RESOURCES

For this week, Brett is back to dig deeper into the aspects of carefully planning the transition from a single server infrastructure to a clustered storage. ... Read more...

For this week, we have Chris back on camera to talk about everything you need to know when deciding if (and when) you should be transitioning from a single server infrastructure to storage clustering. ... Read more...

This week, Mitch and Brett are back on screen and have been challenged by the community to see if 45Drives could achieve 10k IOPs read/write while using Ceph. ... Read more...

This week, Brett is back to talk about a recent solution that we developed for a customer that was experiencing a very common, data movement problem. ... Read more...

This week, Brett and Mitch are back from their trip to Amsterdam where they attended Cephalocon 2023. ... Read more...

Doug Milburn, President and Co-Founder, is back to talk about the when to choose single servers or clustered storage solutions ... Read more...

Mitch is back to talk about our new 2-day Clustered Storage Bootcamp for Ceph. ... Read more...

Spencer is back to give his opinion on 2+1 erasure code versus 2 replica and which one is better (or are either of them good?)... Read more...

Brett is answering a user-submitted question about sending and receiving data with Ceph. The user had asked: "Does ceph have a send receive like ZFS does to a different host somewhere else? Or does that data have to be just rsync'ed?"... Read more...

Mitch talks about how Ceph orchestration tools are used at 45Drives. We recently received a list of questions from a user on Reddit that centers around our Houston Command Center and our Ceph Deploy module specifically. .. Read more...

Mitch talks about tuning and benchmarking your storage workload with Ceph. This video is part 1 of a multi-part video series centered around Ceph... Read more...

Spencer tells us how to create Grafana graphs using Prometheus and Ceph. This short tutorial will help you monitor your Ceph storage cluster and guide you through all the important metrics.... Read more...

Mitch is back to talk about intelligent tiering with S3 storage. This video will feature a demo that explains how to use life cycle management and intelligent tiering with S3 storage and Ceph... Read more...

Mark from our R&D team is here to walk you through our latest Houston module, that will greatly simplify building your next Ceph cluster... Read more...

Brett talks about how Houston's Navigator (File Explorer) and File Sharing modules compliment building Ceph Clusters... Read more...

Brett adds to his unofficial video series "I Wish This Video Existed When We Learned This Ourselves" and walks you through the process of how to add dedicated journals to existing OSDs... Read more...

Brett talks about the dos and don'ts of multi-site clustering. Specifically, he contrasts the difference between multi-site and disaster recovery and between asynchronous and synchronous clustering with Ceph. Read more...

SUZE Linux and CloudBase Solutions have released their first public beta of native Windows drivers for Ceph. Read more...

I thought we would do this week is go a little more in-depth on Ceph object multisite in particular. It's really well fleshed out. It's really well supported and it's really cool. So let's jump in Read more...

A rundown of the free public and private webinars that we offer. Like the open-source community that we know and love, we want to share our knowledge about storage to anyone who is interested in learning about it. Read more...

We talk about a new project that 45Drives has been working on using Ceph Geo-Replication. What's even more exciting, this project is now ready to be released to the open-source community! Read more...

We talk about storage clustering with Ceph using small data sets. You might think that clustering isn’t really the appropriate solution for users with small amounts of data. Read more...

We answers a question with another analogy! This time, he talks about the recommended number of Ceph monitors to specify when mounting CephFS shares. Read more...

Co-founder Doug Milburn talks about when to consider upgrading from a single server infrastructure to a storage cluster with Ceph software. Read more...

An overview of our Ceph Ansible playbooks. Taking our playbooks for a "test drive" is a great way to find out whether this solution will work for your end application. Read more...

An overview of the main tools that are available to deploy a Ceph storage cluster. He introduces Ceph deploy, Cephadm and Ansible, discusses why we love Ansible at 45Drives and gives an outlook on where he thinks the Ceph developers are going next with these tools. Read more...

Our hugely successful webinar inspired many great questions from our customers. Our R & D team worked hard to provide expert answers to your questions. Read more...

So today we're talking Ceph again, and in particular how its stores. And so, in the past I've talked - kind of high level, how it stores its data, replication, erasure code... Read more...

Okay, so the reason I come to you today is we're talking about sizing big Ceph clusters, but it is a conversation I end up having a lot with our sales team and prospective customers. Read more...

So we've talked a lot on the channel about CephFS, why we love it here at 45 Drives, as well as we've gone in a little deeper on how to expand a storage cluster. Read more...

