Hardly a year goes by that does not see some kind of disruptive technology unfold and existing traditions swept away. That's what the two technologies discussed in this article have in common. Ceph captured the storage solutions market in a flash. Meanwhile, Kubernetes shook up the market for virtualization solutions, not only grabbing market share off KVM and others, but also off industry giants such as VMware.

When two disruptive technologies such as containers and Ceph are mixing up the same market, collisions can hardly be avoided. The tool that brings Ceph and Kubernetes together is Rook, which lets you roll out a Ceph installation to a cluster with Kubernetes and offers advantages over a setup where Ceph sits "under" Kubernetes.

The most important advantage is undoubtedly that Ceph integrated into the Kubernetes workflow with the help of Rook [1] can be controlled and monitored just like any other Kubernetes resource. Kubernetes is aware of Ceph and its topology and can adapt it if necessary. However, a setup in which Ceph sits under Kubernetes and only passes persistent volumes through to it, knowing nothing about Ceph, is not integrated and lacks homogeneity.

Getting Started with Rook

ADMIN introduced Rook in detail some time ago [2], looking into its advantages and disadvantages. Since then, much has happened. For example, if you work with OpenStack, Rook will be available automatically in almost every scenario. Many OpenStack vendors are migrating their distributions to Kubernetes, and because OpenStack almost always comes with Ceph in tow, Kubernetes will also include Ceph. However, I'll show you how to get started if you don't have a ready-made OpenStack distribution – and don't want one – with a manual integration.

The Beginnings: Kubernetes

Any admin wanting to work with Rook in a practical way first needs a working Kubernetes, for which Rook needs only a few basic necessities.

In this article, I do not assume that you already have a running Kubernetes available, which gives those who have had little or no practical experience with Kubernetes the chance to get acquainted with the subject. Setting up Kubernetes is not complicated. Several tools promise to handle this task quickly and well.

Rolling Out Kubernetes

Kubernetes, which is not nearly as complex as other cloud approaches like OpenStack, can be deployed in an all-in-one environment by the kubeadm tool. The following example is based on five servers that form a Kubernetes instance.

If you don't have physical hardware at hand, you can alternatively work through this example with virtual machines (VMs); note, however, that Ceph will take possession of the hard drives or SSDs used later. Five VMs on the same SSD, which then form a Kubernetes cluster with Rook, are probably not optimal, especially if you expect a longer service life from the SSD. In any case, Ceph needs at least one completely empty hard disk in every system, which can later be used as a data silo.