Distributed Storage
Ceph, advanced ZFS, and the real tradeoffs of storage at scale.
What you'll actually learn
A single disk's failure modes are simple enough to reason about by hand. Distributed storage isn't — Ceph and advanced ZFS exist because at real scale, drives fail constantly, not occasionally, and the system has to keep serving correct data while that's happening. This track covers how that redundancy and self-healing actually works underneath, not just the commands to set it up.
What you'll be able to do
You'll be able to reason about a distributed storage cluster the way its designers do: what happens when a node disappears mid-write, how much redundancy actually costs in real disk space, and where the tradeoffs between consistency and performance genuinely bite. That's the level of understanding that separates someone who deployed Ceph once from someone trusted to run it in production.
Syllabus
Frequently asked
Roughly 1 hour across 6 hands-on quests — you can go at your own pace and pick up exactly where you left off.
You should be comfortable with Storage on Linux, High Availability on Linux first — the skill tree unlocks Distributed Storage once you've cleared those.
Yes — Distributed Storage is fully available on the free tier, starting with a free first quest and no payment method required to sign up. Plus and Elite remove pacing limits but don't gate any of the Distributed Storage curriculum behind a paywall.
Create a free account and begin your first quest — no card required.
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