So Ceph, you've heard us talk about Ceph before, but Ceph is an infinitely scalable storage platform. It's self-healing, it rearranges its own data to... Read more...

So there's a couple things that make CephFS the best distributed file system, but first of all it is fully POSIX compliant and it's got full support for Linux extended attributes. Read more...

Brett is back this week to talk more about NVMe storage. Read more...

Spencer is back to talk about text collectors in Prometheus. Read more...

ZFS is an advanced file system that offers many beneficial features such as pooled storage, data scrubbing, capacity and more. Read more...

ZFS, the file system for FreeNAS, has its own software RAID implementations. They are named differently but are functionally identical to normal RAID. Read more...

ZFS does a few things differently, which is what makes it the premiere software option for storage servers. This article introduces how ZFS’s data-storage hierarchy is organized to provide new users information about the different types of devices, vdevs and zpools, how they are arranged, and some essential information to consider when creating and managing ZFS systems.Read more...

During this video demo, Spencer will demonstrate how to install Rclone and connect to a cloud service. He also walks through connecting to Backblaze B2 and Ceph. Read more...

Alright so choosing the right RAID level is really going to depend on what is most important for you and the application you're going to be using. Read more...

So a ZFS snapshot is a copy of a data-set or a volume that takes up nearly zero space and can be created almost instantly due to the way ZFS works with its copy-on-write system. Read more...

So before we dive in I thought first I would just give a little explanation on what RAID is and why it's useful. Read more...

Alright, so for best practice number one we're going to talk about ZFS installs. So you're always going to want to install ZFS on a 64-bit kernel. Read more...

So ZFS kinda is very transactional in how it makes a right. It's almost more like a database than a streaming file system, and this way it's very atomic... Read more...

Brett is back to give us an update on some new and improved modules inside Houston - our storage management platform... Read more...

In this week's tech tip, our lead engineer, Brett Kelly, talks about updates to Houston's existing file sharing module... Read more...

This week, Brett teases an upcoming module release for Houston that promises to make deploying Ceph clusters, a breeze!... Read more...

we have one of our data storage specialists Spencer give you a run down of how to add two-factor authentication for Houston.... Read more...

This week, our lead engineer, Brett Kelly, gives us a rundown of the final module update for our July 6th Houston UI release... Read more...

In this week's tech tip, our lead engineer, Brett Kelly gives us a rundown of what's new inside our ZFS module and gives a sneak peek at what our final module update will be before our July 6th release.... Read more...

Our lead engineer, Brett Kelly gives us another sneak peek at a new module for Houston. In the second video of our "get em' out of the command line" Houston series, we show off a visual benchmarking module that quickly and easily gives you performance stats for your storage system... Read more...

Our lead engineer, Brett Kelly gives us a sneak peak at an anticipated new module that our R&D team has been working on within Houston. Check out this video to find out why we built a visual file-explorer for Cockpit.... Read more...

Part two of our three-part series on switching an existing server running FreeNAS over to Ubuntu and Houston. Last week, part one focused on alerts and monitoring. This week, Brett shows you how to set up automated snapshots and backing up your data using our Houston Command Center. Read more...

We answer a user-submitted question about the features of our Houston Command Center. This video is one in a three part series on how to switch an existing server running FreeNAS over to Houston running on Ubuntu. Read more...

A step-by-step walkthrough to show users how to set up a Storinator using a fresh install of Ubuntu and our Houston Command Center. Read more...

An awesome overview of the ZFS and hardware modules inside 45Drives new user interface - Houston. He shows how easy it is to set up storage pools, shares, snapshots, and more. Read more...

Spencer is talking about how to set up Windows virtual machines using Proxmox... Read more...

Spencer is back with a 2-part series about backing up your VMs using Proxmox... Read more...

Spencer is back for part 2 of his series about backing up virtual machines using Proxmox... Read more...

Spencer is back to talk about storage clustering with Proxmox - the main way to deploy virtualized environments...Read more...

This article contains a glossary of terms related to server virtualization. It contains some of the most common industry terms and open-source tools...Read more...

Virtualization is an exciting technology that offers many potential benefits to a massive range of applications... Read more...

Virtualization adds an abstraction layer between physical hardware and the systems and programs interacting with it... Read more...

Spencer is back to talk about how Houston UI and Proxmox compliment each other when administering your storage infrastructure... Read more...

Think you can beat the performance numbers from this project? Head on over to our 45HomeLab forum where Mitch has posted an update to the challenge... Read more...

