On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 10:19 AM, Sage Weil <s...@inktank.com> wrote: > > Hi Guido! > > On Tue, 27 Aug 2013, Guido Winkelmann wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I have been running a small Ceph cluster for experimentation for a while, and > > now my employer has asked me to do little talk about my findings, and one > > important part is, of course, going to be practical limitations of Ceph. > > > > Here is my list so far: > > > > - Ceph is not supported by VMWare ESX. That may change in the future, but > > seeing how VMWare is now owned by EMC, they might make it a political decision > > to not support Ceph. > > Apparently, you can import an RBD volume on linux server and then reexport it > > to a VMWare host as an iSCSI target, but doing so would introduce a bottleneck > > and a single point of failure, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a > > Ceph cluster in the first place. > > It will be a challenge to make ESX natively support RBD as RBD is open > source (ESX is proprietary), ESX is (I think) based on a *BSD kernel, and > VMWare just announced a possibly competitive product. Inktank is doing > what it can.
To add some context to this, my current understanding is that VMware do provide mechanisms to add plugins to ESX but a formal partnership is needed for those plugins to be signed & certified. As such the challenge is more commercial than technical. Inktank are in conversations with VMware but if you are interested in seeing support, please tell your VMware account rep and let us know so we can demonstrate the customer demand for this. VMware partner with multiple storage companies (as evidenced by the number of storage vendors at VMWorld this week) so the fact that they have launched vSAN and are owned by EMC is not a commercial barrier. The ESX business unit want to sell as many licenses as possible and so a good storage ecosystem is critical to them. On the Windows side, as Sage said, watch this space. :-) Neil
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