DRBD Implementation Case Study for Athabasca University

This case study documents the implementation of DRBD® at Athabasca University (AU), Canada's leading distance-education institution. The university faces the challenge of providing high availability for its virtualized servers to ensure that approximately 37,000 students can access their online courses and campus applications 24/7. To address this, AU uses DRBD® in conjunction with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Citrix Xen, and MySQL. The adoption of DRBD® has proven successful over several years, delivering a highly available system with 99.99% uptime at a minimal cost. The case study outlines the simplicity of setting up and maintaining DRBD®, which has allowed AU to focus on its application stacks rather than troubleshooting server issues. It describes how DRBD® has become an essential component in maintaining the reliability and efficiency of the university's services while remaining cost-effective and scalable.