Revisiting the project - back in July 2023 we started looking at the lifetime of consumer hard drives versus enterprise hard drives versus enterprise SSDs... Read more...

For this week, we're heading back to the basics to talk about all of the options you have available from 45Drives to ensure a stress-free time over the holidays... Read more...

This week, Doug and Brett are here to talk about an ongoing project/experiment that we have been working on inside our lab... Read more...

This week, because July is ransomware awareness month, we are diving back into our favorite ransomware protection tool: SnapShield! ... Read more...

This week, Mitch is back to expand on a previous video Brett did around Self-Encrypting Drives... Read more...

This week, we have a debut from Zachary Perry with a topic that, as a support member, he is hearing more and more about and that is SSD trimming... Read more...

This week, Archie is back for a Tuesday Tech Tip to talk about JBOD server expansions and explain why 45Drives doesn't offer these systems...Read more...

This week, Brett is back to talk about self-encrypting hard drives for data encryption...Read more...

This week, Ashley is here to tease you about a new offering coming to 45Drives; Linux training...Read more...

In this video, Doug will discuss the importance of security in data storage. The information...Read more...

This week, Spencer is back to talk about storage snapshotting, what the process is...Read more...

Brett is looking to reduce the amount of time that you spend administering inside Proxmox...Read more...

Ashley is talking about the impact of server downtime for your company...Read more...

Chris is back to talk about the aspects of storage that you need to understand when budgeting for your storage infrastructure...Read more...

Chris is back to talk about what it means to be open-source and how we as a company have adopted the philosophy from the very beginning...Read more...

Your storage server doesn't have to be bland. With the help of our sales team and our custom manufacturing capabilities, we can make your server setup as creative as you can envision it...Read more...

Brett is back to finish up his talk about setting up offline repositories. This time, he is focusing on setting up an offline Ubuntu repository using Aptly...Read more...

Ashley and Spencer sit down with 45Drives customer Thomas Frank. Thomas is one of the most well-known YouTubers who is passionate about helping people, through his content, become more capable and productive...Read more...

Brett is back to talk to you about how to set up your own offline package repository. What happens if you need to download installation files or updates for your operating system or other package files and don't have access to the internet OR you are air gapped for security reasons?...Read more...

Spencer is back to talk about how to index files when using Mac's spotlight search. The spotlight (finder) feature for Macs does not work when you are connected to a Samba share... Read more...

Ashley talks about a new public webinar offering here at 45Drives. Previously, we have been offering public webinars on storage clustering (focusing on Ceph specifically)...Read more...

Spencer talks about setting up and using Nextcloud. Nextcloud is an open source, file sync and share application that offers free, secure, and easily accessible cloud file storage.... Read more...

During this video demo, Spencer will demonstrate how to install Rclone and connect to a cloud service. He also walks through connecting to Backblaze B2 and Ceph...Read more...

This week, Brett talks about new items that are going to be officially launched on August 24th. Along with our previous release of Houston modules, we will also be updating the main Cockpit interface to its newest version. The developers of Cockpit are always updating their core platform, and we want to ensure that we stay up-to-date as well... Read more...

Our Technology Education Manager, Ashely introduces a newsletter series called "The Direct Wire". Interested in becoming a member? Visit our website today to learn more, and become a member of The Direct Wire.... Read more...

Filecoin is the name. And we've been getting a whole lot of interest in it lately. So, I'm going to go through what it is, how you might be able to use a Storinator to take part in the network and then also some of the history on it as well. Read more...

We walk you through how to move your VMs from ESXi to Proxmox. Please note: The process outlined in the video will also work for oVirt, but users will want to use the QEMU-IMG tool rather than the QM tool. Read more...

Alright, so what is Ansible? Ansible is an open source framework tool for administering, updating, pretty much anything you'd ever need to do with your IT infrastructures. Read more...

Here at 45 Drives we have a few characteristics that are at the core of our identity, and one of those is being... Read more...

When most people use S3 (Simple Storage Service), the first thing they think about is Amazon Cloud Storage... Read more...

Ashley breaks down this new service and talks about instances that define a storage emergency, and when this particular service would come in handy... Read more...

Ashley talks about the differences between disaster recovery and high availability when it comes to your storage infrastructure... Read more...

Storinators use a remote management interface called IPMI, which stands for intelligent platform management interface. Read more...

Split brain is a state of a server cluster where nodes diverge from each other and have conflicts. Read more...

Planning out your business continuity can take time, but it could be a significant cost saver in the long run. Read more...

A NAS, or network-attached storage server, is a device that serves as a central location for data storage on your own network. Read more...

