[Linux-cluster] No storage cluster configuration

[Lon Hohberger]

On Wed, 2006-08-16 at 07:42 -0300, Celso K. Webber wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> Does anyone from Red Hat would tell me if Red Hat supports a no external 
> storage environment when using RH Cluster Suite 

Yes...

> and DRDB for replicating 
> data beetween cluster nodes?

No.

> When customers come to us arguing that IBM is offering SuSE Cluster 
> solutions without the need of an external storage, we usually tell them 
> to go on if they don't value their data. IBM on its turn tells that DRDB 
> is stable enough for production, even when using Oracle database on top 
> of it.

There is, or was, some deep-seated hatred between some of our elite
engineers and DRBD, but I don't remember what it was.  It's not part of
the kernel.

> We have lost some projects because of this "magical solution" of using 
> DRDB instead of an external storage, but we are still against deploying 
> production cluster solutions using DRDB or similar solutions.

We don't ship DRBD.  If that changes, we can certainly support it.  In
fact, people from the community have asked about it, too.  Eventually,
we may have to add support for it to our upstream linux-cluster project,
even if Red Hat never ships it - mostly due to its simplicity to
configure, and ease of use in failover environments.

> So, if we are certain that a DRDB (or similar solution) is supported by 
> Red Hat when used in conjunction with RH Cluster Suite, maybe we could 
> compete with those IBM + Novell SuSE solutions.

We're certain it's not supported right now out of the box, since we
don't ship DRBD.  Using it as part of a <script> resource is perfectly
valid, since we do not help with the contents of users' scripts.

Note that the GNBD + Cluster Mirroring paradigm is like DRBD++ - it
supports concurrent writes.

-- Lon