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Transform Storage Into an Enabler Rather than a Limitation with IBM Storage Ceph 8.1: The Enterprise Storage Solution That Grows With Your Business—No Lock-In, No Limits

By Elvia Ramírez posted yesterday

  

Transform Storage Into an Enabler Rather than a Limitation with IBM Storage Ceph 8.1: The Enterprise Storage Solution That Grows With Your Business—No Lock-In, No Limits

Transform Storage Into an Enabler Rather than a Limitation with IBM Storage Ceph 8.1

Let’s get real–managing storage infrastructure is not easy. As a platform architect, you’re likely grappling with performance bottlenecks on data-intensive workloads like AI or enterprise data analytics, while your IT infrastructure team is dealing with budget overruns, operational overhead, and silos in complex systems that choke under pressure.

To try and solve these challenges, most companies embark on a quest to find the next quick fix, exploring options that range from a new cloud service provider, an upgrade to a complex legacy system with siloed workloads–making the architecture even more difficult to manage, or a loop of hiccups and service outages where parts of the business have to fully stop to allow for new infrastructure deployments. But there is a better solution…

A Single Solution for Unparallel Scalability, Enterprise Resiliency, and Cost Efficiency.

IBM Storage Ceph is an enterprise-grade software-defined storage solution with a three-in-one architecture that unifies block, file, and object data in a single highly scalable and resilient distributed solution that simplifies your infrastructure stack.

Designed to address the demands of the most data-intensive workloads such as modern object data lakes for cloud-native applications, analytics and AI, Storage Ceph is a simple but highly flexible storage architecture that conveniently adapts to your business requirements, allowing you to start small and scale out as needed​ without disruption—No Lock-In, No Limits.

Don’t have the staff to get your new Storage Ceph cluster up and running? Not a problem! To make it even easier for you, Storage Ceph offers multiple deployment options, including easy-to-stack Storage Ceph-certified servers, and as a managed service offering, providing cloud storage in your data center managed by IBM experts, resulting in better resource utilization and a quicker time-to-value for your projects, allowing your IT team to focus on managing apps, not infrastructure.​

What’s New in Storage Ceph 8.1

StorageCephScreenshot
IBM Storage Ceph 8.1 simplifies multi-cluster management and improves diagnostics.

We’re thrilled to announce the general availability of IBM Storage Ceph 8.1, with new features that transform storage into an enabler–giving you the scalability, reliability, and flexibility to architect solutions that grow with your business rather than limit it. The updates in this new version include:

Core Software Enhancements

Better resiliency and flexibility with stretch clusters, ARM support, and native encryption.​

·       Continuous operations for active-active workloads with stretch clustering support

·       Expand cluster management and capabilities to ARM-based devices

·       Ensure data protection and preservation with self-encrypting drives

Block Protocol Improvements

Adds RBD mirror consistent group and NVMe namespace masking for stronger data protection and access control.​

·       Application-consistent data protection and simplified data management with RBD mirror consistency groups

·       Secure multi-tenancy, resource isolation, and performance optimization with NVMe namespace masking.

·       Enhanced security for storage access and stronger multi-tenant isolation with NVMe in-band authorization

·       Enhance VMW Plugin

File Protocol Improvements

Improves file system performance with asynchronous and zero-copy I/O, while enabling control with built-in rate limiting.

·       Ensure smooth user experience on applications during heavy I/O workloads by handling more concurrent requests with Libcepfs async-IO

·       Lower latency and improve throughput to deliver data faster with Zero-copy IO​

·       Protect against file system overload and resource exhaustion with rate-limiting capabilities

·       Supports seamless file sharing across environments with all SMB protocol capabilities

Object Protocol Improvements

Optimizes access to multi-tiered storage and reinforces tenant isolation in object-based environments.​

·       Enabling fast, reliable, and scalable access to data across various storage classes with S3 object retrieval

·       Assuring secure granular and flexible control over data access and actions with S3 identity and access management accounts

Storage Ceph Cluster Management

·       Simplified multi-cluster management with unified visibility and improved diagnostic tools

·       Improvements in the VMWare vCenter Plugin

Find more details on the updates in Storage Ceph 8.1 in this technical blog: https://community.ibm.com/community/user/blogs/marcel-hergaarden/2025/05/30/ibm-storage-ceph-81

Ready to Simplify Your Storage?

Discover more about how IBM Storage Ceph can enable your IT team today with highly scalable, reliable, and agile unified storage at https://www.ibm.com/products/storage-ceph and start a free 60-day trial of Storage Ceph Pro Edition here https://ibm.biz/StorageCephTrial

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