Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
How Simple Could Ceph Be? - Ernesto Puerta, IBM
Ceph is as renowned for its versatility and performance as it is for its complexity. Over the last decade, the Community has invested great efforts into improving the usability of Ceph (e.g.: ceph-mgr, centralized config, Ceph-Dashboard, Rook/Cephadm, profiles, auto-tunables, etc.).
However, mailing lists, forums and Slack channels continue to receive regular user comments on the difficulty of installing, configuring, operating, fine-tuning and troubleshooting Ceph.
In this talk we will try to answer the question “how simple could Ceph be”. To do so, we'll:
- Analyze where Ceph complexity comes from, and try to categorize its causes,
- Review the history of improvements,
- Propose initiatives to improve the usability of Ceph (both incremental and disruptive too),
- Identify the possible challenges faced (backward compatibility, long-term sustainability, etc.), as well as remediations.
How Simple Could Ceph Be? - Ernesto Puerta, IBM
Ceph is as renowned for its versatility and performance as it is for its complexity. Over the last decade, the Community has invested great efforts into improving the usability of Ceph (e.g.: ceph-mgr, centralized config, Ceph-Dashboard, Rook/Cephadm, profiles, auto-tunables, etc.).
However, mailing lists, forums and Slack channels continue to receive regular user comments on the difficulty of installing, configuring, operating, fine-tuning and troubleshooting Ceph.
In this talk we will try to answer the question “how simple could Ceph be”. To do so, we'll:
- Analyze where Ceph complexity comes from, and try to categorize its causes,
- Review the history of improvements,
- Propose initiatives to improve the usability of Ceph (both incremental and disruptive too),
- Identify the possible challenges faced (backward compatibility, long-term sustainability, etc.), as well as remediations.
