For more than a decade DRBD® by LINBIT® has been the expert for high availability of data and services. Major cloud solutions providers, data centre operators, specialised service providers and industrial companies employ the open source software worldwide to ensure high availability and to implement disaster recovery. LINBIT now provides the community with a DRBD9 beta version. This new release is significantly more flexible in daily use. Most importantly, it is now possible to keep more than 30 network nodes redundant via “Full Mesh”. This is how LINBIT turns high availability into highest availability.
The availability of business-critical data has become a key factor for the success of enterprises. The smooth flow of economic processes increasingly depends on the functioning of central computer systems. With DRBD LINBIT is offering replication technologies based on an open source model that ensures such reliability. 15,000 DRBD activations from all over the world are reported voluntarily to LINBIT per month.
With DRBD9 beta there is now a new version, offering significantly more opportunities for individual use. Now it is possible to keep more than 30 nodes or servers in a regionally distributed network in sync. “Conventional scenarios replicate from one primary node to a secondary, allowing only one more lower-level node after the secondary. With DRBD9 we have created a solution to keep entire networks synchronised. This means that DRBD9 users can add another 9 to the theoretical availability of 99.999%”, explained Philipp Reisner, LINBIT’s CEO and author of DRBD.
DRBD9 offers many new features, such as the “Automatic Promote” function, which will significantly improve integration with live-migration of virtual machines like KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) or Xen. In addition it also ensures a much higher performance when used with SSDs (Solid State Drives).
The master thesis that became a global success
Reisner developed the first version of DRBD in 1999 for his master’s thesis at the Vienna University of Technology. In the meantime, DRBD has become a global success. What attracts users is not only the technical solution, but also the business model: DRBD is available under the GPL (GNU General Public License) and can therefore be used for free. Since February 2010 the DRBD module has been part of the official Linux kernel (from version 2.6.33). LINBIT offers a whole range of additional services – training, 24/7 support and consulting – as well as the DRBD proxy.
Karl Anton Fröschl, Associate Professor for Business Information Technology at Vienna University, commented on the company’s achievements: “DRBD and LINBIT are great examples of innovation economy. They demonstrate how an academic idea can grow into real business success through constant focus on implementation. And I do not just mean the growth of LINBIT as a company, but also the economic benefits that other businesses enjoy by using its open source solution DRBD.”
9,500 hours of work and 100,000 lines of code
Developing DRBD9 required approximately 9,500 working hours. The code basis, which had built up constantly over the years, has been completely reworked to ensure easier integration of new developments and customer-specific features. DRBD now has 100,000 code lines, more than 33,000 of which is Linux Kernel Code. “We have ambitious plans for DRBD. As soon as we have incorporated the feedback on the beta version from the community into the software, we will release the official version and integrate additional features”, Philipp Reisinger explains.
For more than a decade DRBD® by LINBIT has been the expert for high availability of data and services. Major cloud solutions providers, data centre operators, specialised service providers and industrial companies employ the open source software worldwide to ensure high availability and to implement disaster recovery. LINBIT now provides the community with a DRBD9 beta version. This new release is significantly more flexible in daily use. Most importantly, it is now possible to keep more than 30 network nodes redundant via “Full Mesh”. This is how LINBIT turns high availability into highest availability.
