S3-compatible storage, running on hardware you own

Modern applications increasingly expect S3 — the object storage API Amazon popularized with AWS — as their storage interface, not a traditional file share. Ceph makes that available on-prem through its RADOS Gateway (RGW): an open-source component of Ceph that speaks the S3 (and Swift) API natively, backed by the same distributed, self-healing storage cluster described on the Ceph page.

Why this matters for a storage server

An application written against the S3 API — a backup tool, a CI artifact store, a data pipeline — doesn’t need to know or care whether it’s talking to AWS or to a 45Drives cluster in your own datacenter. RGW gives you that portability: the same API, the same client libraries and tools (including the official AWS CLI), running entirely on infrastructure you control, with no per-request cloud egress or storage fees.

How 45Drives uses it

RGW runs as a service against a Ceph cluster built on 45Drives hardware — either alongside the cluster or on a dedicated gateway node. Houston UI’s cockpit-file-sharing module lists Ceph RGW as a supported S3 backend for bucket and user management, alongside Samba and NFS in the same dashboard.

A real client tool in the same repository

45Drives’ own package repository also carries rclone — the widely-used, genuinely popular open-source “rsync for cloud storage” — right alongside the RGW-related packages. It’s not a 45Drives creation, just a real, well-regarded third-party tool bundled for convenience, and a practical way to actually move data into or out of an RGW bucket from the command line once it’s running.

Why that matters if you’re evaluating storage

• No cloud lock-in for S3-native tooling. If your backup software, data pipeline, or CI system already speaks S3, RGW lets you point it at your own hardware instead of a monthly cloud bill.
• No egress fees. Object storage in the cloud gets expensive fast once you’re moving data out of it regularly — RGW eliminates that cost entirely.
• Same open-source guarantees as the rest of the stack. RGW is part of Ceph itself, not a bolted-on proprietary gateway — auditable, community-maintained, and not tied to one vendor.

Learn more

• Ceph RADOS Gateway documentation
• 45Drives’ cockpit-ceph-deploy repository

See Build Your Own for a real, documented RGW deployment — including setting up scoped credentials, verifying the service with the actual AWS CLI, and adding TLS with a self-signed certificate.