts, with hosts spread
        across 3 rails ?
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