[OpenAFS] Using DRBD for vice partitions

[Horst Birthelmer]

On Dec 8, 2005, at 11:36 AM, Dr A V Le Blanc wrote:

> 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?


No, we've been doing similar things with FiberChannel devices some  
years ago, too.
If you can assure that you never have two fileservers with the same  
partition active, it should work.

Horst