I recently started looking into Ceph as a possible replacement for our 2 node Glustr cluster. After reading numerous blog posts and several videos on the topic, I believe that the following three videos provide the best overview and necessary insight into how Ceph works, what it offers, how to mange a cluster, and how it differs from Gluster.

This video was given at the 2013 linux.conf.au conference. The first one is a Ceph only talk given by Florian Haas and Tim Serong.  It provides a complete overview of the Ceph software, it’s feature set and goes into detail about the current status of each of Ceph’s components (block storage, object storage, filesystem storage, etc).

The second video is a bit more lighthearted, it is a talk which involves some back and forth between Ceph’s Saige Weil and Gluster’s John Mark Walker, the talk is moderated by Florian Haas.  It covers some of the basic use cases for each file systems, offers some technical insight into the overall design, some of the ways in which the filesystems are similar, some items that are on each of their roadmaps moving forward,  as well as some of the ways each of  the projects differ from one another.

The final video also takes place at the 2013 linux.conf.au conference.  It covers some of the same topics that were discussed in the prior two videos, however this one is also geared toward the operations aspect of managing a Ceph cluster.  This talk is given by Saige Weil as well.