Ceph in 2026: versions, roadmap, and production best practices.
Squid is stable. Tentacle is on the way. And the decisions you make about your storage architecture this year will define your infrastructure for the next five. This is everything you need to know — no vendor pitch, just engineering.
Ceph is the most mature and widely deployed open-source platform that delivers block, object, and file storage from a single cluster with no single point of failure. It is used in production by organisations managing petabytes of data — from research labs to cloud providers. With Tentacle (v20) now released and Squid (v19) still widely deployed, 2026 is a good year to understand where Ceph stands and where it's going.
At SIXE we've been deploying and supporting Ceph infrastructure in production for years. This page is the reference we wish existed when we started: current releases, real-world features, honest best practices, and zero marketing waffle.
(Tentacle)
from one cluster
of failure
What is Ceph?
Ceph is a free, open-source software-defined storage platform that unifies object, block, and file storage in a single distributed cluster. Originally built by Sage Weil as part of his PhD at UC Santa Cruz, it is now maintained by a global community and commercially supported by IBM (as IBM Storage Ceph) and Red Hat (as part of OpenShift Data Foundation).
What makes Ceph different from traditional storage is its CRUSH algorithm: data is distributed across commodity hardware with no central metadata server, so the cluster can self-heal when a disk or node fails. No proprietary appliance, no vendor lock-in, no silent single point of failure waiting to ruin your quarter.
If you're evaluating alternatives, our Ceph vs Storage Scale (GPFS), NFS, and GFS2 comparison covers the trade-offs. For object storage specifically, see Ceph vs MinIO.
Ceph doesn't care how many disks you have or where they are. You add hardware, Ceph redistributes the data. You lose hardware, Ceph rebuilds automatically. That's the entire value proposition, and it's a good one.
Ceph version history
Ceph follows a predictable release cadence with major versions every 12–18 months, each named alphabetically after a marine creature. Here's where things stand:
Quincy (17.x) reached end of life in 2025. If you're still running it, the upgrade path is Quincy → Reef → Squid → Tentacle. The official upgrade docs walk through the process step by step. Full changelogs are on the Ceph releases page.
Don't skip versions. Ceph only supports sequential upgrades (Quincy → Reef → Squid). Planning the jump before your current version hits end-of-life is considerably cheaper than doing it under pressure.
Ceph Squid (v19): the current stable release
Squid is a meaningful step forward in both performance and operational maturity. The headline features:
Crimson OSD: early adoption
The Crimson OSD is a ground-up rewrite of the classic Object Storage Daemon using the Seastar framework. It replaces the traditional multi-threaded architecture with a shared-nothing, run-to-completion model. Translation: significantly lower latency on NVMe-backed clusters, especially for the small random I/O patterns typical of databases and virtualisation workloads. Crimson continues to mature across releases — it's available for early adoption in specific scenarios, but the classic OSD remains the default for most production deployments.
RADOS Gateway performance
The S3-compatible object layer got faster multipart uploads, better garbage collection, and lower memory consumption under heavy PUT workloads. If you're using Ceph as a data lake for AI training sets or as a backup target, this is the kind of unsexy improvement that saves you real money at scale.
CephFS + NFS-Ganesha
CephFS gained better NFS export support via NFS-Ganesha, improved snapshots, and more granular quotas. We've written a detailed guide on high-availability NFS with Ceph and Ganesha if you're running this in production.
Dashboard refresh
The built-in web management UI got a facelift, better Prometheus alerting integration, and new pages for RBD mirroring and CephFS subvolumes. Still not going to win design awards, but it does the job.
Ceph Tentacle (v20): the latest generation
Tentacle was released on 18 November 2025 and is now the recommended version for new deployments. Its key improvements over Squid:
- Crimson for erasure-coded pools — expanding Crimson's performance benefits beyond replicated pools to cost-efficient bulk storage.
- Smarter RADOS tiering — better data placement policies for hybrid clusters mixing NVMe, SSD, and HDD.
- RGW encryption improvements — more granular bucket-level key management with external KMS integration.
- MDS at scale — better metadata server performance for clusters with billions of files.
Full release notes are on the Ceph releases page. Track ongoing development on the Ceph project tracker and the ceph-devel mailing list.
If you're running Squid in production and it's stable, there's no rush to jump to Tentacle immediately. But for new deployments, Tentacle is the recommended starting point — you get all of Squid's improvements plus the Tentacle enhancements from day one.
Rook-Ceph: storage for Kubernetes clusters
Rook is the CNCF-graduated operator that deploys and manages Ceph natively inside Kubernetes. If you're running containerised workloads, Rook-Ceph is the standard way to get persistent storage without leaving the Kubernetes ecosystem.
Recent Rook releases have focused on operator stability, smoother OSD scaling (adding or removing disks is less disruptive now), better Helm chart defaults for production, and tighter integration with OpenShift Data Foundation.
For teams on Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Power, Rook-Ceph provides a solid path to persistent storage. SIXE offers Ceph training courses covering both standalone admin and Rook-based deployments. If you're starting from scratch, our guide on how to learn Ceph maps out a structured path.
Ceph features and use cases
One cluster, three interfaces. That's Ceph's party trick — and it's a genuinely useful one. Each access layer serves a different type of workload:
Most storage solutions force you to choose: block OR object OR file. Ceph does all three from a single pool of hardware. That's fewer systems to operate, fewer vendors to manage, and fewer 3AM calls about the storage array you forgot existed.
Who uses Ceph in production?
