DRBD, LVM, GNBD, and Xen for free and reliable SAN

Tim Freeman, Software Developer and Research Assistant at Globus Toolkit, published an article explaining how to achieve high-availability for Xen hosts using open source tools DRDB, Logical Volume Manager (LVM) and Global Network Block Device (GNBD). The objective is achieved without a shared storage facility like a SAN.

“…I wanted a reliable disk solution for backups and also wanted a big, blank and resizable storage system for virtual machines. I knew I wanted to be able to get at the shared disk remotely from other nodes and wanted to be able to replace broken hardware quickly if something failed. I also didn’t want to spend a lot of time reconfiguring OSs and software in the case of a total system failure”.

You can read the original article here.