DRBD on already installed machine

TryingHard · 03-23-2004, 08:55 PM

I have an already installed machine as a mail server :

OS : RH9
Mail : Qmail

Everything is done by default :

qmail is at /var/qmail
I have /dev/hda1 , hda2 boot , hda3 swap

Now, I am considering DRBD to create a failover server... can I do that? or do I have to reinstall qmail into the drbd /dev/nbx?

Any help is appreciated.

TryingHard · 03-24-2004, 03:39 AM

So nobody knows?!

jsokko · 04-13-2004, 10:45 AM

Err... I don't think there's a lot of people with either DRBD or linux-HA experience... I am looking into DRBD for setting up network RAID 1 but it doesn't have to do with our qmail service. Do you want me to post my findings after I go through the rigamaroles?

One thing that I should mention is that I believe DRBD does *not* handle failovers of service. DRBD is strictly for replication of data on your server / host. I believe you need to you linux-HA for failover of IP / service instead.

TryingHard · 04-15-2004, 01:14 AM

HI,

Well, I did the thing all over again, on fresh systems, I believe this is the only way...

True, DRBD is just for copying the data, to have failover you need HearBeat from linux-ha.org, the two software compliment each other....

I did the whole thing with qmail and it's working fine so far, did so many tests and it always works :-)

Let me know if you need any help...

jsokko · 04-15-2004, 09:13 AM

Update from my side:

We decided that DRBD isn't neccessary. We are going to use Rsync + HA instead, since the changes are going to be nominal ( < 100MB a day).

Did you run into any type of pitfalls or struggle with any specific issues with either DRBD or HA?