Chapter 11. Hardware for Swift
In this chapter, we’ll look at the basic hardware requirements for deploying a Swift cluster. As with most deployments, Swift requires up-front planning, validation, and testing to ensure that you select a suitable hardware configuration for your intended workload. This chapter focuses on the hardware that Swift runs on; we’ll cover planning a deployment in the next chapter.
One of the advantages of Swift is that it can run on a wide range of hardware configurations, from commodity hardware to commercial hardware solutions. Indeed, SwiftStack works with several vendors who provide options from qualified chassis by major OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partners all the way through to pre-integrated racks from recommended VARs (value-added resellers).
At the same time, one of the challenges of Swift is that it can run on such a wide range of configurations. There are many options, and we shy away from offering definitive specifications about what hardware you need for your deployment, because these depend so heavily on use, workload, and availability.
What you plan to use your cluster for will determine the hardware configuration you should have. It’s important to use a configuration that provides the ideal balance of I/O performance, capacity, and cost for your workload. For instance, customer-facing web applications with a large number of concurrent users will have a different profile than applications primarily used ...
Get OpenStack Swift now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
