To install DRBD you can choose either the pre-built binary installation packages or you can use the source packages and build from source. If you want to build from source you must have installed the source and development packages.

If you are installing using a binary distribution then you must ensure that the kernel version number of the binary package matches your currently active kernel. You can use uname to find out this information:

$ uname -r
2.6.20-gentoo-r6

To build from the sources, download the source tar.gz package, extract the contents and then follow the instructions within the INSTALL file.

Once DRBD has been built and installed, you need to edit the /etc/drbd.conf file and then run a number of commands to build the block device and set up the replication.

Although the steps below are split into those for the primary node and the secondary node, it should be noted that the configuration files for all nodes should be identical, and many of the same steps have to be repeated on each node to enable the DRBD block device.