Linus Torvalds, lead developer of the Linux kernel community, has merged DRBD, an open source data replication solution, into Linux as a fully supported component. After exactly 10 years of ongoing development work – software developer Phil Reisner wrote the first line of code on December 8, 1999 – Torvalds' acknowledgment means DRBD has become a fixture on the storage market.

DRBD's history is quite remarkable. Reisner originally published the Distributed Replicated Block Device as part of his Master's thesis at the Vienna University of Technology. Originally intended as a means of storing email messages in a redundant fashion, Reisner quickly realized the full potential of the newly developed solution. In November 2001, he co-founded LINBIT, a Vienna, Austria based enterprise focused on advancing the development of DRBD and Linux High-Availability.

In May 2005, Lars Ellenberg joined LINBIT to lead its R&D team with Phil Reisner. His dedication has been a priceless addition to the LINBIT development team. January 2007, DRBD 8 was released which broke previous performance barriers and at the same time introduced active-active clustering capability, allowing simultaneous write access from two cluster nodes. In 2008, LINBIT USA, LLC was founded to offer development, consultancy, 24/7 support, and OEM/ISV integration services in North, Central and South America. Recently, LINBIT attracted considerable attention by open-sourcing DRBD+, a formerly commercially licensed add-on that offered three and four node clustering support.

Phil Reisner is particularly impressed with Torvalds decision to integrate DRBD into Linux. "This is a token of trust in DRBD and a terrific acknowledgment of our work – a true milestone in our company's history." LINBIT North America, CEO, Kavan Smith highlights the advantages of Torvalds' decision, “With this mainline addition to Linux, DRBD will be available to a wider audience of users enabling them to replicate data with more efficiency and control than ever before. Experiencing downtime? DRBD is the answer, not some expensive NAS/SAN device.”

The 2.6.33 Linux kernel release, of which DRBD will be an integral part, is currently expected for February 2010.

DRBD® is a registered trademark of LINBIT in the United States, the European Union, and many other countries.

About LINBIT

LINBIT has led the way in high-availability since 2001, and continues to be the market leader in business uptime, disaster recovery, and continuity solutions. Built on a solid base of Austrian software engineering and open-source technology, DRBD is the industry standard for high-availability (HA) and data redundancy for mission critical systems. DRBD enables disaster recovery and HA for any application on Linux, including iSCSI, NFS, Apache, MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, Xen and KVM Virtualization, and more.

For more information on how LINBIT can evolve your IT infrastructure call 1-877-4-LINBIT or visit http://www.linbit.com