Enterprise Services · Storage & Consulting

Ceph Storage – Software-Defined Storage for Your Cloud

Ceph is the leading open-source solution for distributed, highly available storage. We plan, operate and manage Ceph clusters for Proxmox and KVM environments – fault-tolerant, freely scalable and without expensive proprietary SAN hardware, operated in our data center in Frankfurt am Main.

What makes Ceph the ideal storage solution

Ceph is a software-defined storage system that combines storage across many servers into a single, highly available cluster. Instead of relying on expensive, proprietary SAN or NAS hardware, Ceph uses standard servers and unifies block, file and object storage in a single platform.

The result is storage that grows with your requirements: you simply add more nodes, and both capacity and performance scale linearly. Data is automatically replicated across multiple nodes – if a server fails, your storage remains available without interruption. These very properties make Ceph the foundation of modern cloud infrastructures.

Ceph and Proxmox – an ideal combination

Ceph integrates seamlessly into Proxmox VE. In a Proxmox cluster, Ceph can be managed directly via the web interface – without a separate storage appliance, without additional licensing costs. The virtual machines reside on highly available Ceph storage, which is what makes live migration, high availability and snapshots truly powerful.

This combination of Proxmox and Ceph is the sovereign open-source answer to classic VMware vSAN setups: if a node fails, the VMs continue running on the remaining nodes, and the storage remains consistently available. For companies migrating from VMware, this is often the decisive building block.

Ceph in KVM and CloudStack environments

Ceph also plays to its strengths beyond Proxmox. In pure KVM environments and in our CloudStack private cloud, Ceph serves as a distributed storage layer that supplies virtual machines with fault-tolerant storage. Via the RADOS Block Device (RBD), VMs can run directly on Ceph, while CephFS and the S3-compatible object storage cover further use cases.

How we support you

A Ceph cluster only delivers its strengths when it is properly planned and operated. This is exactly where we come in:

Consulting & planning – We size your Ceph cluster to match your requirements for capacity, performance and fault tolerance.
Setup & migration – We set up your cluster and safely migrate existing workloads to Ceph.
Operation & managed service – On request, we operate your Ceph cluster entirely in our data center, including monitoring and maintenance.
Optimization – We analyse existing Ceph installations and optimize performance, replication and fault tolerance.

Your benefits with Ceph at IMT-Systems

Highly available – automatic replication, no single point of failure
Linearly scalable – capacity and performance grow with every node
No SAN hardware – standard servers instead of expensive proprietary storage systems
Seamless integration – optimally tuned for Proxmox, KVM and CloudStack
Sovereign & GDPR-compliant – operated exclusively in Frankfurt am Main
Genuine expertise – a dedicated contact person instead of an anonymous hotline

Get advice on Ceph

Are you planning a Ceph cluster, looking to optimize an existing installation, or want to put your storage on a future-proof open-source basis? We advise you honestly and without obligation on which architecture makes sense for your requirements.

Request Ceph consulting

Infrastructure

Data Center

All IMT-Systems data centers meet industry standard certifications. In Frankfurt am Main we use multiple high-performance data centers at Digital Realty (Interxion). Thanks to the extremely fast connection to Germany's largest internet exchange point, the DE-CIX, we offer optimal connectivity and the best possible latency within Germany and Europe.