RADOS – the Brain of Object Storage

Technology is filled with terms, and some of them are more important to know than others. For people that are looking to utilize the Ceph distributed storage system, you will likely come across the abbreviation RADOS. RADOS stands for Reliable Autonomic Distributed Object Store, and it is, simply put, the brains and neural system of Ceph-based Object Storage like MojoStorage. RADOS is a system that orchestrates a collection of commodity servers. Another name for commodity servers is storage nodes.

If you’ve already taken the time to familiarize yourself with RAID, you know that for an array of drives, a system exists that ensures redundancy and organizes content in a way that stores more than one copy on any given drive. You could say that RADOS is a far more elaborate system than RAID, though they are somewhat similar. The true magic of RADOS is the math that governs data placement, ensuring system stability and no loss of information in case of drive, server, and even multiple server failures. For those of you who aren’t particularly tech-savvy, but still curious, here’s a good way to visualize RADOS. If RAID was Terminator 1’s T-850 (Arnold Schwarzenegger), RADOS would be the T-X liquid lady (Kristanna Loken) in Terminator 3. RADOS takes data replication to a whole other level, being able to virtualize storage resources across multiples of servers.

Ceph RADOS has several uses, and one of the common ones is that they are used as a standalone system, or a backend, for different types of block storage. Having the ability to scale hundreds and thousands of hardware devices, using management software that runs on each individual node. This software provides storage features like snapshots and replication, as well as thin provisioning, which can be incredibly useful.

RADOS is one of the central tenets of Ceph and is part of the processes that ensure data safety for people using it. By providing block storage capabilities, RADOS is an integral part of the system. It can be used with Object Storage via the popular S3 and Swift protocols. Ceph is a widely trusted system offered by many hosting and IT solution providers, including MojoHost.

Whether you are looking for dynamic storage clusters, a technology that supports emerging IT infrastructures, or a service that is scalable, reliable, and easy to use, Ceph is something that businesses can consider utilizing. It has elements that touch on data safety, failure detection, cluster recovery, data distribution, data replication, and cluster updates.

With an open-source community maintaining and developing it, Ceph RADOS was created at the University of California. It has had major impacts on technology, particularly in object storage and storage management. Getting the best for your web hosting package is essential. MojoHost provides all of the tools that people need to make an educated decision and get the best services for their needs. In addition to the articles here, you can contact MojoHost with questions about specific services offered.