DRBD (Distributed Replicated Block Device) is a Linux kernel module that allows the replication of data between two or more systems. It is useful for creating highly available clusters where data needs to be available even if one of the nodes fails.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install DRBD on Arch Linux.
Before we begin, make sure that:
DRBD is available in the official Arch Linux repositories. You can install it using the following command:
sudo pacman -S drbd
Type "Y" and press Enter to confirm installation.
Once DRBD is installed, we need to create and edit the configuration file located at /etc/drbd.conf.
You can use any text editor to create the file. In this example, we will use Vim:
sudo vim /etc/drbd.conf
Paste the following configuration into the file:
global {
usage-count no;
}
common {
}
resource <resource-name> {
on <hostname> {
device /dev/drbd0;
disk /dev/sdb1;
address <ip-address>:7788;
meta-disk internal;
}
on <hostname> {
device /dev/drbd0;
disk /dev/sdb1;
address <ip-address>:7788;
meta-disk internal;
}
net {
max-buffers 2048;
sndbuf-size 512k;
rcvbuf-size 512k;
ko-count 4;
}
}
Replace <resource-name> with the name of your resource that you want to replicate.
Replace <hostname> with the hostname of each node.
Replace <ip-address> with the IP address of each node.
Save and close the file.
Before we can start using DRBD, we need to initialize it. Run the following command on each node:
sudo drbdadm create-md <resource-name>
Replace <resource-name> with the name of your resource.
We can now start DRBD on both nodes. Run the following command on each node:
sudo systemctl start drbd.service
Finally, we can verify that DRBD is working correctly. Run the following command on each node:
sudo cat /proc/drbd
The output should show the status of the replication.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed DRBD on Arch Linux.
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