back to article SUSE punts SES v5.5 out door, says storage is going software-defined and open source

Private equity-owned SUSE has released v5.5 of its software-defined, Ceph-powered Enterprise Storage (SES) platform. SES is an all-in-one object storage repository with both file and block access protocols. It is common to have unified file and block – Dell EMC Unity and NetApp's ONTAP – and unified file and object – Cloudian …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The main challenge I had with SuSE was that it could never quite use the packages out there and needed its own for YAST. That said, when I wanted a desktop without immediately having to make a choice of which specific one to use (plus running some services to experiment with) I found it very usable indeed.

    I have bought many a DVD before it all went online, and I am old enough to have bought Slackware CDs (downloading it was a pain, and you could always cut floppies off it) - I just seem to have less use for it now..

    Anyway, must have a look once again :)

    1. HolySchmoley

      "I have bought many a DVD before it all went online, and I am old enough to have bought Slackware CDs (downloading it was a pain, and you could always cut floppies off it)"

      So you must be a youff who arrived after CDs were invented.

      Floppies would have been a *luxury* to us. We had to copy it out, by hand (with both of our hands cut off), onto soggy newspaper, using an empty fountain pen, cos our dad had made us drink the ink for breakfast (our once-a-year breakfast). Tell the kids of today that and they won't believe you.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        OK, that was the most unexpected appearance of the 4 Yorkshire men sketch ever.

        Thanks for that :)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "The main challenge I had with SuSE ...."

      I've been looking at SuSe recently because CentOS is getting a bit old (no sign of Centos 8 on the horizon with the associated newer kernel and packages) and Ubuntu has just become a pile of over-hyped mess (e.g. based on the stupidity of the fields it requires you to enter, the installer GUI for the latest version was written by people who quite clearly don't understand networking).

      I tried Alpine Linux, I really wanted to like it. But still too much of a work in progress (the documentation is poor, most of it is a wiki which varies in quality and obsolescence. Also during my trial I encountered at least 3 or 4 packages that where incorrectly built, some of which were built so incorrectly it rendered them quite literally unusable ....an intern with the README and a compiler could have done a better job).

      So that left me really as SuSe being the only real third option to look at. Its OK, but its a bit opinionated (e.g. packages that install binaries in non-standard directories because of "some obscure legacy reason", SuSe is the only distro I've seen that does this) and has a bit of an over-dependence on YAST. But overall its fairly harmless...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        > ... no sign of Centos 8 on the horizon with the associated newer kernel and packages ...

        It's not far off. Xmas present maybe? :)

  2. Nate Amsden

    how is this different from red hat?

    Maybe pricing?

    Red hat seems to offer the same sort of thing: https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/storage/ceph

    Given Red hat bought the company that created Ceph (https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-acquire-inktank-provider-ceph), article is not clear why someone would want to choose this platform over another based on Ceph.

    But I guess the article is not alone, looking at the SuSE Ceph site - it makes no attempt to say how or why they may be better than Red hat (or any other Ceph-based solution), it only compares itself to non Ceph.

    Obviously I'd expect much of the underlying core code to be the same across systems but they can differentiate with their pricing and their monitoring/management tools(vs other Ceph solutions), if they do differentiate they don't do a good job at communicating that.

    Of course if you are already a SuSE Linux customer than it would make sense to use them if you were interested in a Ceph storage option.

    (Not a Red hat nor SuSE customer, never used Ceph))

    I was a brief SuSE customer I guess you could say maybe 13 to 15 years ago, bought several versions of their desktop linux distro at the time. It was pretty slick, though my sister used it more than me I kept to Debian, until at some point switching to Ubuntu on desktop/laptop(only) and now Mint(MATE). I remember one time looking at my sister's computer with SuSE and she had installed Yahoo messenger on it, the windows version. I was shocked that wine worked so well she could do it herself without asking me(she knew very little about computers).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: how is this different from red hat?

      Isn't ceph a bit humongous for all but the biggest setups? I've been researching LizardFS and that appears to be quite capable of running large setups, provided you add raft (in the form of uRaft) to it for HA.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: how is this different from red hat?

        > Isn't ceph a bit humongous for all but the biggest setups?

        Maybe confusing it with Lustre?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: how is this different from red hat?

        As far as I know LizardFS is completely separate project.

        SUSE storage is based on CEPH (Red Hat).

    2. rcxb Silver badge

      Re: how is this different from red hat?

      The article is fine, you just missed it:

      "SUSE was the number-two contributor to Ceph open-source code, and said it typically brought out commercial versions of Ceph releases from the open-source community four to six months before Red Hat."

    3. Rainer

      Re: how is this different from red hat?

      SuSE's Storage Server is much cheaper than RedHat.

      It's licensed by node and the prices are reasonable.

      I hate stuff that is licensed by TB (or GB, if you're an EMC customer).

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