Chapter 4. Technology Previews
This section provides an overview of Technology Preview features introduced or updated in this release of Red Hat Ceph Storage.
Technology Preview features are not supported with Red Hat production service level agreements (SLAs), might not be functionally complete, and Red Hat does not recommend to use them for production. These features provide early access to upcoming product features, enabling customers to test functionality and provide feedback during the development process.
For more information on Red Hat Technology Preview features support scope, see https://access.redhat.com/support/offerings/techpreview/.
OSD BlueStore
BlueStore is a new back end for the OSD daemons that allows for storing objects directly on the Ceph block devices. Because BlueStore does not need any file system interface, it improves performance of Ceph storage clusters.
To learn more about the BlueStore OSD back end, see the OSD BlueStore (Technology Preview) chapter in the Administration Guide.
The NFS interface for the Ceph Object Gateway
The Ceph Object Gateway now includes a new NFS interface that presents buckets and objects as directories and files. The main purpose of this new functionality is to facilitate migration from POSIX applications and workloads to the Ceph Object Gateway.
The Ceph File System (CephFS) and Metadata Server (MDS)
The Ceph File System (CephFS) and Ceph Metadata Server (MDS) have been added as Technology Preview features.
The Ceph File System is a POSIX-compliant file system that uses the Ceph Storage Cluster to store its data. CephFS can be mounted with a kernel driver or as a file system in user space (FUSE).
The Ceph Metadata Server manages metadata related to files stored on the Ceph File System. The MDS daemon (ceph-mds) also coordinates access to the shared cluster.
In addition, the CephFS repair utilities are now supported.
For details, see the Ceph File System Guide.
