Ceph vs Lightbits Comparison
Find out why Lightbits offers superior performance over Ceph Storage for modern cloud environments in OpenStack, OpenShift, and Kubernetes.
Cloud architecture is gaining significant momentum in data centers as many organizations are repatriating their public cloud workloads back on-premises, modernizing their data center, or building specialized cloud services. The strategy is integrating the best capabilities of the public cloud, such as efficiency, scalability, flexibility, automation, and agility but with on-premises control.
Technologies that have emerged as key enablers of on-premises cloud architecture are software-defined storage with open-source orchestrators such as OpenStack, OpenShift, and Kubernetes. And two software-defined storage solutions have emerged as foundational components of modern cloud architecture: Ceph Storage and Lightbits.
Compared to other solutions, Lightbits earns 4.7 stars on Gartner software-defined storage vendor reviews.
Whether you are building from the ground up or modernizing your infrastructure, making a decision on one solution, or augmenting your current Ceph Storage environment, Lightbits offers many learning materials to explore and understand the key differences between the two based on parameters like speed, latency, scalability, data persistence, and cloud integration.
- Whitepaper: Software-Defined Storage for Private Clouds
- Webinar: The Next Evolution Beyond Ceph
- Blog: What Makes Software-Defined Storage the Next Evolution in Cloud Computing
Key Comparison Between Ceph Storage and Lightbits
| Parameter | Ceph Storage | Lightbits | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speed (Throughput) | Good performance, but limited by Ceph’s NVMe-oF gateway | 16x faster than Ceph with NVMe-oF engineered for direct host connectivity. | Ceph’s NVMe-oF gateway introduces additional architectural complexity, leading to bottlenecks and increased storage networking latency. Lightbits is engineered for direct and high-performance host connectivity. |
| Latency | Higher latency, especially in large clusters | Low latency (typically under 100 microseconds) | |
| Data Persistence | Supports data persistence but can be slower | High persistence with built-in data resilience | Lightbits provides better persistence features, ensuring reliability and fast recovery. |
| Scalability | Highly scalable but can require significant resources for large clusters | Seamless scalability with automatic expansion | Lightbits scales efficiently in cloud and data center environments, while Ceph may need more manual intervention when scaling. |
| Automation | Requires significant manual intervention in management and maintenance | Fully automated system with integrated DevOps tools | Lightbits offers better automation features for easy integration with DevOps processes, unlike Ceph, which needs more manual handling. |
| Cost Efficiency | Can become costly in large environments due to resource consumption | Best price/performance scenario | Lightbits is more cost-effective for performance-sensitive workloads at scale, while Ceph might incur higher costs due to more hardware and bigger data center footprint to reach the same level of performance |
| Cloud Integration | Supports cloud integration but can be complex to manage | Simple and direct cloud integration with AWS, Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure | Lightbits Cinder plugin for OpenStack and OpenShift; while the CSI plugin enables Kubernetes to store persistent volumes in a Lightbits cluster. Ceph requires more customization. |
| Storage Architecture | Open-source, distributed object, file, and block storage architecture originally intended for HDDs, many core design elements optimizing HDD behavior still remain | Purpose-built for NVMe-based storage with a focus on performance, scalability, resiliency, and cost-efficiency. | Ceph offers a more traditional distributed storage model, while Lightbits is focused on NVMe storage for superior performance. |
| Data Protection | Provides strong data protection via replication and erasure coding | Advanced data protection with built-in redundancy and persistence | Lightbits offers advanced protection and data resilience compared to Ceph’s traditional approaches. |
| Community & Ecosystem | Large, mature community with many contributors and widespread use | Growing ecosystem, particularly in high-performance sectors like finsvcs, eCommerce, AI/ML, biotech, pharma, CSPs and MSPs | Ceph has a more mature and extensive community, while Lightbits is growing rapidly attracting price/performance-sensitive users. |
