Measuring the WAL vs DB Performance Gap on Ceph USB OSDs
Nine of my fifteen Ceph OSDs use WAL-only acceleration while six use DB. I set out to measure the performance gap and discovered the real story isn't WAL vs DB — it's the USB 3.0 hardware ceiling that dominates everything. The matched-hardware comparison shows DB is 5-15% faster on reads, not the 32% that naive cross-node testing suggested.
SSH Key-Based Access to a Proxmox Cluster
Typing passwords every time you SSH into a Proxmox node gets old fast — especially with a six-node cluster. Here's how to set up SSH key authentication and an SSH config so you can just type 'ssh harlan' and be in.
Hybrid Ceph Storage: SSD WAL/DB Acceleration with USB Drive Data
Running Ceph on USB drives sounds crazy until you put the WAL and DB on an SSD. Here's how separating metadata onto a Crucial MX500 transformed my 15-OSD homelab cluster from sluggish to surprisingly capable — at a fraction of all-SSD costs.
When ZFS and Ceph Problems Collide: Diagnosing Overlapping Failures on Proxmox
A routine ZFS scrub alert on harlan turned into a multi-hour debugging session when a hostid mismatch fix collided with a pre-existing Ceph OSD failure from a dead USB drive. Here's how overlapping storage problems can mask each other and how to untangle them.
Ceph OSD Recovery After Power Failure: SAN Switch Was Dead the Whole Time
A power outage knocked my Ceph cluster from 15 healthy OSDs down to 4. The recovery took days of debugging — heartbeat cascades, a ceph.conf misconfiguration, and a dead SAN switch hiding behind NO-CARRIER flags on every node.
Monitoring ZFS Boot Mirror Health in Proxmox 8 Clusters
Automated SMART monitoring and cost planning for ZFS boot mirrors across a six-node Proxmox homelab cluster with mixed SSD/HDD hardware. Track drive health, plan replacements, and manage homelab storage costs effectively.
Optimizing Jellyfin on Proxmox: Moving Metadata to CephFS and Shrinking LXC Footprints
A comprehensive guide to resolving Jellyfin LXC disk space issues by migrating metadata to CephFS and optimizing container size for faster HA failovers.
USB Drive SMART Updates: Fast-Track to the GRUB Solution
New USB drives arrived for my Ceph cluster, and they’re not reporting SMART data. Again. After solving this problem in my October 2025 article, I need to update the configuration with new device IDs and share the lessons learned from running this solution across my entire cluster.
The bottom line: This was absolutely the right decision. SMART monitoring has already caught failing drives before they damaged data, and the performance trade-off is negligible compared to the stability benefits.