# Ceph Cluster

Source: https://calc.onpremeasy.com/product/ceph-cluster/

## Indicative from-price range

Indicative from-price range for self-hosting Ceph Cluster on 3 servers: about $72 to $337 per month (USD), as of 2026-10-19, for the reference workload (Raw storage capacity (TB): 50; Replication factor: 3; Target OSD count: 12). From-price by provider, each the cheapest server in that provider's own shortlist: $72 on DigitalOcean (basic-2vcpu-4gb, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, fra1); $147 on Google Cloud (e2-standard-2, 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, us-central1); $190 on Amazon Web Services (c9g.large, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, us-east-1); $192 on OVHcloud (rise-1, 6 vCPU, 32 GB RAM, eu-west); $199 on Microsoft Azure (D2as_v7, 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, eastus); $199 on Hetzner (AX41, 6 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, eu-central); $787 on Servers.com (dl-01, 8 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, eu-west).

Reference workload:
- Raw storage capacity (TB): 50
- Replication factor: 3
- Target OSD count: 12

Price snapshot: 2026-10-19. Currency: USD. FX snapshot: 2026-10-19.

Configuration: Low end: 3 x basic-2vcpu-4gb (DigitalOcean, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, about $24 per server per month). High end: 3 x rise-m (OVHcloud, 12 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, about $112 per server per month).

Methodology: This range is generated automatically from public provider price lists. It has not been reviewed by a person, it is not a quote, and it may differ from the total the calculator chooses for your own workload with its AI step. Method: the calculator's offer shortlist for the reference workload (the same ranking it builds before the AI step, up to 12 offers across providers; 12 here) is priced at its monthly list price in USD. The low end is the cheapest of the per-provider from-prices below and the high end is the median server of the combined shortlist, each multiplied by 3, the smallest baseline topology (converged-small). The from-price for each provider applies the same method to that provider's own shortlist (the calculator's ranking restricted to that provider), so it is the cheapest server that ranking offers there, not a recommendation. Prices are taken from the price snapshot dated 2026-10-19; prices quoted in EUR are converted with the ECB reference rate dated 2026-10-19. Servers with fewer than 2 vCPU or less than 4 GB RAM are not priced. Only server rental list prices for the product's own servers are counted: dependencies, licences, support, traffic charges, taxes and setup fees are not included.

Price sources:
- [Amazon Web Services](https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/AmazonEC2/current/us-east-1/index.json)
- [DigitalOcean](https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets)
- [Google Cloud](https://cloudbilling.googleapis.com/v1/services/6F81-5844-456A/skus)
- [Hetzner](https://www.hetzner.com/_resources/app/data/app/live_data_en_EUR.json)
- [Microsoft Azure](https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices)
- [OVHcloud](https://eu.api.ovh.com/1.0/order/catalog/public/eco?ovhSubsidiary=FR)
- [Servers.com](https://www.servers.com/products/scalable-bare-metal)

Ceph is a distributed storage system that unifies object, block, and file storage on one self-healing cluster of commodity hardware, using the CRUSH algorithm to place and replicate data without a central metadata bottleneck. It began as a doctoral research project before growing into an independent open-source project.

## Baseline topologies

- converged-small: 3 nodes minimum; roles: ceph-mon-mgr-osd
- dedicated-roles: 6 nodes minimum; roles: ceph-mon-mgr, ceph-osd

## What drives the cost

- Raw storage capacity (TB): Total raw storage capacity across all OSDs before replication or erasure coding overhead. Primary driver for OSD count and disk provisioning.
- Replication factor: Number of data replicas (for replicated pools) or equivalent redundancy level. Multiplies usable storage into raw storage requirements.
- Target OSD count: Target number of Object Storage Daemons. Each OSD typically maps to one physical disk. More OSDs improve throughput parallelism and recovery speed.

## Frequently asked questions

### How much does it cost to self-host Ceph Cluster?

Indicative from-price range for self-hosting Ceph Cluster on 3 servers: about $72 to $337 per month (USD), as of 2026-10-19, for the reference workload (Raw storage capacity (TB): 50; Replication factor: 3; Target OSD count: 12). From-price by provider, each the cheapest server in that provider's own shortlist: $72 on DigitalOcean (basic-2vcpu-4gb, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, fra1); $147 on Google Cloud (e2-standard-2, 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, us-central1); $190 on Amazon Web Services (c9g.large, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, us-east-1); $192 on OVHcloud (rise-1, 6 vCPU, 32 GB RAM, eu-west); $199 on Microsoft Azure (D2as_v7, 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, eastus); $199 on Hetzner (AX41, 6 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, eu-central); $787 on Servers.com (dl-01, 8 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, eu-west). This is an automatically generated indicative figure from public price lists (price snapshot 2026-10-19), not a quote.

### What drives the cost of self-hosting Ceph Cluster?

The sizing inputs the calculator uses for Ceph Cluster are: Raw storage capacity (TB); Replication factor; Target OSD count. Cost also depends on the number of servers and the provider chosen.

### What is the minimum number of servers for Ceph Cluster?

The smallest baseline topology in the calculator's profile for Ceph Cluster is converged-small (3 servers). Other baseline topologies: dedicated-roles (6 servers minimum). The reference range above is computed for 3 servers.

Size Ceph Cluster for your own workload: https://calc.onpremeasy.com/?product=ceph-cluster

## Sources

- https://ceph.io/en/
- https://docs.ceph.com/
- https://github.com/ceph/ceph