Audience
Infrastructure architects wanting a solution providing real‑time data replication and failover for critical applications and storage services
About DRBD
DRBD® (Distributed Replicated Block Device) is an open source, software‑based, shared‑nothing block storage replication solution for Linux, designed primarily to deliver high-performance, high‑availability (HA) data services by mirroring local block devices between nodes in real time, either synchronously or asynchronously. Implemented deep in the Linux kernel as a virtual block‑device driver, DRBD ensures local read performance with efficient write‑through replication to peer(s). User‑space utilities like drbdadm, drbdsetup, and drbdmeta enable declarative configuration, metadata management, and administration across installations. Originally built for two‑node HA clusters, DRBD 9.x extends support to multi‑node replication and integration into software‑defined storage (SDS) systems such as LINSTOR, making it suitable for cloud‑native environments.
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Longhorn
In the past, ITOps and DevOps have found it hard to add replicated storage to Kubernetes clusters. As a result many non-cloud-hosted Kubernetes clusters don’t support persistent storage. External storage arrays are non-portable and can be extremely expensive. Longhorn delivers simplified, easy to deploy and upgrade, 100% open source, cloud-native persistent block storage without the cost overhead of open core or proprietary alternatives. Longhorn’s built-in incremental snapshot and backup features keep the volume data safe in or out of the Kubernetes cluster. Scheduled backups of persistent storage volumes in Kubernetes clusters is simplified with Longhorn’s intuitive, free management UI. External replication solutions will recover from a disk failure by re-replicating the entire data store. This can take days, during which time the cluster performs poorly and has a higher risk of failure.
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HPE Serviceguard
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SIOS DataKeeper
SIOS DataKeeper is a host‑based, block‑level replication solution that delivers real‑time, synchronous or asynchronous redundancy for Windows Server environments, integrating seamlessly with Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC). It enables "SANless" clusters—eliminating dependency on shared‑storage arrays—by replicating data across local, virtual, or cloud servers, including VMware, Hyper‑V, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, while offering optimized performance without requiring hardware accelerators or compression devices. Once installed, it provides a new SIOS DataKeeper Volume resource in WSFC, supporting geographically dispersed clusters via cross‑subnet failover and configurable heartbeat parameters. Built-in WAN optimization and efficient compression maximize bandwidth use over local and wide‑area networks.
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Pricing
Starting Price:
Free
Free Version:
Free Version available.
Integrations
Company Information
LINBIT
Founded: 2001
United States
linbit.com/drbd/
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Linux
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