Case Study: Max Planck Institute achieves high availability for scientific data with LINBIT DRBD

DRBD® for High Availability of Scientific Data

Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, supported by LINBIT, needed to keep its central mail, print, software, backup, web, department services, and HPC systems continuously available while also ensuring long-term preservation of scientific data. Operating hundreds of Linux servers and computing nodes across two sites, the institute’s challenge was to meet strict scientific best-practice requirements for seamless uptime and reliable data protection.

LINBIT implemented a high-availability setup using DRBD®, Pacemaker, Corosync, CLVM, and SUSE Linux Enterprise, with two clusters in separate buildings and Dual Primary DRBD® replication for Xen-based virtual machines. The solution gave the institute the flexibility to perform software and hardware maintenance without service interruption, supporting 230 TB of data and 300 nodes / 2500 cores with no reported downtime.

Max Planck Institute

Armin Burkhardt

Head of Computer Service Group