DRBD stands for Distributed Replicated Block Device and allows block devices to be replicated over a network in a RAID-1 fashion. Since Linux Kernel 2.6.33, DRBD has been accepted into mainline and with its ever growing user base defines itself as the de facto Linux data replication solution. DRBD acts as a block device and can be transparently inserted underneath virtually any Linux application. Alone, DRBD's replication can be leveraged as a robust disaster recovery solution ensuring data is kept geographically diverse between nodes, data centers or continents. Coupled with other Linux clustering technologies (Pacemaker, Heartbeat, RHCS, etc.), DRBD's shared-disk semantics become the foundation of a free, open-source high availability (HA) clustering stack used to provide complete hardware and service level fault tolerance. From databases to virtualization to centralized storage, DRBD and Pacemaker provide a completely free, open-source availability and redundancy solution using commodity, off-the-shelf hardware.

This talk will first provide an introduction to DRBD: what it does, how it works, and some live demonstrations of replication-in-action. Basic HA concepts will be covered as well as an overview of Pacemaker and the Linux HA cluster stack as it relates to DRBD. To give a sense of its flexibility, common and interesting use cases will be presented ranging from simple, locally deployed HA clusters to geographically dispersed, cross-site disaster recovery installations. Finally, attendees will see how the current Open Cluster Framework (OCF) standards provide users with a generic and easy way of integrating their own custom applications into a highly-available environment using freely available open-source software.

Attendees are expected to have some system administration experience related to storage and networking. Knowledge of the Linux kernel and other shared storage technologies is helpful, but not necessary.

More information:

• DRBD
• Pacemaker
• Heartbeat and Linux HA Project

About the speaker:
Adam is an expert in open-source clustering and high availability. Originally from New England, Adam lives in Portland, OR where he has been working at LINBIT, developers of DRBD and maintainers of Heartbeat. Aside from providing top-level Linux High-Availability and Disaster Recovery consulting for customers in the Americas, he also leads LINBIT training courses in the US, doubles as a technical writer and regularly contributes to related open-source projects. Adam enjoys his R&D work creating new and exciting methods for DRBD integration into the fastest growing arenas; cloud, virtualization, HPC and distributed computing environments.

Meeting Location:
Please note that this meeting will be held at IBM, 590 Madison Ave, 12th floor, corner of 57th Street. This is the building with the IBM logo on the front of the building.

Meeting Location

Please note that this meeting will be held at IBM, located at the corner of 590 Madison Ave, and 57th Street, NY, NY. You MUST RSVP for this meeting.