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.
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.
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.
Homelab Storage Economics: Ceph vs Single Drive Costs
After building and running a Ceph cluster for my homelab, I’ve gained valuable insights into the real-world economics of distributed storage versus traditional single-drive solutions. This analysis breaks down the actual costs per GB across different storage strategies in my setup.