Ceph Days Seattle 2026 - Cloud Transition to Tape
I'm John Shubeck, an information technology professional with over 44 years of industry experience spanning both the customer and technology provider experience. I'm currently serving as a Senior Storage Technical Specialist for IBM Object Storage platforms across all market segments in the Americas.
On Thursday, May 28th, 30 members, myself included, of the Ceph faithful descended on the SURF business incubator in downtown Seattle for "Ceph Days Seattle 2026". Following the traditional Ceph Days agenda, the Seattle program consisted of a series of "Ceph Talks" designed to introduce new ideas and share lessons learned.
Ceph Days are community-driven events designed to bring together Ceph users, developers, architects, administrators, and anyone interested in open-source storage. Held throughout the year in locations around the world, these one-day gatherings offer a unique opportunity to learn from real-world deployments, explore new technologies, connect with peers, and contribute to discussions that help shape the future of Ceph.
Did you know? ¶
- Ceph is a software-defined, hardware-independent storage solution that provides block, file, and object storage on a single unified platform.
- Ceph is championed by developers, administrators, users, IT leaders, and Fortune 500 enterprise customers. It is a living, vibrant, and active group that has adopted Ceph in its IT operations.
- The Ceph project and community are supported by a Foundation (https://ceph.io/en/foundation/) comprising organizations, stakeholders, and industry leaders who collaborate to coordinate investment, development, and community activities for Ceph.
With the setting, plot, and characters stated above, we turn to today's topic. A key activity of the Ceph community is a series of "Ceph Days" conferences. A Ceph Day is a full-day meetup where participants learn, network, make new acquaintances, and share ideas on how to enhance the value of Ceph. Sometimes IBM participates by providing the venue, a guest speaker or two, or the all-important refreshments. At the same time, make no mistake, Ceph Days are organized by the Ceph community, for the community, to support the community.
Here is where I came in. For the first time, I had the honor of being selected to present one of my favorite topics, Ceph Cloud Transitions. And to raise the stakes even further, Ceph Cloud Transition to S3-enabled TAPE! During my 45 minutes on stage, I covered the theory of cloud transitioners and showed a LIVE demonstration of a Ceph cloud transition to IBM Deep Archive. In this demonstration, I proved that static, unused, and potentially outdated object storage content can be tiered off to tape. In the end, the demonstration posed a radical concept: an object store without artificial boundaries and virtually limitless!
If you would like to see a 10-minute lightning round video of the demonstration, click here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVQwkjFF.uWU
I look forward to the Ceph Days Seattle 2026 presentations and other Ceph Talk videos in the near future, which will be posted to:
https://www.youtube.com/@Cephstorage
Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn:
and on YouTube:
https://youtube.com/@johnshubeck2026
Get Involved ¶
If my experience sounds like something you'd like to try, I encourage you to attend a Ceph Day, join a community meeting, or share your own experiences through a Ceph Tech Talk. The Ceph community welcomes users, developers, and storage enthusiasts of all experience levels. To learn about upcoming events, meetups, and ways to get involved, visit the Ceph Community page at https://ceph.io/community. I hope to see you at a future Ceph Days event.