Chapter 1. The basics of Ceph configuration

All Red Hat Ceph Storage clusters have a configuration, which defines:

A deployment tool, such as cephadm, will typically create an initial Ceph configuration file for you. However, you can create one yourself if you prefer to bootstrap a Red Hat Ceph Storage cluster without using a deployment tool.

The Ceph Monitor manages a configuration database of Ceph options that centralize configuration management by storing configuration options for the entire storage cluster. By centralizing the Ceph configuration in a database, this simplifies storage cluster administration.

The priority order that Ceph uses to set options is:

There are still a few Ceph options that can be defined in the local Ceph configuration file, which is /etc/ceph/ceph.conf by default. However, ceph.conf has been deprecated for Red Hat Ceph Storage 8.

cephadm uses a basic ceph.conf file that only contains a minimal set of options for connecting to Ceph Monitors, authenticating, and fetching configuration information. In most cases, cephadm uses only the mon_host option. To avoid using ceph.conf only for the mon_host option, use DNS SRV records to perform operations with Monitors.

Ceph allows you to make changes to the configuration of a daemon at runtime. This capability can be useful for increasing or decreasing the logging output, by enabling or disabling debug settings, and can even be used for runtime optimization.

Ceph configuration options can have a mask associated with them. These masks can further restrict which daemons or clients the options apply to.

Masks have two forms:

Metavariables simplify Ceph storage cluster configuration dramatically. When a metavariable is set in a configuration value, Ceph expands the metavariable into a concrete value.

Metavariables are very powerful when used within the [global], [osd], [mon], or [client] sections of the Ceph configuration file. However, you can also use them with the administration socket. Ceph metavariables are similar to Bash shell expansion.

Ceph supports the following metavariables:

The Ceph configuration files can be viewed at boot time and run time.

Configuration settings for Red Hat Ceph Storage can be viewed at runtime from the Ceph Monitor node.

To set a specific Ceph configuration at runtime, use the ceph config set command.

ceph config set mgr mgr/cephadm/manage_etc_ceph_ceph_conf false

BlueStore keeps OSD heap memory usage under a designated target size with the osd_memory_target configuration option.

The option osd_memory_target sets OSD memory based upon the available RAM in the system. Use this option when TCMalloc is configured as the memory allocator, and when the bluestore_cache_autotune option in BlueStore is set to true.

Ceph OSD memory caching is more important when the block device is slow; for example, traditional hard drives, because the benefit of a cache hit is much higher than it would be with a solid state drive. However, this must be weighed into a decision to colocate OSDs with other services, such as in a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) or other applications.

The OSD daemons adjust the memory consumption based on the osd_memory_target configuration option. The option osd_memory_target sets OSD memory based upon the available RAM in the system.

If Red Hat Ceph Storage is deployed on dedicated nodes that do not share memory with other services, cephadm automatically adjusts the per-OSD consumption based on the total amount of RAM and the number of deployed OSDs.

ceph config set osd osd_memory_target_autotune true

Cephadm starts with a fraction mgr/cephadm/autotune_memory_target_ratio, which defaults to 0.7 of the total RAM in the system, subtract off any memory consumed by non-autotuned daemons such as non-OSDS and for OSDs for which osd_memory_target_autotune is false, and then divide by the remaining OSDs.

The osd_memory_target parameter is calculated as follows:

osd_memory_target = TOTAL_RAM_OF_THE_OSD * (1048576) * (autotune_memory_target_ratio) / NUMBER_OF_OSDS_IN_THE_OSD_NODE - (SPACE_ALLOCATED_FOR_OTHER_DAEMONS)

SPACE_ALLOCATED_FOR_OTHER_DAEMONS may optionally include the following daemon space allocations:

For example, if a node has 24 OSDs and has 251 GB RAM space, then osd_memory_target is 7860684936.

The final targets are reflected in the configuration database with options. You can view the limits and the current memory consumed by each daemon from the ceph orch ps output under MEM LIMIT column.

[ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph config set mgr mgr/cephadm/autotune_memory_target_ratio 0.2

You can manually set a specific memory target for an OSD in the storage cluster.

[ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph config set osd.123 osd_memory_target 7860684936

You can manually set a specific memory target for an OSD host in the storage cluster.

ceph config set osd/host:HOSTNAME osd_memory_target TARGET_BYTES

[ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph config set osd/host:host01 osd_memory_target 1000000000

ceph orch host label add HOSTNAME _no_autotune_memory

You can exclude an OSD from memory autotuning by disabling the autotune option and setting a specific memory target.

[ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph config set osd.123 osd_memory_target_autotune false
[ceph: root@host01 /]# ceph config set osd.123 osd_memory_target 16G

MDS servers keep their metadata in a separate storage pool, named cephfs_metadata, and are the users of Ceph OSDs. For Ceph File Systems, MDS servers have to support an entire Red Hat Ceph Storage cluster, not just a single storage device within the storage cluster, so their memory requirements can be significant, particularly if the workload consists of small-to-medium-size files, where the ratio of metadata to data is much higher.

Example: Set the mds_cache_memory_limit to 2000000000 bytes

ceph_conf_overrides:
  mds:
    mds_cache_memory_limit=2000000000