DRBD Hardware and Software Requirements

Your LifeKeeper configuration should meet the following requirements prior to the installation of the DRBD Recovery Kit.

Hardware Requirements

• Servers – Two or more LifeKeeper for Linux supported servers.
• IP Network Interface Cards – Each server requires at least one network interface card. Two separate LAN-based communication paths using dual independent sub-nets are recommended, and at least one of these should be configured as a private network.

*Note: Due to the nature of data replication, network traffic between servers can be heavy. Therefore, it is recommended that you implement a separate private network for your DRBD resources which may require additional network interface cards on each server.

• Uniquely identifiable storage – Disks or partitions must be uniquely identifiable. The use of a GPT partition table or LVM can provide a unique identifier.
• Target storage – The target disks, partitions or logical volumes must be at least as large as the source disk, partition or logical volume.
• Target synchronization – Once the DRBD resource is created and extended, the synchronization process will delete existing data on the target disk, partition or logical volume and replace it with data from the source.

Software Requirements

• Operating System – See the LifeKeeper for Linux Release Notes or the LifeKeeper for Linux Support Matrix – Supported Applications for a list of supported distributions.
• LifeKeeper Software – You must install the same version of the LifeKeeper Core on each of your servers. You must also install the same version of each recovery kit that you plan to use on each server. See the LifeKeeper for Linux Release Notes – New Features or the LifeKeeper for Linux Support Matrix for specific requirements.
• DRBD software – Setup installs the DRBD Recovery Kit and DRBD software if you have the DRBD Recovery Kit License. Please install the License file at the same time or before installing the DRBD Recovery Kit.

The following packages are installed by default.

• steeleye-lkDRBD and steeleye-libdrbd-perl : DRBD Kit packages
• drbd-utils and
  • RHEL: kmod-drbd and drbd-selinux if selinux-policy-targeted is installed
  • SLES: drbd-kmp-default and drbd-ueficert

Optionally, you can install the following packages with the –addDRBD option after the main DRBD packages are installed (/mnt is the path to media mount location).

drbd-bash-completion : drbd command bash completion

drbd-man-ja : drbd Japanese man pages

# setup --addDRBD
/mnt/LINBIT.tar.gz,drbd-bash-completion:drbd-man-ja

For information on DRBD, refer to the DRBD 9 User’s Guide.