In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:
- Understanding the VSM architecture
- Setting up the VSM environment
- Getting ready for VSM
- Installing VSM
- Creating a Ceph cluster using VSM
- Exploring the VSM dashboard
- Upgrading the Ceph cluster using VSM
- VSM roadmap
- VSM resources
The Virtual Storage Manager (VSM) is a software originally initiated and developed by Intel for Ceph cluster management; it was later open sourced by Intel under the Apache 2.0 License. Ceph comes with the ceph-deploy CLI tool for cluster deployment, and it also provides a rich CLI for cluster management. VSM on the other hand provides a web-based user interface to simplify the creation and management of Ceph clusters. By using the VSM GUI Ceph cluster, the operator can monitor overall cluster health, manage cluster hardware and storage capacity, as well as attach the Ceph storage pools to the OpenStack cinder.
VSM is developed in Python using OpenStack Horizon as its base for the application framework. It has the familiar look and feel of OpenStack Horizon for both software developers and OpenStack administrators. Some of the key features of VSM include the following:
- A Web-based user interface for the easy administration of the Ceph cluster
- It better organizes and manages the server and storage devices
- It aids the Ceph cluster's deployment and scale up by adding the MON, OSD, and MDS nodes
- It aids the Ceph cluster component and capacity monitoring
- It is beneficial to the overall cluster and individual node performance monitoring
- It allows the creation of erasure coded and cache tier pools
- It assists in creating and attaching pools to the OpenStack cinder
- It brings the multi user management interface to Ceph cluster
- It allows for the upgrading of the Ceph cluster