[DRBD-user] DRBD 8.0 life cycle

[Lars Ellenberg]

On Tue, Aug 03, 2021 at 03:34:58PM -0700, Paul D. O'Rorke wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I have been running a DRDB-8 simple 3 node disaster recovery set up of
> libvirt VMs for a number of years and have been very happy with it.   Our
> needs are simple, 2 servers on Protocol C, each running a handful of VMs as
> primary and replicated to the other, and both stacked to a third server via
> protocol A for disaster recover/point in time backups (I run my nightly
> backups off of the tertiary node so as to limit the impact on the two
> primary servers.)
> 
> Now my hardware needs replacing and it looks like DRBD 8 is no longer
> available?    We are not Amazon, we do not need a full cluster with all it's
> bells and whistles, the classic DRBD8 three node setup still works for me.
> 
> My question is whether DRBD8 is still "supported"and whether there are good
> reasons to move to DRBD9?

Depends on what you feel "supported" means.

As we put on our web page at https://linbit.com/solutions-rfq/
DRBD 8 < 8.4 is end of life.
DRBD 8.4 has left "active maintenance" years ago, but needs to be supported
while existing customers pay for existing deployments.  The "relevant" platform
here is RHEL 7, which ends its "Extended Lifecycle Support" in 2026,
so that's the end date for our 8.4 support as well.

For new deployments, or more recent Platforms (RHEL 8, etc),
Linbit does provide support for DBRD 9 or later.

DRBD 9 does everything DRBD 8 does.
Some things it does better.
And it can do some things you may not (yet) need.

You can use DRBD 9 the same way you used DRBD 8, if you want to.
(some config options have been renamed, or moved to different sections)

    Lars