The goal of this project is to integrate the high-reliability storage solution DRBD, the de-facto standard for distributed replicated block devices, which is also part of the standard Linux kernel, into cloud platforms such as OpenStack or Kybernetes, thereby addressing network and computational performance as well as scalability in large cloud installations.

The extensions will allow DRBD to reach out to new markets by cutting storage overheads by 50-80% while guaranteeing practically equivalent levels of redundancy. Furthermore, adopting erasure coding and secret sharing technologies also researched in Archistar will allow confidential data to be securely stored on semi-trusted cloud providers. Simplifying the deployment, enabling monitoring, as well as integrating DRBD into cloud platforms, will allow cloud providers to pick up the technology.

The results of DRBD4Cloud will be delivered as software implementations which, similar to DRBD, will (mostly) be published under an open source licence.

Facts:

• Project start: October 2018
• Project duration: 24 months
• Project costs: approximately EUR 1.2 million
• Funding: Funded through national funding organizations with approximately EUR 675,000
• Coordination: LINBIT HA-Solutions GmbH
• Partners: AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH (Austria), PRO-ZETA a.s. (Czech Republic);