In this chapter we've explored a long list of factors and decisions to consider when planning your Ceph clusters. The lure of diving right in with purchase orders and deployments is strong, but we must stress the benefits of careful planning in advance so that you implement the right architecture for performance, reliability, scalability, and flexibility.
In the next chapter we'll deploy a real, working Ceph cluster in virtual machines. This sandbox will help you get a feel for the dynamics of a Ceph deployment and help practice a number of deployment and maintenance operations without committing to expensive and time-consuming physical server provisioning.