[DRBD-user] Some questions about drbd

[Todd Denniston]

Sven Schuster wrote:
> 
<SNIP>
> 3. are there any pitfalls in using drbd on top of hardware raid?

As long as it is a reliable raid[1], you only have the same trouble as if
you were working with a single spindle, i.e., if you have multiple
partitions under DRBD, seek time will slow things down and you want to put
each DRBD device in a separate sync-group. 

> 4. one of the questions that came to my boss' mind and which is
>    (more or less) directed to linbit: is there any guarantee that
>    drbd will still exist in, say, 5 to 10 years from now?? What I
>    mean is, if we use it at work, we well use it for quite some
>    time and have to make sure that it isn't gone in two years...
>    (please bear with me, I've been using linux for about 10 years
>    now, I'm an open source freak, but my boss is not...and I'd like
>    my opinions to be backed up by someone more knowledgeable, at best
>    by someone from linbit :-) )
> 

 From the "I am only a user, not a linbit person", there are two ways I see:
1) share the cost of keeping linbit in business, i.e., buy a service
contract or two.
2) share the community cost of keeping DRBD in a serviceable condition, by
paying a programmer as needed to keep it working for you and contributing
that to any other DRBD efforts on line.

of course the best would be if both could be done. :) (speaking as one who
has not gotten a linbit contract yet)

[1] I have two Promise RM8000 drives in service, but to make them reasonably
reliable I had to turn off the Domain Validation and slow down the SCSI bus
to 80.000MB/s. Avoid cheep raid hardware.

-- 
Todd Denniston
Crane Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC Crane) 
Harnessing the Power of Technology for the Warfighter