Rook-Ceph Deployment Using Helm

This guide explains how to deploy Rook-Ceph on a K8S cluster at Voltagepark.

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By default, Voltage Park On-Demand bare metal servers have one NVMe mounted at the root partition and six (6) additional NVMe disks. The six additional NVMe disks are unmounted, offering high flexibility for custom HPC workloads.

This Rook-Ceph Deployment Using Helm procedure assumes that Kubernetes is already up and running, that you have Helm installed, and your nodes have six (6) clean 2.9TB NVMe disks each.

IMPORTANT: You need at least three nodes to deploy a healthy Ceph cluster.

Use Case	Nodes	Description
Minimum functional	3	Bare minimum to enable 3x replication and data durability.
Recommended for HA + performance	5	Provides better performance, improved failure tolerance, and smoother recovery.
High-performance scalable cluster	6+	Maximizes NVMe utilization and scales bandwidth and I/O performance.

🧩 1. Add Helm Repo & Update

helm repo add rook-release https://charts.rook.io/release
helm repo update

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📁 2. Create Namespace

kubectl create namespace rook-ceph

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📦 3. Install Rook Operator (Helm-managed)

helm install rook-ceph rook-release/rook-ceph --namespace rook-ceph

Verify it’s running:

kubectl -n rook-ceph get pods -l app=rook-ceph-operator

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📝 4. Create CephCluster Custom Resource

This example features three nodes, utilizing all available disks on the servers.

ceph-cluster.yaml

apiVersion: ceph.rook.io/v1
kind: CephCluster
metadata:
  name: rook-ceph
  namespace: rook-ceph
spec:
  cephVersion:
    image: quay.io/ceph/ceph:v18.2.7
  dataDirHostPath: /var/lib/rook
  mon:
    count: 3
    allowMultiplePerNode: false
  mgr:
    modules:
      - name: prometheus
        enabled: true
  dashboard:
    enabled: true
  network:
    provider: host
  storage:
    useAllNodes: true
    useAllDevices: true
    config:
      osdsPerDevice: "1"
  disruptionManagement:
    managePodBudgets: true
    osdMaintenanceTimeout: 30

Apply it:

kubectl apply -f ceph-cluster.yaml

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🔍 5. Monitor Cluster Startup

kubectl -n rook-ceph get pods -w
kubectl -n rook-ceph get cephcluster

Look for:

• rook-ceph-mon-*, rook-ceph-mgr-*, rook-ceph-osd-*

• PHASE: Ready, HEALTH_OK

This may take a few minutes as all OSDs initialize.

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🔧 6. Deploy Toolbox Pod

To run ceph CLI commands:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rook/rook/v1.13.8/deploy/examples/toolbox.yaml

kubectl -n rook-ceph exec -it deploy/rook-ceph-tools -- bash

Test:

ceph status
ceph osd tree
ceph df

🧪 Confirm All NVMe Disks Are Used

Run this in the toolbox pod:

ceph orch device ls

You should see 6 disks per node listed and marked as “in use” by OSDs.

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💾 7. Create Block StorageClass (RBD)

kubectl apply -f kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rook/rook/v1.17.7/deploy/examples/csi/rbd/storageclass.yaml

Set default (optional):

kubectl patch storageclass rook-ceph-block \
  -p '{"metadata": {"annotations":{"storageclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class":"true"}}}'

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📦 8. Test PVC with Ubuntu Pod

Create a test PVC with 3 TB test-pvc.yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: test-ceph-pvc
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 3072Gi
  storageClassName: rook-ceph-block

Apply:

kubectl apply -f test-pvc.yaml

Create Ubuntu Pod

ubuntu-ceph-test.yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: ubuntu-ceph-test
spec:
  containers:
  - name: ubuntu
    image: ubuntu:22.04
    command: ["/bin/bash", "-c", "--"]
    args: ["while true; do sleep 30; done;"]
    volumeMounts:
    - mountPath: /mnt/ceph
      name: ceph-vol
  volumes:
  - name: ceph-vol
    persistentVolumeClaim:
      claimName: test-ceph-pvc
  restartPolicy: Never
  tolerations:
  - key: "node-role.kubernetes.io/control-plane"
    operator: "Exists"
    effect: "NoSchedule"
  - key: "node-role.kubernetes.io/master"
    operator: "Exists"
    effect: "NoSchedule"

Deploy:

kubectl apply -f ubuntu-ceph-test.yaml
kubectl exec -it ubuntu-ceph-test -- bash

The Ceph filesystem will be mounted at /mnt/ceph.

👏 9. Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully deployed Rook-Ceph on your Kubernetes cluster, allocating the six unmounted NVMe disks.

You can now use this storage for high-performance workloads.

If you encounter issues, reach out to [email protected] for assistance.