OS Recommendations

Ceph Dependencies

As a general rule, we recommend deploying Ceph on newer releases of Linux. We also recommend deploying on releases with long-term support.

Linux Kernel

  • Ceph Kernel Client

    If you are using the kernel client to map RBD block devices or mount CephFS, the general advice is to use a “stable” or “longterm maintenance” kernel series provided by either http://kernel.org or your Linux distribution on any client hosts.

    For RBD, if you choose to track long-term kernels, we currently recommend 4.x-based “longterm maintenance” kernel series:

    • 4.19.z

    • 4.14.z

    For CephFS, see CephFS best practices for kernel version guidance.

    Older kernel client versions may not support your CRUSH tunables profile or other newer features of the Ceph cluster, requiring the storage cluster to be configured with those features disabled.

Platforms

The charts below show how Ceph’s requirements map onto various Linux platforms. Generally speaking, there is very little dependence on specific distributions aside from the kernel and system initialization package (i.e., sysvinit, upstart, systemd).

Nautilus (14.2.z)

Distro

Release

Code Name

Kernel

Notes

Testing

CentOS

7

N/A

linux-3.10.0

3

B, I, C

Debian

8.0

Jessie

linux-3.16.0

1, 2

B, I

Debian

9.0

Stretch

linux-4.9

1, 2

B, I

RHEL

7

Maipo

linux-3.10.0

B, I

Ubuntu

14.04

Trusty Tahr

linux-3.13.0

B, I, C

Ubuntu

16.04

Xenial Xerus

linux-4.4.0

3

B, I, C

Ubuntu

18.04

Bionic Beaver

linux-4.15

3

B, I, C

openSUSE

15.1

Leap

linux-4.12

openSUSE

Tumbleweed

linux-5.1.7

Luminous (12.2.z)

Distro

Release

Code Name

Kernel

Notes

Testing

CentOS

7

N/A

linux-3.10.0

3

B, I, C

Debian

8.0

Jessie

linux-3.16.0

1, 2

B, I

Debian

9.0

Stretch

linux-4.9

1, 2

B, I

Fedora

22

N/A

linux-3.14.0

B, I

RHEL

7

Maipo

linux-3.10.0

B, I

Ubuntu

14.04

Trusty Tahr

linux-3.13.0

B, I, C

Ubuntu

16.04

Xenial Xerus

linux-4.4.0

3

B, I, C

Notes

  • 1: The default kernel has an older version of btrfs that we do not recommend for ceph-osd storage nodes. We recommend using XFS.

  • 2: The default kernel has an old Ceph client that we do not recommend for kernel client (kernel RBD or the Ceph file system). Upgrade to a recommended kernel.

  • 3: The default kernel regularly fails in QA when the btrfs file system is used. We do not recommend using btrfs for backing Ceph OSDs.

Testing

  • B: We build release packages for this platform. For some of these platforms, we may also continuously build all ceph branches and exercise basic unit tests.

  • I: We do basic installation and functionality tests of releases on this platform.

  • C: We run a comprehensive functional, regression, and stress test suite on this platform on a continuous basis. This includes development branches, pre-release, and released code.