SUSE Enterprise Storage
| Company type | Product |
|---|---|
| Industry | Data storage software |
| Founded | 2015 |
| Founder | SUSE |
| Products | Software-defined storage solution based on Ceph |
| Parent | SUSE |
SUSE Enterprise Storage (SES) represents a data storage solution based on Linux, created by SUSE and utilizing the Ceph platform. Its second significant version was unveiled at SUSECon 2015 in November of that year.
With SES 2.0, support extended beyond Linux systems by incorporating iSCSI, allowing block storage connectivity to various platforms, including Microsoft Windows. This development provided a robust, enterprise-level software-defined storage option compatible with all major operating systems that support iSCSI initiators.
Features
The release of SES 2.0 brought several enhancements such as the addition of an iSCSI target, data encryption capabilities, and streamlined deployment through a Crowbar appliance aimed at integrating with SUSE OpenStack Cloud. Collaborations were also formed to enable Ceph functionality on ARM-based hardware.
Both SUSE Enterprise Storage and Ceph move away from conventional fault-tolerance methods like RAID, since Ceph inherently maintains multiple data replicas to guarantee availability and uninterrupted access for clients. This approach removes the necessity for RAID configurations, minimizes capacity overhead, and permits the use of heterogeneous disk types and standard hardware components, resulting in cost-effective storage solutions. Additionally, having multiple copies facilitates improved read speeds by supporting concurrent data retrieval.
The storage policies within Ceph allow organizations to define redundancy levels and tiered storage strategies tailored to data criticality—ranging from several replicas on disks with varying performance profiles to replication distributed across servers, racks, data centers, or even global locations. Write performance is enhanced through Cache Tiering by directing write operations to high-speed cache disks.
SES 5, built upon the Ceph Luminous release, broadened its applicability with BlueStore—a native object storage backend delivering twice the performance—and introduced advanced erasure coding for optimized fault tolerance, along with compression features that improve overall storage efficiency.
SES 6, developed on Ceph Nautilus alongside SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP1, emphasized support for containerized environments and cloud-native workloads, improved integration with public cloud platforms, and reinforced data protection mechanisms.
SES 7 utilized Ceph Octopus combined with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2 and brought forth a Windows driver for Ceph connectivity.
In March 2021, SUSE declared the discontinuation of SES development and sales support; official assistance for SES7 concluded on January 31, 2023.
History
The initial version, SUSE Enterprise Storage 1.0, was introduced as an extension to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12. It leveraged the SLES 12 enterprise Linux framework to provide highly available, replicated storage with strong performance accessible via RADOS or iSCSI protocols.
Announced at SUSECon in September 2017 and released in November of the same year, SUSE Enterprise Storage (SES 5) continued to evolve SUSE's portfolio of software-defined storage technologies.