[DRBD-user] WinDRBD 0.10.1 released (with data and disk devices)

[Johannes Thoma]

Hi Gianni,

Thank you for your eMail, please see the comments inline.

Am 06/11/19 um 21:24 schrieb Gianni Milo:
> Thanks for this. Booting from a diskless Windows installation is a very interesting feature.
> 
> I'm curious to know if there are future plans having a combination of diskful/diskless Windows installation. Meaning, having a local disk Windows installation which at the same time is replicating to a remote server via drbd.
> 
Yes we are planning to support WinDRBD boot devices with a local disk
attached as well.

> In the case of local disk failure, one could pxe/iscsi boot to the remote server and continue working, of course with slower performance. Once a replacement disk is installed, and the proper configuration is done, drbd replication would start replicating back Windows to the local disk. Once replication is completed, the user can boot back from the local disk.
> 
Actually if the root device is a WinDRBD device with local disk and
remote disks users just can continue working if the local disk fails.
Also users can continue working while the disk still syncs.

> Obviously this is an oversimplification of the challenges you will have to overcome to achieve something like this, but it would be good to know if something like this is your future plans?

Yes.

What we have now is support for diskless Windows installations, however
the setup process (installing Windows) requires a regular installation
(without WinDRBD). What comes next is support for installing Windows
directly on a WinDRBD device (using WinPE). We are currently working
on fixing some restrictions of the current solution (such as necessary
registry hacks on boot critical drivers or the way Windows gets the
IP address), but I think once we are done with that we can also add
a local disk quite easily. The only thing is that there must be some
small storage to hold DRBD meta data on the local disks.

Best regards,

- Johannes