First Experiences with CEPH on the WLCG Grid

Abstract

Much interest has been shown in the Ceph storage platform and this paper presents an introduction to Ceph, object stores, and the initial results of testing Ceph for possible use at large sites. We look at its performance when used as a disk cache for a traditional HSM and compare its performance with competing systems. In addition, we present a model comparing hardware usage for various Ceph configurations with RAL's existing CASTOR instance and discuss future plans for Ceph deployment at RAL.