Ceph isn't a lab experiment — it runs critical workloads at scale. Cloud providers use it for multi-tenant infrastructure, research institutions for petabyte-scale data lakes, and enterprises for unified storage behind Kubernetes and OpenStack. CERN, Bloomberg, Deutsche Telekom, DigitalOcean, and OVHcloud are among the publicly known large-scale adopters.
The most common deployment scenarios we see at SIXE:
- Cloud infrastructure — backend storage for OpenStack or Kubernetes, replacing proprietary SANs.
- AI/HPC pipelines — S3 object storage for training datasets, block storage for GPU-attached compute nodes.
- Backup and archiving — erasure-coded object storage replacing tape or proprietary deduplication appliances.
- Enterprise file shares — CephFS + NFS-Ganesha replacing traditional NAS for departmental shares.
Platform compatibility
Ceph best practices in 2026
Deploying Ceph is not hard. Deploying Ceph well is where the difference is between a cluster that hums along for years and one that keeps you up at night. Here's what actually matters:
Hardware sizing
- OSDs: Dedicate NVMe SSDs for the WAL/DB partition, even if the main OSD disks are HDDs. This single change can double your random write performance.
- Network: 10 Gbps minimum for the public network, separate 10 Gbps (or higher) for the cluster/replication network. Network is almost always the bottleneck — not CPU, not memory.
- Memory: Plan for 4–5 GB RAM per OSD daemon. BlueStore on NVMe may need more.
Configuration
- Replication vs erasure coding: Use replication (3x) for latency-sensitive workloads (RBD, CephFS). Use erasure coding for bulk storage (RGW backups, archives). Don't guess — profile first.
- CRUSH map: Design it to reflect your physical failure domains (rack, row, datacenter). The default config assumes all OSDs live in one happy failure domain. They don't.
- Monitoring: Ceph Dashboard + Prometheus + Grafana. Configure alerts for OSD down events, nearfull thresholds, and slow ops. If your cluster can page you before users notice, you're doing it right.
Common pitfalls
The most common Ceph error we see in production — could not connect to ceph cluster despite configured monitors — has a surprisingly simple fix most of the time. Our Ceph troubleshooting guide walks through it and the other usual suspects step by step.
Never let a Ceph cluster get above 85% capacity. CRUSH rebalancing becomes increasingly painful as you approach full. You won't notice the problem gradually — you'll notice it all at once. Plan your expansion before you need it.
Ceph vs the rest: a quick comparison
Every storage solution has trade-offs. Here's an honest snapshot — no shade at anyone, just different tools for different jobs:
Need the full picture? Our detailed analyses go deeper: Ceph vs MinIO and Ceph vs Storage Scale (GPFS).
Need help with Ceph in production?
Reading docs is one thing. Running a Ceph cluster under SLA with actual data that matters is another conversation entirely. SIXE is an IBM Business Partner with hands-on experience designing, deploying, and operating Ceph infrastructure across Europe.
- Consulting & deployment — Architecture design, hardware sizing, CRUSH map optimisation, and production hardening.
- Official Ceph training — From standalone admin to Rook-based Kubernetes deployments, with hands-on labs.
- Ongoing support — Monitoring, upgrades, troubleshooting. Senior engineers, no helpdesks.
- AI/HPC storage consulting — Ceph architectures for machine learning pipelines and high-performance computing.
We're the team you call when the cluster is on fire — and the team you should have called before it caught fire. Tell us about your project and we'll tell you what it actually takes.
The essentials in 5 points
→ Ceph Tentacle (v20) is the latest release (Nov 2025), with erasure-coded Crimson, smarter tiering, and improved MDS performance.
→ Squid (v19) remains a solid active branch — widely deployed, with Crimson OSD early adoption, faster RGW, and better CephFS/NFS support.
→ Reef (v18) has reached end of life — final release 18.2.8 shipped March 2026. Plan your upgrade to Squid or Tentacle.
→ Rook-Ceph remains the standard for Kubernetes-native Ceph deployments, now with smoother scaling.
→ Three interfaces from one cluster: block (RBD), object (RGW), and file (CephFS) — the most mature open-source unified storage platform available.
Frequently asked questions
What is the latest stable version of Ceph?
Ceph Tentacle (v20.x), released in November 2025. Squid (v19.x) is also an active stable branch and remains widely deployed. Reef (v18.x) reached end of life with its final release (18.2.8) in March 2026 — new deployments should target Squid or Tentacle.
Can Ceph replace NFS in production?
CephFS can serve NFS exports via NFS-Ganesha, and it works well in production. But Ceph is not a drop-in NFS replacement — it requires cluster planning, network design, and operational know-how. It's a different animal.
Is Ceph suitable for production workloads?
Yes. Ceph runs in production at organisations managing petabytes of data, from research institutions to cloud providers. It is commercially supported by IBM and Red Hat.
What is the difference between Ceph and MinIO?
Ceph provides block, object, and file storage from one cluster. MinIO focuses exclusively on S3-compatible object storage. Ceph is more versatile but operationally more complex; MinIO is simpler for pure object storage workloads. Both are excellent — different tools, different trade-offs.
How does Rook-Ceph work with Kubernetes?
Rook is a CNCF-graduated operator that automates Ceph deployment, scaling, and upgrades inside Kubernetes. It provides CSI-based dynamic provisioning for RBD and CephFS volumes — you create a PVC, Rook handles the rest.
References
Ceph. Official documentation and release notes. docs.ceph.com/releases
Ceph. Project homepage and downloads. ceph.io
Rook. Cloud-Native Storage for Kubernetes. rook.io
IBM. IBM Storage Ceph. ibm.com/products/storage-ceph
Red Hat. Red Hat Ceph Storage. redhat.com/technologies/storage/ceph
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