Components

DRBD consists of two main components. The driver code in the kernel, and the user space tools to control, configure the driver, as well as integration programs and scripts that glues the DRBD system to cluster management software and other system components.

The driver code was developed for many years as so called out-of-tree module, and got integrated into the vanilla Linux kernel with the 2.6.33 release.

This means that if your Linux distribution is shipped with a kernel older than 2.6.33 you have to install a kernel module package and packages for the user land code. If you distribution contains a Linux-2.6.33 kernel or newer you only need to install the user land code.

Linux releases with DRBD

It is recommended to use userland packages of the same release as the kernel component. The following table shows the DRBD version equivalence relation between Linux releases and DRBD releases. Of course you can always upgrade to the latest DRBD module version by building the out-of-tree code, or installing the respective kernel module packages (see next page).

→ continue with DRBD packages