[DRBD-user] DRBD and KVM for a HA-Cluster ?

Antonio Anselmi tony.anselmi at gmail.com
Tue Jan 18 15:36:38 CET 2011

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


I added a bit of HA to a ProxNMoxVE-DRBD cluster tahnsk to some
scripts. Have a look here, maybe it could be interesting
http://forum.proxmox.com/threads/5300-getting-a-little-more-redundancy

Antonio

2011/1/17 Lentes, Bernd <bernd.lentes at helmholtz-muenchen.de>:
> JR wrote:
>
>
>> It has nothing to do with VMs at all.  We're talking about the storage block device (DRBD) being accessible on both nodes simultaneously:
>> http://www.drbd.org/users-guide/s-enable-dual-primary.html  I understand "active-active" and "dual-primary" is a common term applicable in many
>> places,but to be clearly, just talking about the configuration options in drbd.conf:
>
>>         net {
>>           allow-two-primaries;
>>         }
>>         startup {
>>           become-primary-on both;
>>         }
>
>
>
>> The reason you make it active-active on both nodes is because with Live-Migration the VM does exist simultaneously on both nodes for a brief period of
>> time as the memory pages/state are
>> migrated over and both access the block device simultaneously yet in a synchronized manner through the underlying HyperVisor.  Indeed, there is a
>> mechanism in place for synchronization as your >surmised there must be.
>
>
>> Don't I need a cluster aware FS for that short period of time when both are running ? What mechanism for synchronization do you mean ?
>> Can I realise the Live migration with cluster tools, or with KVM tools ? If I use KVM tools, don't they interfere with the HA-Software ?
>
>
>> They are never "both running" at the same time: though they may exist on both hosts at the same time, one VM instance will stop before the copy of this > VM instance starts from where the original stopped.
>
>> How familiar are you with live migration?  http://www.linux-kvm.org/wiki/images/5/5a/KvmForum2007$Kvm_Live_Migration_Forum_2007.pdf  The key point of
>> LiveMigration is that the VM is copied to another physical host while running, after which the original VM is paused, then dirty pages that changed
>> since the initial page copy are synchronized over quickly, and then it does a quick hand off from one physical to host to the other (MAC addresses, etc)
>> before unpausing the recently sync'd VM on the new host.  Check out pages 4-9 in the PDF above for a more detailed description of this process.  While
>> the VM exists on 2 physical hosts for a brief moment during this process, the HyperVisor or KVM makes sure only 1 copy of the VM is active at a time.
>
>> The short answer to your "do I need a cluster aware FS" is: no.  You need block-level synchronization, in your case KVM assures this during a live-
>> migration.  These are some fairly semantic low-level details, I just wanted to be precise in what was actually happening here.  DRBD's "allow-two-
>> primaries;" is required for LiveMigration.
>
> Live Migration sounds very interesting. I think i will create a dual-primary solution.
> Concerning the live migration:
> Are they performed with HA-Tools in pacemaker, or with KVM-Tools ?
>
>
> Bernd
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> drbd-user mailing list
> drbd-user at lists.linbit.com
> http://lists.linbit.com/mailman/listinfo/drbd-user
>



More information about the drbd-user mailing list