[OpenAFS] Using DRBD for vice partitions

[Dr A V Le Blanc]

I have been doing some experimenting using DRBD (Distributed
Redundant Block Device; see www.drbd.org) for vice partitions.

The idea is that two file servers use two disks to provide a
single virtual disk using network RAID.  If one server goes down
for a long period, the disk can be mounted on the other server
and its contents restored.  This requires:

(1)  Restarting the server processes, since you can't add
     or remove vice partitions from a running server.

(2)  Doing a vos syncv on the added partition, so that the
     volumes on that partition get attributed to the new
     server in the data base.

Other than this nuisance, it seems to work well enough.  Can
anyone see any problems in using this approach?

     -- Owen
     LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk