Hi everyone,

I recently started working on Ceph.

First of all, Ceph is a collection of programs that provides Object storage, Block Storage and Distributed FileSystem, with no SPOF. For a more detailled overview, checkout this Slides.

The code is available on GitHub.

If, as i do, you are new to ceph, you should start by compiling ceph from sources.

./autogen.sh && ./configure && make

Once compiled, you’re up and running to start contributing!

But wait… How do you test your code? Do i have to deploy a whole cluster? Yes! and no!

A tiny hidden undocumented tool is here to help you in this task : vstart.sh \o/

This tool allows you to deploy a whole fake cluster on your filesystem, with various options, and also some environment variables can configure the number of OSD/MDS/MON/RGW you want to run.

You can also find its sibling called stop.sh to stop all processes launched by vstart.sh

Hope this little post will help you in getting started with Ceph contribution.

PS: A man page for vstart is on its way out. ;)