When you need reliability, high performance at a larger capacity - enterprise drives are the best option for a trouble-free operation. Read more...

So as I touched on in a previous video, the IPMI is a great interface for system administrators to manage their server. And it does this by way of the BMC or the... Read more...

For this week, Brett is back to talk about the history and importance of the Universal Backplane Management specification... Read more...

Incase you haven't heard, the next-generation Stornado (F2), is now available... Read more...

For this week's tech tip video, Brett is back to talk about the most important tips to consider when handling your hard drives Read more...

This week, we have Spencer giving a brief overview of how our internal storage architecting process works and how it benefits you. Read more...

Brett is back this week to talk about what you can do, if you can't wait that long to incorporate NVMe storage into your infrastructure. Read more...

Brett is back in front of the camera to introduce the next generation of our all-flash storage product; the 2U Stornado. Read more...

Brett and Mitch are looking to build a petabyte Ceph cluster for a Veeam repository. Read more...

we have one of our data storage specialists Spencer give you a run down of what to expect after you purchase a configured storage server from 45Drives. Read more...

Brett focuses in on one of the major mechanical improvements of the Storinator which is the modular drive cages. These drive cages will improve user feel and serviceability when it comes to managing your Storinator storage server. Read more...

Brett focuses in on one of the major improvements of the Storinator which is the direct-wired backplanes. These backplanes give us the ability for hot swapping and staggered spin-up. Read more...

Okay, so the Storinator storage pod is essentially a bunch of hard drives or SSD’s, if you see in our Stornado, attached to a motherboard, and how do you attach all these drives to a... Read more...

We continue on with an in-depth look at PetaSAN with benchmark testing using our starter storage cluster of (3) AV15 servers. Read more...

An in-depth overview of PetaSAN; a great purpose-built appliance for Ceph iSCSI storage. Read more...

We talk about the two ways that Ceph is exported with iSCSI via "the Red Hat way" and the "SUSE Linux way". Plus, Brett introduces PetaSAN which is a purpose-built appliance for Ceph iSCSI storage. Read more...

Brett is back to give you his 5 best practices when using CephFS and Samba. Read more...

we're going to talk about network connections and specifically all the different types of network connections you could have in a storage server, including the 45 Drives storage server. Read more...

So NFS is a distributed file system protocol that was developed way back in 1984 by Sun Microsystems, but today it's considered an open standard which means anyone can use it... Read more...

Network bonding is where you take two or more network interfaces and you combine them into a single logical network interface. This can be great for... Read more...

We have been super busy launching our new #HomeLab division that we forgot to tell you about something else really cool! Read more...

This week was a big one for our team! We hosted our first annual 45Drives Creators' Summit. The week was jam-packed with tours, demos, engaging talks and sailing! Read more...

This week is a big one for us! We are hosting our first annual 45Drives Creators' Summit. In this video, Mitch explains the details of what a creators' summit Read more...

This week, we have Darryll and Christien discussing one aspect of our business that makes us unique in the storage solution industry - our lead times. Read more...

Chris is back to discuss the configuration packages that are available when purchasing your Storinator product(s). When we say we are going to support you through the entire process of solving your storage problems, we truly mean it. Read more...

Brett Kelly here for another 45Drives Tuesday Tech Tip, except this week, it's less of a tip and more of a story people ask all the time. And we love telling the story, frankly. Where do you come from, what is the origin story of 45 Drives? So let's get into it. Read more...

What is STaaS? STaaS stands for storage-as-a-service, and it's part of the whole trend towards renting or subscribing to some sort of IT infrastructure, which probably started with software-as-a-service or SaaS. Let's come back to STaaS in a little while. But first, let's talk about why it exists in the first place. Read more...

Introducing two new products from 45Drives; the Mi4 and the C8. These front loading servers are perfect for storage infrastructures that need to be affordable and high-performing but don't necessarily need a massive amount of storage. Read more...

An update on our operating system of choice going forward for our server products. You may have heard that IBM and RedHat are "killing off" CentOS Linux. This has forced us to be a little more strategic, as we choose a new primary operating system going forward. Read more...

Ashley talks about the advantages and longevity of a 45Drives storage server compared to those provided by legacy vendors. She talks about "planned obsolescence" and how some legacy vendors plan to have a pre-determined life for their hardware. Read more...

Alright, so the story begins with Protocase. So for those who are unaware, (Protocase, I’m wearing the hat today) Protocase is 45 Drives’ parent company. Read more...