Speaking of network disks (was: Re: syncing remote homes.)

Speaking of network disks (was: Re: syncing remote homes.)

[Mr. James W. Laferriere]

 	Hello Bill & all ,

Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> Sat, 22 Sep 2007 09:41:40 -0400 ,  wrote:
> My only "advice" is to try and quantify the data volume and look at nbd vs. 
> iSCSI to provide the mirror if you go that way.

 	You mentioned nbd as a transport for disk to remote disk .

 	My Question is have you OR anyone else tried using drbd(*) as a
 	method to replicate disk data across networks ?

 	I've looked at the projects documents & software .  They're
 	mentioned at linux-ha .  But I personally have not heard of anyone
 	using it in production .  So I asked my question here .
 		Tia ,  JimL

(*) http://www.drbd.org/
-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| James   W.   Laferriere | System   Techniques | Give me VMS     |
| Network        Engineer | 663  Beaumont  Blvd |  Give me Linux  |
| babydr@baby-dragons.com | Pacifica, CA. 94044 |   only  on  AXP |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

Re: Speaking of network disks (was: Re: syncing remote homes.)

[Iustin Pop]

On Sat, Sep 22, 2007 at 10:28:44AM -0700, Mr. James W. Laferriere wrote:
> 	Hello Bill & all ,
>
> Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> Sat, 22 Sep 2007 09:41:40 -0400 ,  wrote:
>> My only "advice" is to try and quantify the data volume and look at nbd 
>> vs. iSCSI to provide the mirror if you go that way.
>
> 	You mentioned nbd as a transport for disk to remote disk .
>
> 	My Question is have you OR anyone else tried using drbd(*) as a
> 	method to replicate disk data across networks ?

I have used it only in local networks, but it works very well. It's
much, much better than md + nbd, for example, because it was designed
with the network in mind - so it deals gracefully with transient network
errors and such.

And the current version (8.x) is also more flexible than the previous
versions. I'd recommed you give it a try.

regards,
iustin

Re: Speaking of network disks (was: Re: syncing remote homes.)

[Bill Davidsen]

Mr. James W. Laferriere wrote:
>     Hello Bill & all ,
>
> Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> Sat, 22 Sep 2007 09:41:40 -0400 ,  
> wrote:
>> My only "advice" is to try and quantify the data volume and look at 
>> nbd vs. iSCSI to provide the mirror if you go that way.
>
>     You mentioned nbd as a transport for disk to remote disk .
>
>     My Question is have you OR anyone else tried using drbd(*) as a
>     method to replicate disk data across networks ?

Have not. And looking at the homepage, I think it's aimed at anothjer 
problem. If the local drive fails, I really don't want anything starting 
applications on another machine, running fsck, etc, etc. I just want my 
disk reads to go to a working device or pseudo-device.

HA and mirroring are related, but HA is more aimed at whole machine 
failures.
>
>     I've looked at the projects documents & software .  They're
>     mentioned at linux-ha .  But I personally have not heard of anyone
>     using it in production .  So I asked my question here .
>         Tia ,  JimL
>
> (*) http://www.drbd.org/


-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
  CTO TMR Associates, Inc
  Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979