The Ceph Days Berlin 2025 are officially wrapped up—and they reminded us once again what makes this community so unique. On November 12th and 13th, practitioners, operators, and long-standing contributors met at DESY in Zeuthen for two incredibly lively days of exchange.
After seven years away from the DACH region, the community was clearly ready for a reunion. Seats were gone quickly, and the feedback shows that the mix of technical depth, practical insights, and open discussion hit the mark.
This event was truly a community effort: organized collaboratively by DESY as our location host, Hetzner Cloud as sponsoring partner, and the CLYSO team, who supported coordination and communication around the event. The Ceph Days have always been community-driven—this edition was no exception.
What the Community Said: Real Dialogue, Real Expertise
One of the strongest signals from both attendee and speaker feedbacks was the quality of conversations happening everywhere. Whether at the topic tables, during coffee breaks, or in Q&A sessions, the exchanges were deep, practical, and refreshingly honest.
Speaker Feedback
"The quality of the questions was exceptional. You could clearly feel that active users and real experts were meeting to move Ceph forward."
Attendee Feedback
"From AI/ML strategy to RGW internals—the agenda was perfectly balanced. You walk away with knowledge you can apply immediately."
The topic tables—Cloud Ecosystem, Deep Dive, and Object Storage—became hubs of shared experience and spontaneous problem-solving. It captured the spirit of the Ceph Foundation perfectly: collaborative, open, and solution-oriented.
The Agenda: From 40 PB Lessons Learned to AI Strategy
Across two days, the program covered the central topics shaping the Ceph ecosystem today.
Strategy & Future
- Joachim Kraftmayer (CLYSO) discussed the strategic evolution of object storage, and
- Ingo Ebel (DESY) shared insights from their CephFS migration journey—showing how large scientific infrastructures use Ceph at scale.
- Markus Wendland & Heiko Krämer also cut through the complexity of Digital Sovereignty with clarity.
Performance & Practice
- Wido den Hollander reminded us why latency must stay at the center of performance thinking.
- Kritik Sachdeva (IBM) demonstrated NVMe-oF acceleration for OpenStack—live, and impressively.
- Jean-Marie de Boer (SURF) reflected on seven years of operating 40 PB, including what only long-term production environments reveal.
Innovation & Community
- Matthias Münch (Red Hat) invited the community to collaborate on the new Generic Ceph Sizer,
- and Md Mahamudur Rahaman Sajib (Croit) presented fresh algorithms to speed up CephFS mirroring.
Compliance & Special Topics
- David Mohren (CLYSO) explained the necessity of AES-GCM for BSI/DORA compliance,
- while Stuart Hardy & Zaid Bester (Hexion) demonstrated an innovative path from RGW to tape storage.
Deepen your knowledge: Slides and Full Video Recordings
To make sure everyone can benefit from the content—whether they were onsite or couldn’t secure a seat—we’ve prepared everything for publication:
All presentation material and video recordings are available on the Ceph Days Berlin event page now. - HERE!
A heartfelt thank-you to everyone who contributed: the speakers, the attendees, the volunteers, and our partners DESY and Hetzner Cloud, whose support made this community event possible.
Events like these show why the Ceph community remains so strong, open, and inspiring.
We’re already looking forward to the next opportunity to meet again.
Your CLYSO Team