Chapter 2. DRBD Features

Table of Contents

Single-primary mode
Dual-primary mode
Replication modes
Multiple replication transports
Efficient synchronization
On-line device verification
Replication traffic integrity checking
Split brain notification and automatic recovery
Support for disk flushes
Disk error handling strategies
Strategies for dealing with outdated data
Three-way replication
Long-distance replication with DRBD Proxy
Truck based replication
Floating peers

This chapter discusses various useful DRBD features, and gives some background information about them. Some of these features will be important to most users, some will only be relevant in very specific deployment scenarios.

Chapter 6, Common administrative tasks and Chapter 7, Troubleshooting and error recovery contain instructions on how to enable and use these features during day-to-day operation.

Single-primary mode

In single-primary mode, any resource is, at any given time, in the primary role on only one cluster member. Since it is thus guaranteed that only one cluster node manipulates the data at any moment, this mode can be used with any conventional file system (ext3, ext4, XFS etc.).

Deploying DRBD in single-primary mode is the canonical approach for high availability (fail-over capable) clusters.