[DRBD-user] Single Primary with Missing Secondary

Paul McEnery pmcenery at gmail.com
Mon May 5 22:33:03 CEST 2008

Note: "permalinks" may not be as permanent as we would like,
direct links of old sources may well be a few messages off.


Hi All.

Is it possible to initialise drbd on only one node, with a view to adding a
second node at a later date (once it has been purchased)?

I have a single server which needs to be setup as a storage server
presenting iSCSI luns to a number of other systems. The idea is that if the
system works successfully, a second redundant storage server will be
purchased which will mirror the primary (drbd + heartbeat). I am trying to
set the primary up so that I can simply activate the secondary node once it
has been purchased, without the need to rebuild from scratch. The only
analogy I can think of is; this is similar to building a RAID 1 mirror on a
single disk, specifying the second disk as "missing", as mdadm allows you to
do. Once you purchase a second disk, you can simply copy the partition table
and use mdadm to bring the disk into the array. Essentially, I would like to
do the same with drbd, where the second node is not available from the
outset, and may not be available for a few months.

Does anyone know if this is possible with drbd? If not, I am starting to
think along the lines of using a qemu secondary node during initial setup,
which is later discarded. Can anyone think of an easier way for me to get a
single node to become primary having never communicated with the secondary?

TIA
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