[PVE-User] Proxmox and DRBD

[Alwin Antreich]

Hello Klaus,

On Fri, Aug 17, 2018 at 10:22:30PM +0200, Klaus Darilion wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Reading the archives I learnt that Proxmox removed DRBD as the consequence
> of license issues (which were reverted). As far as is know this was about
> DRBD9 and older Proxmox releases had support for DRBD8.
Linbit itself took on them to support PVE, they have a repository and
manual for that.

> 
> Checking the Proxmox sources (storage modules) it seems that there is still
> some code for DRBD left, but apperently not used.
> 
> IMO it is a real pitty that DRBD is not supported anymore. There are several
> use case where DRBD is a perfect and cost efficient solution avoiding
> additional external storages. Debian 9 comes with DRBD8 out of the - so why
> not use it (without needed any additonal software from Linbit)?
Check out the pvesr for storage replication.
https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-pvesr.html

> 
> Is there any technical reason why DRBD(8) is not supported anymore?
The storage plugin is, AFAIR only for DRBD9.
https://docs.linbit.com/docs/users-guide-9.0/#ch-proxmox

> 
> Is it possible to activate and use the leftover DRBD code in Proxmox?
> 
> If not, I think the simple "manual" solution would be a DRBD-backed LVM
> storage in active-active mode. Any experiences with such a setup (except
> that it is not nice to have a single DRBD ressource for all VMs instead of
> one DRBD ressource per virtual disk)?
Try pvesr, as mentioned above, it uses ZFS and snapshots to replicate
volumes, less hassle then with DRBD, IMHO. Or give Ceph a go, integrated
into PVE.

--
Cheers,
Alwin